7 Ways To Use Your Rehearsal Night To Its Full Potential

Alex Enfiedjian 00:11 Hello and welcome back to another episode of the worship ministry training podcast. My name is Alex Enfiedjian, your host. Today we’ll be talking about seven ways to use your rehearsal nights to their full potential. And this content actually comes from an interview where I’m the one being interviewed on the church media podcast with Carl Barnhill. It’s a really great podcast for creative church types. So I highly encourage you to check it out. It’s the church media podcast. And the content was initially called seven reasons to have a midweek rehearsal. But I believe you could actually convert those reasons into markers to evaluate your current rehearsals to see if you’re using them to their full potential because if you’re strategic with your rehearsal nights, you can get a lot accomplished. And they have kind of a long term impact on your ministry. So I thought it would be helpful for you guys to hear this content. And I also thought it would be fun for you to hear an interview with me, because I share just a little bit about my story in the worship leading realm, which I haven’t ever really talked about before on my podcast over the last four years that we’ve had this thing, so I thought it’d be fun for you to hear that. And we’ll jump into that in a second. But first I want to tell you about our new recommended product of the month. The pads live app, it’s an app for your smartphone or your tablet, core sound pads is literally revolutionising the pads game with how incredibly easy they’re making it to introduce backing pads into your band. You know, previously you had to download mp3 files, find a program to play them on, figure out how to crossfade and all that. But now you can literally just download an app on your phone or your tablet, you plug it into your sound system, you build your setlist within the app, and you click play. you swipe through the songs, they automatically crossfade everything is just super smooth. They even have a built in metronome option that you can use if you’d like your band to start playing with the click track. So it’s seriously amazingly intuitive. And it’s free, it’s free to download, and you can unlock more pads within the app itself. Or even better, you can go to core sound pads comm and enter the promo code WM t podcast at checkout. And that will save you 20% off the pads bundles. And you don’t get that discount within the app itself. So I would encourage you to go to core sound pads, enter w mt podcast save 20% and then those pads automatically get unlocked in the app itself for you to use. So check it out. All the links are in the show notes. It’s a really great resource for your team. That’s our recommended product for this month. Let’s get into today’s interview with me.

Carl Barnhill 02:44 Hey guys, today I welcome on the line Alex Enfiedjian. To the show, Alex did a murder your name to that.

Alex Enfiedjian 02:51 Actually, Carl, you did an awesome job. You are one of the few people who get it pretty close.

Carl Barnhill 02:56 All right. Alex is a worship leader, songwriter, producer and pastor. He is the mastermind behind worship ministry training comm a great website where you can pick up training materials for your your team, all kinds of training stuff for worship leaders, all kinds of other people to great website. Alex, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for hanging out.

Alex Enfiedjian 03:17 Thanks, Carl. I think you’re the first person to ever call me a mastermind.

Carl Barnhill 03:20 So it’s an honor to be with you. Absolutely, man. Now we’ve kind of followed each other online. I love for you to just tell us your background and how you got started in music and ministry, that sort of thing.

Alex Enfiedjian 03:31 Sure. Yeah. So it’s long story, and I won’t bore all your listeners, but really junior high, you know, like one of my youth leaders was like, Hey, your musical Do you want to jump on the drum kit? And he kind of started from there. And then it was like, Hey, you want to play guitar? And hey, you want to lead a song. And pretty soon I’m leading youth band and then leading in, you know, for the adults and kind of went from there. And here we are like, I don’t know how many years later. 1220 I don’t know a lot, a lot many years later. And I’m leading worship every week and leading a ministry of other worship leaders and have the worship ministry training and all that stuff. So

Carl Barnhill 04:06 So you were leading back in the days of like, shout to the Lord, Lord, I lift your name on high. Like was that in your wheelhouse? Back in the day?

Alex Enfiedjian 04:15 Yeah, old school, holy and Anointed One. Jesus, you know, that kind of stuff. Those are like my junior high love language right there.

Carl Barnhill 04:25 Awesome. Now you were a missionary in Russia, right? You had a stint in Russia? Was this when you were a kid or older? Or? No, I

Alex Enfiedjian 04:33 was. I was 19. I moved to Russia. When I was 20. I was in a Christian band playing bass. And we got invited on a short term mission trip to Russia to play some outreach concerts. And I just kind of fell in love with the Ministry there. And I was like, Man, this is way better than going to college and becoming an English teacher. So thankfully, that is the thing that God used to bring me into full time ministry and I was there for two years met my beautiful wife there who was in the ministry with me and We married there. And then two years later we move back to the States.

