Combining Choir and Praise Team (Blended Service): The Ultimate Guide

Speaker 1 All right, let’s combine our choir and our worship team together into one team, a blended service, if you want to call it that. How do you do that? So we’re going to cover how to recruit new people. We’re going to cover the audition process that I use at my church. We’re going to talk about which songs work best, the best tech to use, how to teach them the parts and resource them, and a whole bunch of other things that I think will help you combine these two groups of people together, because it is becoming more popular nowadays to combine a choir of some sort with a modern worship band. The first thing I want to share about is songs. It’s important that you just pick songs that work well for a choir, for a choral sound. There are certain songs that are syncopated and a lot of words and a lot of weird rhythms. It’s just not going to sound pretty to have a bunch of people singing that. I’m thinking of the song I Praise God. That song has so many syllabus in the verses and then the choruses. There’s no dramatic sweeping melodies in that song.

Speaker 1 You want songs that work well with the choir, like a thousand Halleluias. That’s a beautiful song or Oh, Praise the Name. Anything that’s congregational is going to usually work well for a choir. I like to lean into our choir Sundays. We do a combined choir Sunday on the first Sunday of every month. I like to lean into the traditional songs. I like to use hymns. I do modern arrangements of hymns. I know that Shane and Shane have a lot of modern arrangements of hymns. I actually have a lot of modern arrangements of hymns. If you want them, I will put a link below to all of my old recordings of Alex’s versions of hymns with choruses added or rhythm sections. If you’re interested in hearing my hymns, don’t judge me. Some of these are literally 15-year-old recordings straight from the soundboard, but there’s probably 25 or 30 hymns in there that you can take and try at your church for a blended service because that way the choir is happy, but the style still sounds modern. One small tip I have about doing modern versions of hyms is try not to change the melody. The whole point of doing a him is to sing the original melody, O.

Speaker 1 G. Melody. Try to not tweak the melody of a him or put it in a different time signature unless you just really, really have to. Pick great songs for the choir, I usually pick them one month in advance. Now, let me tell you how I resource the choir to learn the song. So I pick good choir songs, and now I put all of those songs into a Google Drive folder that the choir always has access to. So there is a master folder called Choir Songs, and then there’s a date folder. And inside that folder, I put all the MP3s in the keys that we’re singing them, and I put the sheet music. Now, where do I get the sheet music? I’ll tell you in a second. Then I label the files 112233, so that it’s easy to know the order of the songs and to keep track of everything. Now, you might be saying, Alex, why don’t you just use Planning Centre? Great question. We’re going to. And let me tell you how I will be using that so that you can just jump ahead of me and do that if you’d prefer. The way that you can use Planning Centre is to create a choir arrangement for your song.

Speaker 1 Then in that choir arrangement, just upload all the files into that song. That way, whenever I’m going to do a choir Sunday, I just make sure to click the choir arrangement, and and then boom, all the resources are there and ready for the choir. The reason we haven’t done that yet is because they’re older and it’s a bit more complicated for them. We’re just doing Google Drive folder for now because they can all click a link and then click the MP3. One more thing about resourcing your choir. If you’re able, record the choir parts as separate tracks. If you don’t want to use sheet music, you can just literally record the different parts for each song and upload them to that planning centre arrangement or to that Google Drive folder. Just say bass, baritone, tenor, alta, soprana, whatever, just label those files correctly and put them into the Google Drive folder or Planning Centre arrangement. Now, where do I get sheet music? I don’t get sheet music. Our choir director gets the sheet music from Song Select or Praise Charts. She’ll go online, download them, and then we upload them into that Google Drive folder.

