This past year our schedule for youth has changed, and our youth band is not leading worship for the youth as often as we once had. This has given me a great opportunity to try something new. Being Creative!
Since we do not have the schedule of having to work up songs for the next week, we now use our weekly rehearsals to work on a variety of things.
1. Work on Solo Songs- It’s been great to work on some songs that we would not necessarily use to lead worship, but could use in services sometime. These also would be great when our group goes outside of the church to play. Maybe it’s something by Switchfoot, Jars, or Fee the kids have heard and brought in.
2. Try Out New Songs- The youth have had a blast just bringing in music to try. We’ll listen to it and play through it a few times. Sometimes we like it and put it in a folder to work on later. Sometimes we say Nahh!! and move on.
3. Test New Styles of Songs- With this freedom we have also been able to try different styles, instrumentations, arrangements etc… Maybe its a style we don’t normally play, or even switching up instruments to try something different.
What do you do to get the creative juices flowing?
We just tried the “different style” thing and it’s been fun. We had a song with a 1,5,6,4 pattern (G,D,Em,C) and at the end of the song, we did a reggae break and used the Jason Mraz line “I won’t hesitate, no more, no more, it cannot wait, I’m yours”. For our kids it’s like watching them play their instrument for the first time because the rhythm is so different from rock-style worship.