Got fired from my church gig...

[joebar]

well at least they were paying you to play there. i have been singing those praises for years...
200 K on a PA system? it must have been lined with gold... wow.
people are people in or out church; it is just a buildng anyway.
take away the structure, the production, the nice clothes and you are left with your average dysfunctional social group. nothing mysterious there.

 

[jaywa]

It appears because they were told they could get better sound without them by the salesmen who sold them their setup. The pastor made the choice, not the music or sound ministry (the sound ministry is the untrained volunteer).

I tell you what, some of the most incompetent "experts" in the entire pro sound field work for companies that specialize in sound reinforcement for "houses of worship." They know that a lot of the people signing checks for churches don't know jack about music or P.A. and they exploit that for everything it's worth. When my church was building their new worship center the Building Committee (which included none of the worship team members BTW) swallowed the "audio consultant's" recommendation hook line and sinker, despite concerns raised by several of the worship team musicians that there were some serious fundamental flaws in the design (e.g., all subs flown 30 feet in the air and no subs at floor level). As a result we wound up with a sound system that had many of my musician friends visiting and saying, "nice looking stuff but it doesn't sound very good." Dead zones, bass traps, hot spots, slapback... you name it. Just a hellacious room to listen to live music in, and even worse to play.

Fast forward, last year we finally brought in a different guy (who does P.A. for all the big time bands when they come through as well as all the major local festivals), and the first thing he said was, "you need to get those subs on the floor." We traded in a bunch of the stuff on his recommendation, re-configured the arrays, and wound up with tons better sound (at FOH and on stage) for less money than we spent originally, using fewer cabinets and less wattage.

 

[joebar]

200 K???
yeah i am still stuck on that one. seems like a lot of mismanagement in that place; imagine that...
i got out of churches because of politics just like this brad. however, if someone wanted me to play and payed me good enough, i would do it again, but i would never go thru that crappola for free. if someone expects me to go thru what is essentially a musical and a spiritual root canal, i should be compensated.

 

[plankspanker13]

200 K???
yeah i am still stuck on that one. seems like a lot of mismanagement in that place; imagine that...
i got out of churches because of politics just like this brad. however, if someone wanted me to play and payed me good enough, i would do it again, but i would never go thru that crappola for free. if someone expects me to go thru what is essentially a musical and a spiritual root canal, i should be compensated.

AMEN!! Preach on!!

 

[bradjonesbass]

reading some of these responses makes me really happy for my church. my pastor gives the worship leader and production leader complete freedom over the creative arts in the church. He makes input as far as telling them what he's going to be teaching on and will often suggest songs to go with it, but leaves it to them to decide. my worship pastor gives the musicians freedom to experiment with the songs. the only time he said anything to me at all was when I first got my fretless and was having some intonation problems he told me to work on my intonation before I brought it again - and he was right. after some woodshedding on it for a month or so I took it for rehearsal and he was like "cool". After service he paid me a huge complement by saying, "man, I can really tell you've been working hard. You sounded awesome today." He will occasionally, but not often request I play fretted/fretless but 90% of the time he leaves it up to me. We also have two full time tech people on staff and well trained volunteers to help out.

The rest of the staff and church is likewise (relatively) politic free. People know their roles and don't intrude on others' areas. Even the senior pastor knows his gifts are teaching and leadership and he lets the music people do the music, the video guys do the video, the counseling team do the counseling, the youth leaders lead the youth, etc...

Extremely refreshing environment to be in.

 

[JimmyM]

btw, there is a local megachurch near me that up until about 2 weeks ago had a billboard out front with the name of the church, large pictures of the pastor and his wife, and the legend, "making jesus famous!"

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!?

 

[Brad Johnson]

Brad,

I do not believe I would have played the last two Sundays. I have experienced similar sound situation. I started subbing at a church and the sound was always bad, not like your situation, but it was bad. When the church separated the "sound man" came with the new forming church. For 3 years the sound was always "wacko" and musicians complained. The praise band decided it wasn't the equipment, it was the man behind the board. After having more experienced people behind the board, we have fixed a once difficult situation. Just because you can connect the equipment, doesn't mean you can properly run it. On Sundays we are there to Praise our Father and hopefully the sound quality is there for the congregation to enjoy. Thankfully our Praise Band is Full of Professional Players including myself. The music is always in the pocket and we use charts. God Bless You.

I had to play the rest of the month to get paid for the full month. Honestly, I had no problem with that. In fact I'm pretty sure it was fairly uncomfortable for the MM... I just went in and did what I normally did.

BTW the soundguy in this case didn't connect anything. He's a very nice guy who volunteered despite not having a clue how any of it worked. They bought a big automated digital board and assumed it would be easy to run. I have no idea why. They had it in a locked enclosure so no one was allowed to get to any of the cabling.

