Today I’m seeing two main types of praise bands in churches: blended bands and guitar driven bands.
When I first started as a music director of a church plant over ten years ago, I thought we had arrived when I could manage a steady bass player and drummer every week. To have a true band you need at least 3 elements: bass, drums and a mid-range rhythmic instrument like a guitar or keyboard.
As your church grows so grows your band, and your style will dictate the direction your band grows. Or more likely, the direction your band grows will dictate your style (if you don’t have a killer electric guitar player it’ll be hard to pull off anything by Hillsong United.)
Blended churches will grow a blended band. This is where the majority of churches are stylistically today. My 2011 poll indicates 2/3rds of churches do NOT include electric guitars in their music (take the 2012 poll below to see if percentages have changed.) The “blended worship band” usually consists of piano, synthesizer, acoustic guitar, bass and drums. A stray flute, sax or other instrument may sometimes be included as well as congas and other hand percussion. This church will probably have a male worship leader with a small SAT praise team (soprano, alto and tenor.) Even if this band includes an electric guitar, it really won’t sound guitar-driven – the guitarist basically just adds color and texture, and uses reverbs and delays instead of a harder, distorted sound.
1/3 of churches have a guitar driven band. This band performs mostly guitar driven songs and consists of two or more electrics, bass, drums and keyboard. The keyboardist provides mainly synth pads (strings, etc.) to glue the sound together as well as B3 organ licks and gurgling synth textures. A piano patch may be dialed up or an acoustic guitar brought out for the occasional ballad. Guitars are driving and distorted. This church has a male worship leader and perhaps a single female alto singing backup.
The blended band and the guitar driven band may perform the same songs, but they’ll sound different. Which type of band is developing at your church? Take the poll below.
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I notice that neither option includes a female worship leader ; ) I guess we are pretty rare ; ) I lead with guitar or piano, whichever suits the song most. We have a super consistent and dependable drummer and bassist, going on 3 years working as a team. Very dependable vocalists (all female, working on getting more males) and a new guitarist who can do acoustic (usually 12 string) or electric. Thanks for the interesting info : ) What do you think about the idea that guitar-driven worship might be related to church size? In my (somewhat limited) experiences, it seems the more medium/smaller size churches maintain a blended band, while it’s the megachurches that can “pull off” the guitar-driven band. Just wondering if anyone has seen a smaller congregation that utilizes a guitar-driven band.
The photo for this post is awesome.
Our praise team waivers between both styles. We are primarily guitar driven but work with 2 teams of 4 vocalists. Occasionally when short a guitar, we go for more of a blend with more piano lead. I am a female worship leader by the way, and feel the pain of the stereo-type, that it has to be a male leader. Funny how women’s rights are not active in todays churches yet.
Seems more that size and demographics are the controlling factors. Small, rural communities are most often blended. Small churches and lack of local “interested” talent. Larger churches just have more options for interested people and choices for talent.
The demographics of the area also controls a lot. In areas where there are tons of young couples – 20′s-40′s – guitar driven seems to be a good fit.
I don’t see many female worship leaders NC, but the ones I know do a great job.
I am not a worship leader, but have been on worship teams as a vocalist. Whether it is guitar led or a blended band, I have found that the most important factor is the church needs to be intentional in its efforts to grow. It seems this is the time for praise bands to not replace traditional services, but to be added as an option. It seems that all the growing churches offer some type of contemporary service that reaches a different set of people than those that prefer a more traditional setting. Neither is wrong and neither is right. It doesn’t matter what instruments are in the praise band, just that they are using what they have and are reaching the people God is sending to them. Keep up the good work!!
We are basically a blended team. Right now we lack a bass player but we make up for it with tracks using Garage Band. The tracks also come in handy if someone is missing that week. We also intergrate a theater organ into our team which adds a whole different dimension.
That lead guitarist looks a lot like my husband. Uncanny?!
We are a small country church and the Lord has blessed us with 2 worship teams and we alternate weeks. One is blended which I usually refer to as piano driven and mine is guitar driven and we have acoustic guitar, electric, bass, drums and 3 singers. For maybe 10 years we were the Brady bunch because it was my husband, our 3 children and me leading worship. It was for survival when we lacked numbers. We still are a family with a few more musicians. We went through the transition of bringing guitar and drums into the service (very challenging!) as it was piano and organ driven doing mostly hymns before I became involved in the music. We have been at our church for almost 30 years now and feel blessed to be part of our church family. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
To respond to the idea of size and demographics… We are a smaller church located in rural farm land in northern Ohio. We avgerage just over 200 per week, but were closer to 100 a few years back when we started the “contemporary” service. We’re at least an hour from any “major” city and our church almost literally sits out in a cornfield. On any given Sunday, our attenders range in age from infant to up in their 90′s. Not to mention that the church has been here since the late 1800′s. We’ve gone through the typical church wars like any others have, however we’ve had a contemporary, guitar driven praise band for years now and it seems to be flourishing. We also still hold a “blended” service on Sunday mornings, but there are typically only around 30-40 people at that service. The bulk of the attendance and active servants come from the “contemporary”, guitar driven service. Doesn’t seem like it should work, but somehow God continues to bless.
Happy Anniversary Worship Ideas!
We have 2 services in 2 locations and I am blest to lead both! 1 is band/guitar led (mainly acoustic) but we’ve just brought in a young electric guitarist and the band includes drums, bass & keys. The 2nd service is blended w/ choir, piano, organ, guitars & drums. I wonder how many other churches have 2 services styles that are led by the same person?
I too lead both the contemporary and the blended service at our church.
We have a blended worship team and also can be piano or keyboard led.
People need to realize that an electric guitar can be a light easy background sound that brings out a distinctive fill-in at just the right time or it can be a lead in at the front of a song.
My concern is the noise that comes from electric guitar that seems to permeate from the younger generation which is growing in the contemporary worship of today.
That too can be a training between the older generation and the younger generation if both sides will be willing to learn from each other.