Speaker 1 That’s how we resource the choir, and we do it one month in advance because I always say tools plus time equals excellence. You need to give your people the tools they need with the time that they need to succeed. So one month in advance, they’ve got all their resources. They click the link. Yay. Now they can come prepared to rehearsal. How do we do our rehearsals? Our choir sings once a month. On the Thursday before that upcoming Sunday, we have an acoustic rehearsal. It’s just me on my guitar, the choir director who can plunk out enough notes on the piano and who can hear when people are off pitch, and the choir. We just sing through the songs and she tunes them up. We’re constantly reinforcing the concepts of blending, blending the tone, blending the timing, softening the consonants, listening more, ending our words at the same time. We’re constantly reinforcing those concepts at that rehearsal. If we need to, we actually break off into different groups, and we have a section leader who can lead that particular tenor part or alto part, and they lead those groups in different rooms around the choir room.

Speaker 1 Find your strongest alto, find your strongest tenor, find your strongest soprana, whatever, and designate those people to be section leaders. They can take the MP3s that you’ve put in Dropbox, and from their phone, they can play it and sing along in their room with everybody to hone those parts in. Then after about 45 minutes, everybody can come back together and you can sing through the songs together. That is if your choir needs a little bit of extra work, try that for your Thursday rehearsal. Then on Saturday morning, we do a full run through with the band and the choir together on stage with all the tech and everything there so that they can get used to how the songs actually sound with the band on the stage, with the lights shining in their eyes and all that. What we do is we have our band arrive first. At 9: 00 AM, our band arrives. The band practises for an hour. We dial our parts, we get the song sounding good. The choir arrives at 10: 00. At about 10: 05, we invite the choir on stage, and we run through the whole set top to bottom with the band.

Speaker 1 We don’t really stop. We just go through all the songs. And then afterwards, I turn around and ask the choir director, Is there anything you want to go over again. Usually, they don’t need to because we’re going to run it again on Sunday morning for our Sunday morning rehearsal before service. Our choir director does wear in your monitors so she can hear the click track, and she can also hear our music director giving any guidance. Those are our rehearsals. Thursday Night Acoustic, Saturday morning with the band. Now let’s talk about services. Then I’ll tell you about which microphones to use and some other sound tips. Then I’ll tell you how I audition the choir and how we communicate with them. So Sunday, the band arrives 15 minutes early. They get set up. They do one run through of a song, maybe two. Usually one of the songs that the choir is not singing on because usually the closing song, the choir doesn’t sing. So we’ll run that song, get our ears dialled in, and then the choir arrives and they jump on stage, and we just run the whole set top to bottom, and we get off.

Speaker 1 So it’s a very short rehearsal on Sunday morning because we already did Saturday morning. I usually remind the choir on Sunday to smile, to worship, to praise. I tell them the best thing you can bring to the church today is your own personal worship of the Lord, just leading through your body language, leading through your facial countenance, making sure that you’re clapping, you’re cheering, you’re praising God, that you’re being expressive so that you’re leading the congregation. I always remind them that on Sunday mornings. Also, we make sure we feed them. We do have a couple of choir members who love to bring food, and you can rotate that every month if you want, assign people and rotate that, but keep your troops fed and happy so that they’re not hungry on stage. Then, of course, make sure to always impart some spiritual thought to the choir before they get on stage to worship. You should always be bringing some word of encouragement or scripture to your choir at rehearsal before Sunday service all the time. Lead them spiritually as well as musically. Okay, let’s talk about microphones and some sound advice. My favourite microphones for micing a choir are the Earthworks Gooseneck choir mics.

Speaker 1 They are amazing sounding. They’re super wide, and they’re super neutral, and they’re super natural sounding. If you’re looking for a good pair of choir mics, I’ll put a link below. Earthworks are my favourites. My sound guy doesn’t like them because he said they’re too wide and it picks up some of the band. Now, that’s my second thing about sound. You’re going to want to keep your choir as far away from the drums as possible. So put them on the other side of the stage from the drummer, and you’re probably going to need a drum shield for your drummer, a tall one, and they might even need to use hot rods to keep the choir mics from just becoming another drum overhead mic. So that’s a small sound tip. Another small sound tip is when you tell your choir to clap, because I do encourage them to clap, teach them the silent palm clap. So they’re doing this with their hands, but there’s no sound. See? No sound, very little sound. If they’re all clapping for real, that’s all that’s going to be picked up in the choir mics. Then the sound guy is just going to turn it down because it just clap more than voice.

