Shooters In Churches: Federal Panel’s Guidebook Counsels ‘Run, Hide, or Fight’

The federal government has released a guidebook to help churches respond to shooters and other on-site emergencies as part of President Obama’s executive actions to fight gun violence.

Titled “A Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operation Plans for Houses of Worship,” it offers suggestions and instructions apart from any laws or mandates. The guidebook is the work of a panel of 100 experts encompassing faith leaders, first responders, law enforcement officers, educators and emergency planners, who also released books for K-12 schools and higher education.

The faith leaders wanted to talk about making schools safer — and more, Vice President Joe Biden said in announcing the guidebook.

“They know, they’re worried, that their congregations are at risk. So they wanted to know what should they be thinking about when someone stands up in the middle of a congregation and decides to do something similar to what we saw in the schools,” Biden said of the group’s deliberations.

“So we gave concrete direction. We said, all of you come up with what you think are the best practices, the most concrete recommendations that you could give us that will enable us to teach or prepare or lay out a menu for the school districts and churches.”

The guide advises churches to develop a plan of action and, in the event of an active shooter in the church, to have the congregation already trained to “run, hide, or fight” depending on opportunity. Nowhere does the document advise church members to arm themselves with guns or other weapons.

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Buying Drums for Worship Part 1

Occasionally my worship leader friends ask me what kind of drums and cymbals they should buy for their church. Even though I’ve covered this subject a bit in my Worship Drums Guide it’s a question worth answering again because there are so many brands and options.

So where to begin? Let’s start by asking what kind of church sanctuary you have before you buy your church’s first drum kit. There are many shapes, sizes and floor surfaces of church sanctuaries that I’ve played in over the years that require the appropriate types of drums and cymbals to keep your sound guy happy. You have to be honest with yourself and ask “do I just want to rock out?” or “do I want to buy the right drums that would be the most beneficial for church worship?” Would the age of your congregation, design of your sanctuary, size of your soundboard and size of your church benefit more from real drums or electric drums?

Electric Drums

An electric drum kit is usually the first place a more traditional church goes when they move to a contemporary service. The electric kit is a very practical solution for easing an older crowd into drums in the sanctuary and the volume level is also easily controlled. The only downside to electric kits have been the drum samples – especially cymbals. But with more and more drum sample libraries entering the music software market we’re starting to hear some incredible drum samples. The only problem is most electronic kits on the market do not have these quality samples… yet. I believe they will in the future with more research and development. There’s a way to incorporate better drum sample libraries into your electronic kit which I cover in the Worship Drums Guide. I also feel a lot of churches probably will not know the difference and the stock samples in your electric kit should do the job.

The Benefits of Electric Drums

The biggest benefits of electric drums are containment, minimal input usage and volume control. If you’re just using the stock sounds from your electric kit’s brain then all you need are 2 inputs for your whole drum mix. That certainly makes things easy on the sound man especially if you’re a smaller church with a smaller soundboard. The electronic kits are also easy to move and live on a smaller stage. They don’t take up a lot of space and you don’t need a drum shield to tone down the volume.

There’s only one electronic kit I recommend and it’s any of the Roland electric kits from the TD-KV series and all the lines that go up in price from it. They range from $1500 to $7500. I like the Roland kits because of the real swivel of the cymbals when you hit them and the mesh heads of the drums. I also think their sounds are great and the integration of any outside midi is easy to patch in. For me, the feel of the Roland kits have been the best. You can also add the Roland SPD-30 pad and trigger loops or more auxiliary sounds.

Real Drums

You’ll have to experiment to see if real drums work for your room and congregation. You might want to either start with a drum shield or add it later if your drums are too loud. A drum shield will take getting used to for your drummer and worship team and requires its own set of rules. I have played drums with no drum shields in small rooms and it’s worked just fine. Of course this approach takes some major restraint on a drummer’s part to not overplay and hold back in volume.

Drum shields make sense in the older sanctuaries because they were built for choirs, organs and to amplify unplugged sound from the stage. Drums are naturally going to be boomy and overpowering in an older church building.

The Benefits of Real Drums

I prefer to play real drums over electric drums any day of the week. I also notice a difference in energy from the stage when the band plays with real drums. Even if your whole band is using in-ear monitors the drums are still live and loud. I also think real drums sound the best. It takes a great sound man to know the room, right equipment, and right mics in order to pull off a great live drum sound.

Next week I’ll share my favorite drums and cymbals.

Jon Skaggs has played drums for Christian artists like Brandon Heath, Chris Sligh and Nichole Nordeman, is a music producer, clinician, and author of the Worship Drums Guide. Visit his website at www.jonskaggs.net.

Pastor Helps Nab Thief Through Social Media

CBN News reports a pastor in Houston helped authorities catch a thief. And he did it using social media.

