Small Group Worship - Essential Skills for Musicians

Being a worship musician in a small group meeting is a challenging and satisfying ministry. You have the opportunity to use music to support and unify the praises of God's people. This is a great honour and privilege.

If you are a beginner at music, one thing you will realize is that there are many aspects of music that you can study. But if there is an urgent need in your group for you to be ready to serve in the shortest time frame possible, you have to know what are the essential worship music skills and make acquiring those skills your top priority. Those skills are:

1) Playing clear chords and counts.

Unifying the praises of the people requires that you give them clear chords (so that they can all sing in the same key) and clear beats (so that they all sing at the same time). The two best instruments for providing such musical support in a small group setting are guitar and piano.

As you work on those instruments, work towards being able to play in a wide range of keys. For guitar you should be able to play in the keys of C, D, E, G and A major. For the piano you need to study the chords of all those keys and the keys of F and Bb major as well. And practice playing rhythms in a steady and firm fashion. This helps the people to sing out their praises more confidently.

2) Building intensity through your playing.

As the people sing the song again and again, especially during the chorus, it is vital that your accompaniment also build up in musical intensity. If you are playing in a church band this task can be shared amongst different instruments, but in a small group you will usually have to handle all this by yourself. On the guitar you can play louder, use a more active strumming pattern or other techniques such as hammer-ons in your chords. On the piano you can increase your volume, play a more active rhythm, use more fills or bring up your inversions.

One very useful exercise is making a point to be able to play through a song in four different levels of intensity, from a stripped-down, bare-bones way to a give-it-all-you've-got way. After you have worked on this consistently for some time it will come naturally for you when you play for worship.

3) Playing chord progressions to support free worship and prayer.

There are two main approaches to playing chord progressions during free worship and prayer. The first is to play the chords of the song last sung. The second is to play a short, holding pattern type of chord progression, such as the I-IV or the IV-V progressions. I prefer the second, because it allows people to quickly resume singing the song again if that is what the worship leader directs. The first does not work too well unless the leader and the small group is more musically inclined. And that is not often the case.

So as you practice the chords in the various keys you seek to master, pay attention to playing the usual holding patterns in that respective key. Especially for guitar, you may discover interesting ideas and techniques that you can use as you experiment with different ways of playing the same chord patterns.

Conclusion:

It takes a lifetime to truly master an instrument, because there are so many aspects to explore and skills to develop. But if you desire to serve in a small group worship ministry, the three skills given above are the crucial skills you should emphasize in your practice and in your music lessons. Do so and you will see the results of your labour!

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