Carl Barnhill 05:03 Awesome. Well, that’s the best kind of mission trip right there.

Alex Enfiedjian 05:06 Yeah. You know, they say like mail order brides like, I totally went and picked mine up

Carl Barnhill 05:11 from Russia. Nice. Now you currently serve as the pastor of worship at Calvary Chapel, South Bay in LA. Right? That is correct. Yes. Tell us about the church and and your role there.

Alex Enfiedjian 05:23 Yeah. So it’s a newer thing for me, I moved down from Northern California about eight months ago in March of 2017. And started here, got a phone call out of the blue. And part of it was because of the podcast that I have, like, people were listening to it, and some lady said, Oh, you should call this guy. And there’s a connection to the church, for sure. From my earlier days, like I said that that band I was playing bass for they were from this church, but I didn’t attend this church. But they called me it’s a very large church. I don’t know how many 1000s, but multiple 1000s closer to like, eight, nine, something like that. And they said, Hey, we really need someone to be our pastor of worship, and to lead all of our worship leaders, because, you know, there’s, like every ministry has, you know, musical worship portion that they needed someone to oversee, and bring unity to so kind of coming into this and really trying to unify that group. We actually had our first unification meeting last Saturday, which was really cool. So we had like, 150 volunteers who had never even met each other, you know, because the church is so big, and there are so many different areas of industry. So it’s, it’s crazy, Carl, it’s absolutely insane. And, but it’s, it’s awesome. And it’s a great challenge. And I love a challenge. So I love to build stuff. So it’s been fun. And I pray that, you know, God will give me 20 years here to really build something beautiful.

Carl Barnhill 06:42 How long have you been there now? Eight months only? Wow, that’s awesome. And where? And tell me about your experiences before that? Where were you before this church?

Alex Enfiedjian 06:50 Yeah, I know where this size for sure. Like, you know, I was in. After Russia. I was in a small Baptist Church of about, you know, 200 people, and then went to a non nondenominational Church of about 700 people, and then did a really short stint up in the mountains, in Lake Tahoe at a church of about, I don’t know, 500 people. So then God called me to church, you know, 10 times larger. So I don’t know what he’s thinking. But I know he’s got a plan. And I trust him to use me somehow. Yeah, man,

Carl Barnhill 07:21 I totally understand that I was a youth pastor back in the day at a really small church of like, 100 people when I was a student, Pastor of like, I don’t know, 10 kids, not even that, and then serving in a couple of different churches in the most recently new spring, you know, running 30,000 people on a Sunday. So it’s, it is crazy to kind of see, you know, the difference in the size of churches. But it’s also interesting, I was talking to someone the other day about this, it’s interesting to kind of see the same problems, that bigger churches don’t think that smaller churches deal with some of the same things that they do and vice versa. And it’s amazing that the same problems exist, no matter the size. Do you find that to be true? Also?

Alex Enfiedjian 08:01 Yeah, absolutely. I think we all wrestle with the same problems of not having enough volunteers to make things work or, you know, the bigger the church, the bigger the budget, but also the bigger the expenses. So it’s just like, it’s, it’s the same problem for everyone. And you know, what’s cool, Carl, is I’ve also found that like, the same solutions work in a small church, a medium church and a large church, like if you’re a good leader, and you put the right systems in place, like it will bring health regardless of what size church you’re in. So I think that’s just encouraging for any of our listeners, you know,

Carl Barnhill 08:33 yeah, very true. Okay, so I am big. I’ve talked about this before, I really want to dive in to this topic of a midweek rehearsal, or a midweek run through. So I want us to talk through we have seven reasons that we’re going to talk through with you to have a midweek rehearsal. Now, you’re going to set this up here. It’s interesting, because you’re moving this direction. Right. You You, you wrote an article about this about Man, I wish that I had a midweek rehearsal for these reasons, right.

