I have to keep telling myself that. Over and over and over again. The repetition is important.
I’ve been singing with our church’s praise team. This Sunday, Palm Sunday, will by my fourth week. This is a big deal. I have a big HUGE problem with much of today’s worship team music. Often – VERY often, the music either says NOTHING or it says the same thing over and over and over and over and over (how many is that?) and over again. Six. This Sunday (and rehearsal tonight), that’s how many times I have to sing:
“Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.
Open the eyes of my heart.
I want to see you.
I want to see you.”
Six. times. With the chorus after four and then this verse again twice. Oh, yes. THIS is the verse. Just because it’s the SAME verse over and over and. okay. I’ll stop. But seriously. It’s actually more than six all together because it repeats AGAIN. I Googled the lyrics and THIS actually appears at the end:
ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Another song for this week?
“Forever God is faithful
Forever God is strong
Forever God is with us
Forever
Forever
Forever God is faithful
Forever God is strong
Forever God is with us
Forever
Forever
ForeverHis love endures forever
His love endures forever
His love endures forever
Forever
Sing praise, sing praise
Sing praise, sing praise”
and mix up and repeat ad nauseam.
again. ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!
Why am I singing with the praise team if the music makes me this crazy? It started with a phone call from someone who usually begins with, “Hey, Julie, How are you?!” This phone call began instead with “WE NEED YOU. Can you sing with the praise team for the next two weeks?” I didn’t have a reason to say no. So I said yes. We’ve been going to church at the 9:30 a.m. contemporary service instead of the 11:00 a.m. traditional service. Kinda nice to get out so early. Not so easy to skip church either. My daughter loves having mom sing “up there.” My son isn’t embarrassed. (Hey, I’ll take it.) My husband tells me the music is better with me up there. But. The music.
It’s not just Thursday night rehearsal and Sunday morning performance for me. I sing it all week in the car because I rehearse more than enough to be able to sing it without sheet music in front of me on Sunday morning. Because if I’m going to do this, I’m going to give it my best. And because for as much as these songs repeat, they repeat in a certain order. I’ve downloaded them from Amazon and made a playlist on my mp3 player for the praise team so I can just listen whenever I’m in the car. And I’m a mom. I can spend some serious time in the car. I’ve been singing this music for one to two hours a day. I can’t listen to it any more today. I just can’t. It’s a praise sucker for me at this point.
I shared my problem with the person who asked me to help in the first place. She understands. She didn’t pick the music. A few days later she offered me this: “I may not like every song we do, but someone in the congregation might really love it. So I give that to them as a gift.”
Well.
A gift.
I suppose I can do that.
But can’t we just limit the gift to one a week? (yes. that was my whining voice.)
So again. Why am I still singing with the praise team? I was asked to sing for two weeks. This week makes four.
I’ve decided to stick it out until the end of April because the church is in musical transition. They just hired a new worship leader. He starts in May. My surgery is on April 30th and I’ll miss church for at least two weeks.
So.
I’m praying for direction. And I’m waiting. Serving. Giving a gift.
This made me laugh.
The one that kills me is “Trading My Sorrows” with the chorus “Yes Lord, Yes Lord, Yes Yes, Lord. Yes Lord, Yes Lord, Yes Yes Lord. Yes Lord, Yes Lord, Yes Yes, Lord, Amen” !!! My daughter loves it and loves to drive me crazy with it!!
I can imagine with all the practices these might get kind of stuck in your head!
Hope you enjoy sharing your gift – and that they don’t ask for a refund or a gift receipt! LOL!
I can understand how this would get tiring, but I say this coming from the standpoint of growing up Catholic: it’s still better than just a slow, droning organ. 🙂
And with your voice, it would make the most repetitive lyrics totally tolerable.
I like the gift part. Sometimes it just HAS to be about someone else, so that I can get through it LOL Two weeks, turns into 4, turns into a full time job. Watch out…
I sing with our praise team too and don’t always love the song choices. It’s an opportunity for me to submit to my leaders though, at least that’s how I have to look at it. I love Trading my Sorrows, but am cracking up….it is really almost too much!
I’m with you on the song lyrics. Why can’t there be a happy medium between the old, 4-stanzas-and-a-chorus hymns, and the repeat-ad-infinitim praise songs? What happened to the songwriters? When did randomly picking any verse in the Bible and putting it to music and calling it a song become acceptable? Where is the creativity?
It seems we’re only a few short notes away from a song about the begats.
Chuckling over here. My husband is the worship leader and I sing with the team. Yeah, there are some songs that I’m not so very fond of…when the chorus repeats over and over I call them “the songs that never die” and give him the evil eye (“End It!”). There are some very good songs out there, however….maybe you could point the new director in their direction?