It all started when a brand new trailer filled with the church’s sound equipment, chairs, and other items went missing from the storage facility where it’s kept between services.

After reporting the theft to police, the pastor was able to get an image of the thief from surveillance video. He posted the picture on social media sites, asking people to share it.

“We put that still picture on Facebook and just asked people to share it,” Pastor Chris Parrott of Canvas Church in Houston said. “Honestly, we were not expecting to recover anything, but we thought, you know doing something is better than not doing anything. If we do something we’ll have a better chance of recovering our equipment.”

His efforts paid off.

A neighbor’s tip led police to a house where they recovered the equipment and arrested three suspects.

Pastor Parrott said the trailer and its contents added up to about $15,000. For the relatively new, small church, recovering the equipment meant a lot.

“We’re here to bless the community,” he said.

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American Churches Begin to Focus on Security

Sheepdogs in training.

That’s what churches needs right now, according to a specialty ministry organization.

And as cute as are the four-footed kind, and as helpful, these “sheepdogs” are none other than security-minded church workers, officials and volunteers who want to stop evil at the door when it comes to church.

The Sheepdog Seminars for Churches organization says 440 people have died a violent death while on church or faith-based property in the United States since 1999.

“In addition, thousands of children have been sexually molested while on church or faith-based property (or at church-related events),” the organization reports.

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Hillsong NYC Draws 5,500

Along with his half shaved head and slicked back Mohawk, he’s dressed in his usual Sunday attire: black jeans and an unbuttoned denim shirt with a tank top underneath. His tattooed arms, including one with two guns crossed, peek out from under his rolled-up sleeves.

His Hillsong Church NYC holds at least six sermons every Sunday in a ballroom-style concert venue that has hosted such bands as U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. People squeeze into whatever space they can find and take notes on iPhones as Lentz marches across the stage, peppering his sermon with Bible verses, jokes, pop music lines and street slang.

“If you’re new to our church, we love you,” says the 34-year-old Lentz. “Don’t be alarmed by the craziness you see. One time somebody said, ‘Y’all are crazy in your church,’ and I said, ‘You ever seen you dance drunk? Don’t be judging us up in church.'”

New York has become a magnet for startup evangelical churches in recent years. There are currently more than 200 in Manhattan alone, according to Tony Carnes of the research project, A Journey Through NYC Religions, and Hillsong is one of the fastest-growing.

After a little more than two years, Hillsong estimates it draws 5,500 people to Sunday services each week. Crowds lining up are a regular weekly scene at Irving Plaza near Manhattan’s Union Square. Hillsong often has to add additional evening sessions, which could last well into the night.

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After Son’s Suicide, Rick Warren to Return to Pulpit

Three months after his son’s suicide, Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren announced Friday he will return to the pulpit.

Warren plans to begin a series of sermons titled, “How to Get Through What You’re Going Through,” on July 27 and 28, a church official said.

The first service starts at 4:30 p.m. July 27 and will be streamed live on saddleback.com.

Matthew Warren, 27, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was found dead in his home in the 25000 block of Pradera Drive in Mission Viejo April 5.

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10 Tips On Becoming a Great Worship Band

Jamie Harvill offers ideas for improving your musicians:

Worship bands generally rely on developing their song arrangements organically. Even with a proper chord chart, it’s left to each player to determine their specific parts. Listening skills and musical discipline is a learned-trait for most players, and unless we as leaders promote excellence of musicianship within our worship teams, the result will be confusion, and we will continue to dog paddle in mediocrity.

To get to the the next musical level, the following paragraphs contain very helpful information, beginning with the all-important 100% Rule, and concluding with a list of 10 helpful tips to launch your worship band into the realm of the sublime!

The 100% Rule

It’s important to set a proper goal or standard for each player to maintain dynamics and musicality. This is best illustrated by using the 100% rule.

Using the diagram, we see that when a single instrument plays a song’s accompaniment, the player can make use of 100% of the musical landscape: rhythm, bass, chordal movements, etc. But when another instrument joins the accompaniment—such as an acoustic guitar with a piano, for instance—each must adjust their playing to 50% of the musical landscape.

When a bass player joins the band, the keyboardist can now focus less on their left hand-playing (bass), and the guitar can now focus on chord placement higher on the neck, away from the range occupied by the keys. Now 33% musical space is given to each of the three instruments.

When a drummer joins the band, the other players can relax even more to make room for the new instrument. It’s no longer necessary for the piano, acoustic guitar and bass to carry the bulk of the rhythmic responsibility. Though the rhythm is still somewhat shared, each player must be careful to avoid wandering into the other players’ territory. As a result, each person can play even less: 25 percent each, and so on. The successive addition of instruments will result in each person having to play less.