 

[Phil Smith]

I feel for you Brad, I just started a church gig and they gave about 40 tunes on a 3 CDs but oddly enough the ones we wind up playing on Sunday aren't on any of them. So on Sunday morning we go through what they're going to play before the service begins, I chart out the changes and then work the magic.

Sounds to me like they want to replace you with someone else or maybe you're not christian enough for them. Man if the true believers act this way I hate to see the aethist in action.

 

[DerHoggz]

If the amp was smaller than the monitor, why would it matter?

+1 on the Avioms, killer lil things.

 

[Brad Johnson]

reading some of these responses makes me really happy for my church. my pastor gives the worship leader and production leader complete freedom over the creative arts in the church. He makes input as far as telling them what he's going to be teaching on and will often suggest songs to go with it, but leaves it to them to decide. my worship pastor gives the musicians freedom to experiment with the songs. the only time he said anything to me at all was when I first got my fretless and was having some intonation problems he told me to work on my intonation before I brought it again - and he was right. after some woodshedding on it for a month or so I took it for rehearsal and he was like "cool". After service he paid me a huge complement by saying, "man, I can really tell you've been working hard. You sounded awesome today." He will occasionally, but not often request I play fretted/fretless but 90% of the time he leaves it up to me. We also have two full time tech people on staff and well trained volunteers to help out.

The rest of the staff and church is likewise (relatively) politic free. People know their roles and don't intrude on others' areas. Even the senior pastor knows his gifts are teaching and leadership and he lets the music people do the music, the video guys do the video, the counseling team do the counseling, the youth leaders lead the youth, etc...

Extremely refreshing environment to be in.

That would be my preference but I'm a realist.


The truly frustrating part about my situation was that it could've been remedied so easily... they just didn't want to. According to the MM, the pastor's compensation package is in excess of $200k. He made himself the head of the commitee to hire his replacement and placed a cap on the new pastor's compensation... less than half of what he was getting. And he has a retirement package that pays out $1M over 10 years when he leaves later this year.

Again, according to the MM they can find funds when they want to, if it's for something the pastor wants. They could hire a competent sound person... they just won't. All of this stuff came up in normal conversation whenever the musicians were together.

He also talked about how people have left the church because of how it's run and other things that have happened.

Then he fell right into the groove.

 

[Brad Johnson]

I feel for you Brad, I just started a church gig and they gave about 40 tunes on a 3 CDs but oddly enough the ones we wind up playing on Sunday aren't on any of them. So on Sunday morning we go through what they're going to play before the service begins, I chart out the changes and then work the magic.

Sounds to me like they want to replace you with someone else or maybe you're not christian enough for them. Man if the true believers act this way I hate to see the aethist in action.

That was another cute thing that would happen. He'd give me a list of songs at the last minute, tell me they were on the cds, I'd check the cds I was given, not there. Then he'd tell me they were on the cds the other musicians had that he hadn't given to me. I asked him several times to give me the cds, never happened. Oh well.

Still, I made it a point to go in prepared and each and every time I was. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be.

 

[JimmyM]

hypocrites. i hate people who invoke god's name in order to enrich themselves. it's preying on the weak-minded.

 

[bradjonesbass]

forgot to mention we get our charts at least 1 week in advance - of Wednesday's rehearsal... for big services where we're doing more complicated music - Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond, etc... we get it a month in advance.

 

[Brad Johnson]

If the amp was smaller than the monitor, why would it matter?

+1 on the Avioms, killer lil things.

I have no idea. And it was no louder than the onstage monitor should've been.

 

[Brad Johnson]

forgot to mention we get our charts at least 1 week in advance - of Wednesday's rehearsal... for big services where we're doing more complicated music - Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond, etc... we get it a month in advance.

I'm still not quite sure why they thought me having notes on some songs was a bad thing... except for me being the only one who played the songs as they were given to me. Having charts given to me would've been amazing.

When I heard that I couldn't play by ear, that was a hoot.

 

[Brad Johnson]

I tell you what, some of the most incompetent "experts" in the entire pro sound field work for companies that specialize in sound reinforcement for "houses of worship." They know that a lot of the people signing checks for churches don't know jack about music or P.A. and they exploit that for everything it's worth. When my church was building their new worship center the Building Committee (which included none of the worship team members BTW) swallowed the "audio consultant's" recommendation hook line and sinker, despite concerns raised by several of the worship team musicians that there were some serious fundamental flaws in the design (e.g., all subs flown 30 feet in the air and no subs at floor level). As a result we wound up with a sound system that had many of my musician friends visiting and saying, "nice looking stuff but it doesn't sound very good." Dead zones, bass traps, hot spots, slapback... you name it. Just a hellacious room to listen to live music in, and even worse to play.

