Many people get assigned to lead music for a small- or medium-sized church, not knowing much about what they’re doing. They may have just a little experience, or none at all, in playing an instrument, singing, or leading a congregation in worship. It’s great to be able to serve, but many people feel overwhelmed when assigned to such a position. They don’t know where to turn to find resources to help with their new responsibilities.
Sometimes, there’s someone in the church who can play a keyboard or guitar or other instrument to accompany singing. Sometimes there’s at least someone who can at least plunk out enough notes to help the crowd carry a tune. And sometimes there might be a person or a few who can sing on pitch strongly enough to carry a tune so the whole congregation can follow. But sometimes there’s not even a person with any of these skills.
That is where pre-recorded accompaniment can come in handy. Several sources sell CDs with recordings of familiar hymn tunes to play over speakers to accompany singing. So buying a decent stereo and speaker system can help to provide music.
For those who do have musical talent and the right equipment to record quality sound, this provides an opportunity to make resources available. What about recording hymns and worship songs to an mp3 format and making them available on music flash drives? That way, a church can put the flash drive into a computer that’s connected to the sound system and play the congregational accompaniment from that. Or if they don’t have a computer/speaker combo available in church, they can be allowed to burn files from the flash drive to CD for personal use.
They could have a custom layout designed with access to hymn mp3s, as well as lyrics in PDF format for printing and in Powerpoint for projecting on a screen. Every week, the music leader could plan the songs he wants. He could use them straight from the custom flash drive, or copy the files to a computer, or burn them to a CD for use.
The customer base could be broadened to include large churches, which could request a quantity of flash drives containing the songs they want, to give to music leaders or even a whole choir group so they can have access to printable music. CF Gear could work with a music publishing group or with a church to design a flash drive layout that would include whatever they need for their purposes. They’ve already worked with an independent music distributor, Indiedrive, in creating a solution for distributing music. Who’s to say that model couldn’t be modified for a ministry too?
A ministry could find flash drives a great help in providing music accompaniment for services. Consider CF Gear’s top-rated services for your ministry.