To hear examples of “building block” playing, listen to the complex harmonic and rhythmic construction techniques of groups like Earth, Wind and Fire and Coldplay. Paying close attention, one can hear that each individual instrumentalist is playing relatively simple parts. But by pulling back and listening to the big picture, interactions between the elements create an intricate but satisfying sum total. In other words: a big sound can be created by interweaving smaller, simpler parts.

In all of my experience playing live and in the studio, I find that the three “Ls” of good musicianship are: Listen. Listen. Listen. When a musician pays close attention to what the others are doing, and conceptualizes that playing in a band is more about creating a conversation than each person making a speech, the music benefits tremendously.

Sonic Space and the Frequency Spectrum

Every instrument fills a sonic space within the frequency (or tonal) spectrum. Keyboards and guitars share similar characteristics of tone, so it’s easy for parts to become “blurry,” or covered up when everyone plays in the same space. For instance, when a piano part is centered around mid-keyboard (middle-C), the guitarists will do better to find parts that occupy another tonal space in another octave.

Also, when using more than one guitar, it’s important that each player decide where on the neck to play; one guitarist can play chords high on the neck, while the other takes a lower position. Sometimes an electric guitar can make a huge musical statement by playing a simple part on a single string with a creative effect like a delay or tremolo. Two keyboardists can choose between two patches and create complimentary parts to play.

It’s important to be creative and experimental in choosing unique sounds for each instrument’s part. This will help to diversify the tonal pallet, making it easier for each part to be heard in the mix. (Sound techs constantly battle while attempting to mix a band that plays indiscriminately, whose players don’t carefully select well chosen parts).

Here are some tips on playing economically, musically and skillfully.

  • Choose economical parts to play. Using the 100% rule as a guide, learn to play less as other instruments are added to the band. Sometimes go high, sometimes low…whatever is needed to advance the song. Develop a signature riff. Well constructed parts are the starting-point for a great sounding band.
  • Make use of dynamics. Listen to each other. Don’t play if the music doesn’t call for it (what a concept!). Verses can be softer than choruses to create interest and diversity within a song. A song’s power in worship is diminished when everyone plays full-blast, all the time. Like a good novel, think of a song as having a beginning, middle and end; decide which parts and instrumentation will be layered in and out to create an ebb and flow within the song.
  • Make sure that everyone plays the same chord progression. A well organized chord chart is essential for each player, displaying chords with corresponding rhythmic movements.
  • Make sure everyone pays attention to the fine details in each song. Solidify each rhythmic highlight, whole-note, dynamic rise and fall, and tempo change, Make sure everyone is accenting at the same place, at the same time.
  • Stay in tune. Make sure the band is in tune. Check that the keyboards are in correct concert pitch (A-440). They sometimes can be slightly off if a keyboard player is not careful while scanning through patches and changing parameters. Guitar and bass players need to continually check their tuning (silently, please!).
  • Make sure everyone can hear themselves in the monitors, and can hear and see each other on stage. Good monitoring and proper sight-lines between band members is essential for communication.
  • Use a click. A click/metronome (for the drummer alone, or in the headphones of the band) is helpful to insure that the predetermined tempo is followed. Tempos that feel right in rehearsal may feel either too slow or too fast during performance—stick to what you decide beforehand! The drummer usually operates the click, so allow for enough time to adjust tempos between songs.
  • Be generous—give musical space for others to fill. Don’t be selfish; give opportunity for everyone in the band to shine. The most important thing is to prefer each other in love (Romans 12:10), and for the collective, disciplined efforts of each player to focus on the betterment of the whole.
  • Play in time. Don’t rush the beat, which is the most common trait of a novice player on the team. Be careful, when necessary, to lay back the beat in a musical fashion. Practice with a click. Make sure everyone hears plenty of hi-hat from the drummer, especially the singers (who may not be able to hear the click).
  • Pay attention to tone. Tone for each player is subjective, but it can be agreed that each instrument must be warm and full-sounding—without the annoying hiss of white-noise or rumble of 60-cycle electrical hum. A good tone originates from well crafted instruments and amplifiers; high-quality cabling; good, quiet effects; proper microphone techniques and direct input devices. Don’t expect to sound like your favorite rock star simply because you buy the same gear. “Bone Tone”—the individuality that comes from your unique touch—can be a good thing! Get help from a musician who’s tone you prefer to help you create a desirable sound.

Barely Half of Weekly Churchgoers Think Pastors Contribute “A Lot” to Society

Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans think clergy contribute “a lot” to society, according to new data from a survey on which professions Americans respect most.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 18 percent of American adults surveyed believe clergy contribute “nothing” to the wellbeing of society, and another 36 percent believe clergy contribute “some.” That’s just one percent less than those who believe clergy contribute “a lot.”

The percentages have stayed more or less constant since the last time Pew asked the question in 2009. Clergy rank lower in public esteem than the military, teachers, medical doctors, scientists, and engineers, but higher than artists, journalists, business execs, and lawyers.

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