Alex Enfiedjian 09:03 Yeah, well, I wish that I was moving in these directions, but I just don’t see it happening at our church at this point. So our like I said, our church is very large. And we have multiple services, like per week, we have three different types of services per week, all in our main sanctuary. And that doesn’t include any of it like ancillary other ministries, but like in the main we have a Thursday night service, we have a Sunday morning service, three of those and a Sunday night service is different. So that’s, you know, three different bands, three different sets each week. So to ask my team to like come out on a different night for each one of those services. I would be here, you know, six nights a week. So I just don’t see it happening. So I kind of wrote a little article, be moaning and, you know, loving the fact that I can’t have a midweek worship service. So that’s why this article kind of came from and these points came from,

Carl Barnhill 09:54 but it was interesting how your, your points that we’re going to talk through, really were eggs. actly what we experience at NewSpring? That it just gave us this massive non stress environment that we weren’t rushed on a Sunday. So speak to that and set us up a little bit.

Alex Enfiedjian 10:12 Yeah, totally. So, you know, like you I, I have had midweek rehearsals in the past at other churches. And it’s just a beautiful thing, because you don’t have to rush to squeeze in everything, to get it just right. When you only have an hour before the service, you actually have a dedicated day to be with your team, low stress, low pressure to really build culture, build relationships, try new things, tighten things up, and I can’t say enough about how vital midweek rehearsals are to growing a ministry in a healthy direction.

Carl Barnhill 10:49 Yeah, and a quality experience on Sunday. Totally, to all those reasons. So Alright, so we’re gonna walk through seven, let’s walk through the first main reason.

Alex Enfiedjian 10:59 Yeah, totally. So the first reason is discipleship, scripture and prayer with your team, like, you know, now at this new church, like I said, we have an hour or an hour and a half before service, everyone shows up, they’re trying to get their ears fixed, and whatever sounding good. And then we got to run through the songs and tighten things up. And, you know, whatever. And it depends on how prepared the band shows up, and how long that goes. And you know, so sometimes you can squeeze right up to like, a half an hour before service, and you get off the stage and you get in the back and everyone wants to go grab a coffee or bite to eat and come back and pray and get on stage. There’s no time in those moments to have any sort of spiritual. I mean, you can have spiritual dialogue and spiritual conversation, but you can’t sit down with your team and say, let’s open the scriptures. Let’s read a psalm. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s take prayer requests. And let’s just, you know, talk about some things that are going on in our lives. It’s all very rush, rush, rush, with a lot of focus on the music, because the services like you know, right around the corner. So having a midweek rehearsal allows you to have that time. You know, like, let’s say your midweek rehearsal is two hours, well, you can totally afford to take a half hour to read through a song with your team, like one of the things I used to do is read Psalm per week with our team. So we would start at Psalm one. And we would end at some 150 100 150 weeks later, you know, and so, in 150 weeks, you’ve gone through the entire psalter, with your team, and you talk through those points, you share things that you gleaned from it, you pray for each other. And it really knits the team together. Like I think when you’re spiritually connected it, you know, transfers to relationally, emotionally and even musically. So I think, even for this reason alone, having a midweek rehearsal is is worth it.

Carl Barnhill 12:38 Yeah, I know, if you tried to do that on Sunday, you’re constantly looking at your watch. Yeah. And not really getting a chance to flesh out what you want to talk about. Okay, let’s go and move on to your second reason. Sure.

Alex Enfiedjian 12:50 Yeah, I think the second reason for having a midweek rehearsal is to be able to have some important conversations, or what I would call crucial conversations, you know, like, you might need to confront a team member about being late all the time, or you might need to confront a team member who has a bad attitude, or who’s being a diva, or, you know, I don’t know who’s not showing up knowing their parts or whatever. Or maybe it’s even just, there’s a team member who’s going through divorce, and you want to, you know, talk about it with them and pray for them and minister to them, but like, you don’t want to do that right before a service, because then emotions are heated, and it’s just going to get into their head and mess with their, their head and their psyche, and then they’re gonna have to get on stage and lead worship. And it’s just like, no way, you know, so when you have a midweek rehearsal, you can, you know, keep someone after that, and have a hard conversation or have a crucial conversation. And there’s enough time between the rehearsal and the Sunday morning experience for everybody to decompress and process their thoughts and emotions and, and really like what I found, Carl, I don’t know about you, but you can’t have the ministry that you want, without having Crucial Conversations. Like if you don’t confront bad behavior, or deal with a difficult person, you will, it will just turn into a cancer. So you have to have these in order to get where you want to go. And that assumes that you have a vision already, which most of us I think do have a vision for what we want, but crucial conversations and one on one conversations are like a huge part of achieving the vision that God’s put in your heart. So I think midweek rehearsals are a great time for that.

