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Got fired from my church gig...
- Thread starter Brad Johnson
- Start date
- Aug 16, 2003
- 1,130
- 24
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist;Essential sound products,Dunlop, Ergo Instruments
After I left that day one of his bodyguards ran after me and apologized saying he had no idea about what was going to happen and that he respected the fact that I kept a cool head and laughed it off.My buddies who heard about what went down were joking about they were planning a benefit for my bail money
- Aug 25, 2007
- 835
- 6
- Disclosures
- I manufacture for several companies including but not limited to: Bridge City Sound, Catalinbread, more.
And churches wonder why attendance is down.
Im dealing with a similar situation at my church right now. Do not feel alone in that. Its almost like people dont care about the quality of their performance anymore. It is completely irritating. It is all about what THEY can get out of music with no attention to other musicians or how the general mix sounds.
Fortunately, nothing is permanent.
Im dealing with a similar situation at my church right now. Do not feel alone in that. Its almost like people dont care about the quality of their performance anymore. It is completely irritating. It is all about what THEY can get out of music with no attention to other musicians or how the general mix sounds.
Fortunately, nothing is permanent.
- Aug 16, 2003
- 1,130
- 24
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist;Essential sound products,Dunlop, Ergo Instruments
All churches are not the same but just like any organization management is key and everybody is not treated equal. Brad's situation is common because as every new MD or minister of music comes in they often want to have "Their people" plus Brad's a working pro with a different mentality,I had the same issues with preparation and often wrote chart's to new songs to save time because I wasn't given them in advance and the New/old MD always had a problem with that because he said I didn't really know the song although he admitted I played it perfectly. Once he asked me "what if I change the way I'm play the song or the key?" and I said I would change my chart or transpose it and he purposely played everything in a different key that Sunday killing the P&W team and the Choir and when the Choir director asked him why he did it he replied "To keep the band on their toes"
A church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners!
No church is perfect because they are all full of PEOPLE!
No church is perfect because they are all full of PEOPLE!
What a thread. If you're a Christian, putting your church's dirty laundry out there for public (ie, non-believer) comment is wrong ... read your Bible, Paul had a lot to say about this in 1 Cor 6. If you're not a Christian, all your opining about what's wrong with the church and music ministries ought to mean nothing to the Christian, who ostensibly operates under different principles and has different values.
Music ministry is just that ... a ministry. It ain't a gig, it ain't the road to fame and glory, and it ain't always fun. It's about service to a congregation. If that's not one's attitude, it's best to leave it alone. That goes for MM's, MD's, and lowly bass players.
Music ministry is just that ... a ministry. It ain't a gig, it ain't the road to fame and glory, and it ain't always fun. It's about service to a congregation. If that's not one's attitude, it's best to leave it alone. That goes for MM's, MD's, and lowly bass players.
What's most interesting to me about all this is the bigger, consistent money gigs apparently are in churches. Guess that's "where the money is" these days. I'm stunned that churches would pay to fly musicians in to play Sunday gigs, much less pay them at all. Like several posters mentioned, my experience growing with church music was old white haired ladies pounding on an organ or piano. Churches really are a big business and it sounds as though there is very little religion in some of them. At least some of you are making a living from it.
This seems to be getting a bit off track.
For those interested in P&W gigs and situations in general, there is a thread specifically devoted to the pros and cons of churched based gigs. I will post up the link shortly.
Edit:
Please use this link for general P&W discussion.
This thread is about Brad's experience in getting fired from his
his gig. Please keep you comments directed at the OP's situation as he discusses it as opposed to a general religious discussion as that serves little purpose regarding his specific gig, if you get the distinction.
If we continue with general discussion, the thread will be closed and we will move on.
Thanks for your understanding.
For those interested in P&W gigs and situations in general, there is a thread specifically devoted to the pros and cons of churched based gigs. I will post up the link shortly.
Edit:
Please use this link for general P&W discussion.
This thread is about Brad's experience in getting fired from his
his gig. Please keep you comments directed at the OP's situation as he discusses it as opposed to a general religious discussion as that serves little purpose regarding his specific gig, if you get the distinction.
If we continue with general discussion, the thread will be closed and we will move on.
Thanks for your understanding.
To the OP, thanks for starting this thread. I definitely needed to read it today as I have been thinking about my place in my "church band" lately. After reading through this I feel I fall into the extremely grateful camp as well. I don't get paid and I play electric guitar or bass as needed. We don't have amps on stage and I can't always hear myself well either.
I've offered to the WL/MD to chart songs for the whole group if he can get me the mp3s a couple of days ahead and do that quite often. I can't remember how many charts I've created in the last 3 years, but looking now I've got 65 charts in my folder I save them in. I'd guess I did 40-50 of them. It keeps me challenged me to learn the songs on multiple levels and gives everyone a solid chart to work from on Sunday. The level of musicianship is varied, but it ends up working well every Sunday.