Speaker 1 So teach them the silent palm clap. One last sound advice is to put your best singers closest the mics and your worst singers furthest from the mics. Just clump the best singers around your microphones. But you got to be coy about that. You can’t be obvious that you’re banishing people to the outer rung. Okay, how do I audition people? And then how do I communicate to the choir? Every time we have a monthly choir, I announced it from the stage that we’re looking to get more people involved. So literally, there’s a huge choir on stage, and I take that opportunity and say, Hey, guys, if you want to join the choir next month, I would love to meet you after service. So literally, right after service, I’m going to hop down off the stage and I would love for you to come up. I’ll take your email and I’ll email you this week and we can get together. Sometimes I’ll even send some of the choir members out there with clipboards to try to convince people to sign up. And then I take all those emails, and on Monday morning, I email the people and I say, Hey, I’m so excited you’re interested.

Speaker 1 Please learn this one song. I just send them Agnes Day. And then meet me on the third Thursday of this month. I always do it on the third Thursday of the month. I audition people in the lobby of our church because it’s I need you to find. I say, We’re just going to sing together. I just want to hear your range. It’s very low key. Don’t worry. Every third Thursday of the month, I’m auditioning two or three people, and I immediately take them over to the choir room. Hey, next Thursday, we’re going to be singing in here, so I’ll send you the songs. The reason why I audition people on Thursday night, the third Thursday of the month, is because on the fourth Thursday night of the month is when we do our monthly choir rehearsal. I need to know if they’re available on Thursday nights, and that’s why I do it that night. When they come back that fourth Thursday of the month, I put them in between the more experienced singers, and I tell to those singers, please take this person under your wing. I usually introduce them to the group and say, Hey, this is so and so.

Speaker 1 And then I ask that so and so, Hey, what’s your favourite ice cream flavour? And I just try to break the ice and make them feel comfortable. I put them around really good singers and experienced singers who can teach them how to read the sheet music and who are going to answer questions for them, or if they look lost or can’t find the notes, those singers can take them under their wing and help disciple them and train them musically. We’ve added about 10 new choir members through this audition process in the last three months. It’s been a great way to get people involved in serving and more deeply integrated into the life of the church. This is a great training ground for new singers. Hopefully, I’ll find some great new singers through doing this open audition, constant monthly recruiting tactic. All of this takes me about 10 hours a month total to do all this. I do have a choir director who helps, but it’s not a huge time investment, and it’s been extremely rewarding and good for the church, and it’s built a lot of unity and goodwill. I didn’t talk about how I communicate, but I basically just email the choir through Planning Centre.

Speaker 1 When someone auditions and joins, I add them to Planning Centre in the choir position, and then I just email all the choir people from Planning Centre. Let me know what questions you have. I’m sure there’s a lot that I didn’t cover. Leave a comment below. Let me know what questions you have, or if you do this and you do it well, let me know what I can do better. I would love to learn from you. Share a comment. Let me know what I can do better. Subscribe and like this video. If it was helpful to you, grab those him arrangements below. If you’re interested in growing as a leader and organising your worship ministry to be more effective, efficient, and healthier, I encourage you to try the Worship Ministry Training Academy, which I run. It’s an online platform that will give you access to 10 in-depth courses, live monthly trainings, expert interviews, done for you, documents, resources, templates, ministry admin systems, audition process, onboarding documents, team devotional material, team musician training documents. I mean, all the work is done for you. Plus, you get a supportive community and access to me and our other coaches.

Speaker 1 I would love for you to join the Academy. It’s completely free to try. Well, it says it’s a dollar, but we don’t charge you. A dollar to try for 15 days, the full access. So I would love to meet you inside the Academy. You can go to worshipministrytraining. Com. I will see you in the next video. God bless.