Carl Barnhill 14:18 So in kind of speaking with this, one thing that I would do, I’ve mentioned this before, is I would take Tuesdays and Thursdays could be whatever the day of the week, one day or whatever and dedicate it to lunches or coffee with a team member. Male team member, obviously, if you’re speaking to a female team member, you might want to have them over to the church or something like that. But that’s another way that if you have dedicated time, whether that’s a lunch or a midweek rehearsal, where you stay after, maybe you plan to stay after 30 minutes that if you need to have a crucial conversation, you can or you can leave it open. Do you have you experienced that where you kind of leave it open? Hey, I’m going to be Stick around for half an hour if anybody has any questions needs to talk to me about anything in your walk with Christ or anything I’m going to stick around.

Alex Enfiedjian 15:08 Yeah, I’ve never actually done that. But that’s kind of a cool idea. But I’m thinking about this crucial conversation idea. And I’m my experience lately is validating it because I have a bass player who is like, he constantly is hitting bad notes. And I know that I need to talk to him about it. But I don’t want to talk to him before service. And then right after he serves after a long day of work, he comes and he gives us time and he serves, and he hits 10, bad notes on the bass, right after that service, where he’s just, you know, poured himself out for the Lord, even though he’s, you know, fumbled the bass notes. Like, I just can’t bring myself to confront him right after he’s just served. It’s like, there’s got to be a separate time. So I love the fact that you’re having coffee with people. And you know, and just I know, this isn’t exactly on point. But as we’re talking about crucial conversations, I found just like encouraging, before you confront, you know what I mean? So like, for this bass player, I would say, I would say, dude, you’re like one of my favorite bass players, your tone, and the fills that you do are awesome. But you’re just you’ve been a little bit busy. And I noticed that when you’re busy, you don’t land on the right notes. So like, can we work on that? Or how can we work on that? You know, so you encourage and then you confront so?

Carl Barnhill 16:15 Yeah. Or an encourage sandwich? Yes. Yeah. Bring it back around at the end to Okay, our third reason here for a midweek service. I love this. It gives you time to tighten up music and transitions. Oh, yeah. flesh that out?

Alex Enfiedjian 16:31 Yeah. So you know, I think, like I said, when you’re rushing for a service right around the corner, you just settle for good enough, because you’re like, Okay, well, you know, we didn’t nail that break. But that’s good enough, no one’s gonna care. But when you have time set aside that’s like specific to really dial things in, then you really have time to work out things like rhythm section grooves, or vocal harmonies, or Okay, vocalists, you’re coming in here who’s singing this, who’s singing that, or some other technical things in the music, or maybe even just focusing in on a particular part of a song that you know, could be stronger, like, okay, let’s leave that, let’s leave that like 10 times until we get really comfortable with that. And if you don’t have time for that, because you have a service around the corner, then it ain’t gonna happen. So it’s really about, you know, just having that dedicated night to really tighten up the band. And then we’ll talk about transitions to later or if you want, we can talk about it now.

Carl Barnhill 17:28 Yeah, I was kind of mentioned, transitions, because that, from a musical standpoint, which you can speak to a lot better than I can. And a production standpoint, which is a little bit more my sweet spot, those transitions are key with both of those teams. And those teams working together in transitions. That’s the details of a great worship experience. Walk me through kind of, from a musical standpoint, how you really drill into transitions.