But at the same time many of human-based issues mentioned in this thread don't come into play at our church. It's a small 200-300 people per service church that doesn't have much overhead. We rent a facility each week and only the pastor has a salary. The rest of the offerings are dispersed out into the community to help where possible.
In attendance, we have tattoo'ed bikers, modern rockers, homeless, young families, gray haired old ladies and everyone in between. It's been setup as a service for those burned in or burned by other churches and all are welcome. No membership or rules required, just a space of grace to come, listen and share if interested. Reading through this thread I've been reminded how relevant our type of service is these days.
Thanks again for starting this thread. It has really helped me today.
I've offered to the WL/MD to chart songs for the whole group if he can get me the mp3s a couple of days ahead and do that quite often. I can't remember how many charts I've created in the last 3 years, but looking now I've got 65 charts in my folder I save them in. I'd guess I did 40-50 of them. It keeps me challenged me to learn the songs on multiple levels and gives everyone a solid chart to work from on Sunday. The level of musicianship is varied, but it ends up working well every Sunday.
But at the same time many of human-based issues mentioned in this thread don't come into play at our church. It's a small 200-300 people per service church that doesn't have much overhead. We rent a facility each week and only the pastor has a salary. The rest of the offerings are dispersed out into the community to help where possible.
In attendance, we have tattoo'ed bikers, modern rockers, homeless, young families, gray haired old ladies and everyone in between. It's been setup as a service for those burned in or burned by other churches and all are welcome. No membership or rules required, just a space of grace to come, listen and share if interested. Reading through this thread I've been reminded how relevant our type of service is these days.
Thanks again for starting this thread. It has really helped me today.
I wish I could go to your church! I've yet to find anything that...accepting...close enough to home to get there on a regular basis.
Cherie
There's zero pain here, despite the comments about me looking for sympathy
. I thought people might be interested in a real world work situation, that's all. The things you mentioned that had no bearing on this situation (like IEM fundraising) were weird and only muddied the issue for you... I guess you had me confused with something else.The non-talent issues that caused this termination are still a mystery though I have no doubt I'll eventually hear something. The chances of it being more BS are high.
I made polite suggestions to remedy the issue and all of them were ignored. In ear monitors were not an option so let's be done with that once and for all. I was not allowed to touch the board or any of the connections. The soundguy was never available outside of Sunday service. The chain of command was the MM then the pastor. Period. Any thoughts on going over their heads are not based on the reality of this situation... it really doesn't matter what other situations you've seen, this one is what it is. I worked with the MM and did what he asked only to have him plead ignorance afterwards as to why I did what we discussed. Then he said I adamantly refused to use my amp when we talked about it... right after he had said we didn't.
And when I didn't get angry and quit over the allegations but instead just hunkered down and performed quietly, I got fired.
If you have suggestions that aren't based on something other than what actually happened, cool. Otherwise I've done enough head scratching.
Well...transposing on the fly is good for ya, like broccoli.I still don't understand why they had a problem with charts, if its just you making notes for yourself. Its not like you were showing up with charts for the whole band.
Cherie
I'm pretty sure the inference was that I needed a chart for every song, which frankly would be a pretty stupid conclusion to draw. Since I never saw the MM with any kind of chart nor did he ever offer any, I don't know of his ability in that area.
As the bassist, I'm the one guy onstage with a minimum of wiggle room. The guitarist (who was the previous bassist) predominantly played fills. The MM played whatever way he wanted to. The rest of the group was the second keys, sax, trumpet and drums. They basically did whatever they wanted vs. having to play the actual structure of the song.
So I'd be there with an unfamiliar song that was called on the fly (I have no problem with that), the MM changes the pattern from one verse to the next, the second keys is trying to guess where the MM is going and the guitarist, who's seated next to me is calling out intervals that clash with both of them. So when I play what the guitarist called, both keys look at me funny.
It was a cluster ( on the songs the pastor called) that occassionally came together. And the one time I did get to play with a confident, consistent keyboardist who jumped in when both keys didn't know the song, I nailed it. Which, outside of this situation, is what I normally do. I have a very quick ear but I need to be able to hear who and what I'm playing with.
Although I'm not a Christian, I am going to resist the temptation to respond to this post.
The mindset against preparedness is almost mindboggling. If I had to guess, it might be looked at as trying to upstage others who are too lazy to be as prepared. I take pride in what I do and I never phone it in... I know you never know who's listening and besides, I'm not lazy enough to not care.
"Look at him, playing songs all correctly and such... who does he think he is?"
This MM was one of those guys who had to be right. At rehearsal we'd play something with a unison run, he'd blow it yet contend that he was right... even though others were playing it identically, we were wrong. Cool... show me how you want to play it and that's what I'll do.
That would lead him to play the recording for everyone to hear, only to find out he was wrong. Fortunately nobody laughed. Then he'd try to learn it at rehearsal (no matter how long that took) and then we'd try to play it together... just like we had from the beginning.