Fast forward, last year we finally brought in a different guy (who does P.A. for all the big time bands when they come through as well as all the major local festivals), and the first thing he said was, "you need to get those subs on the floor." We traded in a bunch of the stuff on his recommendation, re-configured the arrays, and wound up with tons better sound (at FOH and on stage) for less money than we spent originally, using fewer cabinets and less wattage.

Houses of worship have alway been easy targets for sales people IME basically because of the ego involved in "doing better" than the next one. Bragging rights are very important.

You have a $200k sound system? Well, our pastor has a jet.

Top that. It really makes me wonder what book they're reading.

 

[Brad Johnson]

45 minute drive, huh? That's about what I drive too. Most people tell me I drive way too far to go to church. I tell them I'm cool with it but it sure would be nice to go somewhere close but there's no church that I know of that'll let me have the freedom I have on my worship team. They totally let me play what I want to play and even let me do some soloing as well.

I'm one of those rare people that don't gripe about driving for work. Leave early enough, get there early if I can. Traffic sucks, what else is new? Many people complain about driving anywhere around here. Not me.

 

[Brad Johnson]

I have noticed lately that when a tb'er discusses things that have gone wrong in different bands or at various gigs that many of us find the need to knock down the poster. I clearly understand the concept of constructive criticism, but lately I have seen many more responses that seem to be personal attacks and finger pointing. Brad, my take on this thread was that you had a bad experience and wanted to share it. I also got the impression that you would listen to suggestions on what you could do about it. But several of the responses seem to be telling you what you did wrong and how your expectations were incorrect. Trying to pass blame on to you is of no value. Likewise, getting defensive serves you no good purpose. You are moving on, and that is best.

What I am trying to say is that I have been in one of these threads where something I said inspired personal attacks. I found myself getting very defensive. Your experience is uniquely yours, and as human beings we wish to share these experiences, and we want helpful feedback. Yet subsequent posters can't possibly know all the details of the actual situation. As TB'ers I think we need to show each other more consideration than we have been of late.

Thanks, I've noticed that too. It's as if people think that some people can't be this childish, petty or otherwise without provocation.

 

[JimmyM]

Top that. It really makes me wonder what book they're reading.

the bernie madoff story? the jim bakker story?

maybe they need to be reminded that these stories don't have happy endings for the protagonists.

 

[svtb15]

This whole story rings home to me...
I had a similar situation, very good paying too for 3+ years. Started out subbing, then they asked me to come on full time. It was a satellite church with TV broadcast..
Was full time for 3 years total, and i loved the gig..And my trip was 40 minutes.. tough when you get in at 3 am

Got constant kudos from the main pastor, the MD, etc, etc,.And the other church campuses other than the main campus would hire me for their services. Almost everyone in the band was on pro level as far as musical ability. I say almost everyone.

Suddenly last fall , longtime church higher ups pastors were leaving almost in droves being replaced by younger pastors....

All the while during my tenure i made any service i was contracted to.
Sometimes flying in the night before on a red eye and making 7AM sound check.

It was a mega church with a nice Meyer system and all the goodies you would see at any contemporary concert these days including lights m video etc. Pro sound crew too..

The drummer and i were areally the only two that knew our materiel week after week inside and out. It was made easy because they got us everything that we needed way in advance so that made it easy...

The other players were very capable but were slack in learning the stuff so soundchecks were gruesome.
At time to the point where I would have to write out proper changes for the MD since he nearly had no clue and only heard things one way which was not harmonically correct. And he would not learn a tune,,I had no issue in doing it , I just wanted everyone to be on the same page.. When the MD was on vacation I MDed and we got stuff done in no time....

Anyway, the MD was constantly telling me how wonderful it is to have me on board, how honored he was, how much difference i made to the church and the band.. And that i was the only one that was there on time and prepared ALL the time..

That was weekly, i was told those kudos for 3 years ... I could only say thank you..
Anyway last January the MD wants to meet with everyone.

He met with me and said that i have an unforgiving heart and fired me.
I have never been fired from a gig in my life, and have done major tours minor tours TV, Radio, commercials,you name it..

I said an unforgiving heart? mmmmm weird coming from someone that has issues that i will never say in a public forum....

I had to fight for the money they owed me .. but i got it after my lawyer sent a very nice letter.
I have dealt with pagan death metal management companies to pop star greedy basstard NY lawyer mega agencies and never once did they try to screw me the way a church tried to.

But i got my money. And now its in the rear view mirror.. I wish them the best and i have moved on...

The weird part is that i was caught off guard become for some strange reason i never thought that a church would act in such a way, during and afterwards...
So i feel ya pain.. Been there..
Just look back as an experience that we will learn from.