Alex Enfiedjian 17:55 Yeah, and I think you’re right, it’s both musical and technical. Because like if the lighting cues are off, or maybe some of your listeners don’t have lighting cues, but I think most of your listeners are pretty tech savvy or come from tech savvy churches, otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be listening to you. But you know, like lighting cues and like even sound stuff like okay, this vocalist is singing this song, and this vocalist is leading this song, like, the technical side needs to be seamless as well. But musically speaking, like, what I typically do is I will run through each of the songs with the team, where we will really dial into the song as an individual unit. And then we will play through those four or five songs. And then when we finish that first run through, then I will say, Alright, guys, we’re going to run through it as if it’s the actual service. And we will play through the set and play through the transitions. And if I need to speak into a transition and say, okay, that that didn’t work, like I need you to come in earlier here. I’ll actually, you know, we’ll stop and talk through it. But we try to play seamlessly through the entire set as if it were a Sunday morning, and carwin. One of the like, biggest blessings of using ear monitors, if your listeners have in your monitors, instead of floor wedges like is, if you can hook yourself up with a program that has vocal cue countenance, it makes transitions totally seamless, because everybody has a little talking robot dude in their ear, counting 1234 and everybody comes in right together. There’s no like turning around and looking at the drummer and like, tapping your foot or bobbing your head. And it’s just like, if you can get like, for example, Ableton Live, or even some of the apps have that as well on like an iPad, where it counts in the songs for you. And I don’t you know, I know some churches and maybe even new spring was like this, but they have like the accountants for the entire song where it’s like chorus 234 and stuff. But even just having the intro counting is what we do, and it’s so seamless for the transition. So that’s a little tip.

Carl Barnhill 19:54 Yeah, it is. And we actually started using the click track in the production room. So whatever the band is hearing, we have it in the production room as well. And so that it kind of helps the lyric operator stay in. It helps the director stay with the tempo, the switcher operator, it kind of helps everybody it’s a little bit annoying sometimes and in certain instances, especially when you’re slow song and it’s like, you know, more, you know, but, but I think it helps keep everybody on track too. So that’s good. That was a pretty good impression, Carl. Thank you. Thank you. You did some as well. That was good. All right, let’s move to Reason number four.

Alex Enfiedjian 20:35 Yeah. So I mean, I think just as your musicians get to dial stuff in, I think your sound techs get to dial things in as well, when they have time to spend time on things that they wouldn’t normally have time for. So they might want to try like a different microphone on a lead vocalist, or they might want to tweak the microphone placement on a guitar amp or on the toms. Or maybe they’ll do a deep dive into the effects unit and find a better reverb, or work on making the inner sound better, you know, like it’s, it’s time dedicated to things that they wouldn’t have time for, right before a service, even something as simple as like taking a young sound tech and letting them mess around with the board and experiment and try things without worrying about them ruining the sound for the service, you know, so and that, if you do that, that pays long term dividends of like raising up someone new, you know, so I just think, you know, your sound techs are gonna be able to dial things in Week after week, and continually incrementally make things better.

Carl Barnhill 21:30 I totally agree to have that be a training ground, our training opportunity, it’s a non stress thing where you don’t have to worry about messing up in front of everybody. So yeah. Okay, reason number five is that it gives other singers a chance to lead. So from a worship perspective, it gives you no other opportunities to other fingers, tell us how you’ve implemented this in the places that you’ve served.

Alex Enfiedjian 21:56 So just like the sound tech is like, Hey, little young sound tech come and try this, like the worship leader can do the same thing. Like if he has a background vocalist, who usually sings harmony, but he feels like hey, this might be in Sally’s range. Like, she doesn’t usually lead but it’s a midweek rehearsal. Hey, Sally, do you want to just lead a verse for rehearsal? And just let her go for it. And then like, as she gets to the end of the verse, If she sounded great, say, hey, do the chorus too. And just let her lead the song, you know? And wow, like, that sounded amazing. Do you want to do that on Sunday? And she’s like, Oh, my gosh, but she has at least she has four days to yakka Sally talks like that. But she you know, at least has four days to get that nervousness out of her system and sing it on Sunday really well. Or if Sally really stinks and doesn’t sound great at all, then no harm no foul, because it was a midweek rehearsal. And you were just, you know, kind of like, casually tossing her like, Hey, you want to just jump in and sing this real quick? You know, it’s not like you were like, okay, Sally, like sign this contract, you’re gonna sing, you know. So I think that’s a really good way to kind of let background vocalists grow into lead vocalists. And overtime, I think they’ll get more comfortable and get better doing it.

Carl Barnhill 23:03 It’s good. All right, so we have two more to go Alex get started with number six.

Alex Enfiedjian 23:08 Yeah, number six is to experiment, a dedicated rehearsal time with no pressure allows you to experiment both musically and technically. So what does that mean? That means like, you can spend some time tweaking the arrangement of a song, like if it’s feeling dated, and like you’ve done it a million times the same way, like, okay, let’s, let’s reimagine this song. Or if you’re a worship leader, and you leave from acoustic, it’s a time for you to try leading from electric like, you know, it’s not, if it fails, it’s during a dedicated rehearsal time where it’s okay to fail. Maybe even having just a jam session with your team. You know, like, I don’t know how many worship teams do that. But sometimes that can really let your musicians loosen up a little bit and let out their inner creativity, or maybe even like writing a song together. But it’s also a time to experiment. Technically, like if you’re going to move to your monitors, or if you’re going to implement a quick track like Sunday morning is not the best time to do that for the very first time. So having a rehearsal date allows you to bring these major changes into the mix without potentially causing a train wreck. You know, it’s much better to do these things when there aren’t 200 or 2000 people sitting there watching you fail miserably. Yeah,

Carl Barnhill 24:17 exactly. And I think that we’re obviously seeing a theme here that this midweek rehearsal is a time where you’re not stressed. It’s a non stress time for your team to try things for your people to get practice on your gear and singing and, and sound and it’s practice. It’s a practice. So okay, our last reason that we have to think about having a midweek rehearsal with your band and your crew is this. You can have time to analyze a recording before Sunday, this is so good. Flush this out for me.

Alex Enfiedjian 24:56 Yeah, this is huge. Like I can’t think of a better Way to help your team improve, then recording the rehearsal and sending it to them every single week. Like, I have done this at all my other churches and we, we do it here at my new church now, except it’s after the service. So it doesn’t really help them make necessary changes. But what I used to do when we had a midweek rehearsal was I would record every rehearsal, I would go home and listen to it, I usually listen to it on the way home, put it headphones on, I would listen to it, I would make notes of things that didn’t sound good, or parts that needed to change, or people who were pitchy or whatever. And I would not just listen to myself, but I would send it to my team members, so that they could hear what they’re doing. And they could go, man, I really don’t like what I was doing. And then they could make the appropriate changes before Sunday. And like I said, this has been by far the fastest way to improve my team sound over the years, because I’m like, amazed how little I hear during rehearsal. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced this with musicians, Carl, but like, people think what they’re doing in the moment sounds good. But when they go back and listen to it, the recording never realize, you know, and so having a midweek rehearsal gives me time to catch these issues and fix them before actually having the Sunday service. So that, I’d say is a huge reason. And I’m sure you can do the same thing for the technical side of things as well.

Carl Barnhill 26:20 Yeah, exactly. And if you end your night of rehearsal with a run through, I would suggest that you record that run through from top to bottom. And then you can break it up later into songs if you need to, or whatever. But the reason I suggest that is because if you do a full run through, and you have a worship leader that’s praying or making a transition, they might say something, in fact, I would encourage our leaders to do this, even if you say something like, Hey, I’m going to say something here about how God’s moving in my wife. And, and I’m going to talk about this verse right here. And then at this point in, when I’m talking about that, I need the band to hit this note and walk into this intro. Like all that kind of stuff, matters. And it helps the team know where to go and know the journey that you’re all taking the audience on. Do you have any thoughts here out?

Alex Enfiedjian 27:09 No, I think you’re right. I think it’s leadership. Right? It’s being clear, it’s giving direction, it’s giving your people a roadmap so that they’re not driving blind, you know?

Carl Barnhill 27:20 Yeah. And also, with the recording, you can send it to your crew, especially your lyric operators, your directors, switcher, operators, camera operators, all your production crew can heavily benefit from that recording. In fact, we would put it on Planning Center all the songs on Planning Center. And occasionally, this might be a bit terrible. But we would check up on people in Planning Center and see if they listen to the songs you can do that. Oh, yeah. Cuz you can see, that’s good. Yeah. And so not to like be, you know, a jerk about it, but just say, Hey, I noticed that you kind of struggled a little bit with this song. Next time, I just want to encourage you, we put the songs up here, you know, for this reason, you know, it gives you a platform to speak to that you’re talking about Crucial Conversations. Anyway.

Alex Enfiedjian 28:12 Yeah, and no. And, you know, we do use our rehearsal or not our rehearsal recordings, but our recordings from our services, like, on Sunday mornings, I’ll ask the broadcast mixing crew, like, Hey, can you send me the audio from second service? I’ll chop that up. And I’ll put it in Planning Center for the band to reference for the next time, you know, so that’s how we’re going to arrange the song. So there’s kind of a added benefit of like, that’s our arrangement of the song, you know, because we don’t play things here. Exactly. Like the album’s we do our own kind of spin on stuff.

Carl Barnhill 28:40 Right. So. Okay, as we wrap today, a couple questions. So you mentioned this at your church. What if I’m in a church, that it’s not feasible at all to have a midweek service, somebody could be listening to somebody like, yeah, those are great ideas never would happen at my church? Well, that’s how I feel.

Alex Enfiedjian 28:57 That’s how I feel right now. But what what you could do, and here’s, here’s my thing, Carl, I’m sure you’re the same way. I want to be a solutions person, I never want to say I can’t do something, I want to say, How can I do something? So okay, I can’t, you know, have a weekly rehearsal for three different services every single week, well, what can I do, I can have a monthly thing that I gather my band, maybe every month, or maybe every two months, and I gather my band and we play through a new song or tighten things up or work on in your mixes, you can still apply these same principles on a like less regular basis.

Carl Barnhill 29:38 You know, that’s very, very good. What would you say? And I think that’s a great solution. What would you say to someone that’s like Sunday’s my only option? Like that’s all I have? How can you implement some of the same principles that we talked through and still do it on a Sunday? Kenny I mean, obviously wouldn’t be as as effective probably, but I

Alex Enfiedjian 30:00 think you can, um, for example, I think one of the things that I’ve thought about is like it not for this church, but another church was, what if we ran through, like one new song per week after service. So after everyone goes home, everyone leaves the sanctuary, okay, we’re gonna hang out, hang around, maybe we’ll buy the band doughnuts, so that they have like, a little bit of carb energy to get through 45 minutes of a new song, you know, run through and arrangement, you know, so like, again, it’s it’s not taking no for an answer. It’s figuring out, okay, well, maybe we so we at our church, I asked our band to start arriving half an hour earlier than they used to arrive under the old worship pastor. So that was a new thing. But I was like, we need to do we need this time we need to do it. But maybe you could do like I said, after service, you could just say, okay, every service after service, we’re going to run through one new song, you know, or we’re going to run through this thing. But whatever you want to work on, you know?

Carl Barnhill 30:55 Yeah. So how do you deal with and I’ve dealt with that before coming into a church. And the attitude of, well, this is how we do things. Okay, well, starting x day, we are going to be here 30 minutes early. Like that’s, that’s what we’re going to do. What has been the response from that? Have they hated your guts? Or how have you measured that response and the effectiveness of implementing some of this stuff?

Alex Enfiedjian 31:20 Oh, man, that’s good. You know, I, I actually want to do a podcast episode for the worship ministry training podcast about coming to a new church and how to bring about the change you need to bring about as a new person in an established church, because I think it’s a very tricky thing. But I think one of the best things that I could say is to really love the people and get to know the people and like, be nice, be a nice person, and explain why explain why we’re gonna do this. And I think when people know that you’re not a jerk, and they know that you have good reasoning, and they see that you’re a solutions oriented person, and you’re like, always making everything better. They’re gonna be like, well, I don’t necessarily like waking up half hour early, but I see his point, and it is going to make things better. That’s how I would approach those conversations.

Carl Barnhill 32:08 Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for joining me this week, and I have a sneaky suspicion that you’ll be back next week on the show. Cool. That means I passed the test. You did. Alright. Thanks a lot, man.

Alex Enfiedjian 32:21 Thanks, girl. Bye. Awesome. Well, that’s all we have time for this month. I hope you were helped by this episode. If you were please help us by forwarding it on to a friend. We make it very easy for you to share these episodes by clicking certain links in the show notes. So check that out, and then send it out to your favorite social media platforms or emails or all that stuff. So thanks for sharing. Thanks again for leaving reviews. If you’ve done that on iTunes, we really appreciate it. You can leave us a review by going to worship ministry training comm slash review. Also, be sure to check out the pads live app from core sound pads, you can get it free in the app store and I have links in the show notes for that. So make sure you check out pads live in the app store of iOS for now and Android is launching soon. Alright, that’s it for today. God bless you guys this month as you lead your churches to love Jesus and love each other well and I will see you next month for another helpful