Develop a Discipleship System
The Nuts and Bolts of Music and Worship Arts Ministry: Part 2 - Music Library Maintenance
By Lisa Hancock and Diana Sanchez-Bushong
Introduction
Music library maintenance is critical to maintaining and growing any worship arts ministry. A church’s music library consists of music for all ensembles in the congregation, including congregational song, because the largest and most dynamic ensemble in the church consists of the congregants who gather on Sunday mornings for worship! Our United Methodist heritage recognizes music as a significant avenue of learning and formation in the Christian life. Maintaining and tending the music library is an important avenue for forming disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Music library maintenance can feel overwhelming, especially if you have several ensembles or a library that hasn’t been tended in a while. As you approach this task, we encourage you to think of it like feeding a family. Feeding your family every week includes planning, grocery shopping, and cleaning out the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer from time to time. The same goes for your music library. In this article, we offer suggestions about how to take stock of your congregation’s musical needs (planning), how to develop a strategic approach to purchasing new music (grocery shopping), and how to intentionally use and tend your current music library (cleaning out the pantry).
Taking Stock
The first step in music library maintenance is taking stock of what you have. Depending on the church, a music library may include choral anthems, cantatas, congregational song resources, handbell music, chord charts for the band(s), children’s choir and/or Sunday school music, VBS music resources, and other small ensemble or solo music. As you evaluate the contents of your music library, consider also how your music library is organized. In an ideal organization system, you should be able to find what you are looking for in four steps or fewer:
- Identify what you need
- Identify where the piece of music is located
- Find the piece of music
- Pull the piece of music to use.
The goal of these steps is to take fewer than five minutes. As you assess your organizational system(s), notice if some genres or collections are more organized than others. Perhaps your choir anthems have a clear system, but chord charts for your youth praise band are listed in an unalphabetized spreadsheet only one person can access. Or, your children’s music may be easily accessible, but you’re always searching for your collections of handbell music. If this is the case, begin forming a plan to improve the organization of the areas of the music library that need it. Identify people in your church who are excellent at organizing and setting up processes, and recruit them to help! Finally, a note about digital files: unless all the musicians in your ensembles have a digital means of reading music on Sunday mornings, create a filing cabinet drawer for paper copies of digital music. This is especially relevant for ensembles using chord charts. Having these chord charts in the filing cabinet, organized alphabetically, helps you access them quickly for rehearsals and saves paper in the long run.
The next step in taking stock of your music library is looking for the gaps in resources. What musical needs has your congregation had in the last five years? Have you had resources available to meet those needs? How often did you need to research and purchase new music to meet those needs? Needs can arise from several places (some of which will be addressed in the next section), such as expanding your congregational song repertoire to include global songs or recent hymns. Music needs can also arise as ensembles change over time. Perhaps your choir once had five sopranos and two tenors, but now has two consistent sopranos and six consistent tenors. Perhaps you’ve started a new children's choir or handbell ensemble and discovered you need more options than what your library contains. Taking stock of your library includes listing needs you’ve recently experienced and considering whether current resources can meet any ongoing needs or if you need to take a strategic approach to addressing those needs in the coming months and years.
Strategic Development
In music ministry, there are certain things you can always count on. One of these is that music ministry revolves around the seasons of the Christian year and, more specifically, around the two cycles of Advent/Christmas/Epiphany and Lent/Easter/Pentecost. All the other Sundays are considered Ordinary Time, unless there is a feast day such as All Saints Day. So, as you think strategically about how to increase your library, consider where the gaps are in relation to these cycles. Do you have ample music for the four Sundays of Advent so that you don’t have to pull out Christmas music, but instead balance the music with the readings of Advent? Do you have service music and responses for these cycles? Assess the number of anthems you have for each season and the type of anthem – SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), children, youth, bells, special arrangements with instruments or multiple choirs. Then begin a wish list of what you want to purchase with this year’s budget or in the next budget year or years. As you move through the year, note any new anthems or congregational songs that didn’t make it into the schedule this time but that you want to revisit the next time this season comes around. Keep a special place to note those pieces. If you have the budget now, consider purchasing them and making a note to program them next year.
Ensemble development is crucial in creating a music ministry that grows and matures. It’s important to find music that helps ensembles feel successful while also challenging them to grow. This is one of the most important tasks of a church musician. It’s not easy, but it is immensely rewarding. Assess the gaps in the music library you would like to fill in the coming year and in the next five years related to ensemble development.
Begin by developing goals for your ensembles. Do you want the choir to be able to do entry-level master work in the next three years? What kinds of anthems might build skills to get them there? Do you have those in your music library? Do you want your choir to sing in other languages? Find some anthems that use English and Spanish, Swahili, French, or whatever your other language might be. Do you want the choir to be able to sing a cappella? What are some easier Renaissance pieces that help choirs learn to sing a cappella?
If you are starting or have recently started a new ensemble, consider where you want it to be in the next three years. Then check to see if you have music in your library that will meet those needs. The further out you plan, the less panicked you will feel when it’s time to get the “right” music for a season for your ensemble.
The world’s rich cultures and languages are now more evident on our screens, in our curriculum, and in our ever-changing communities. How does your worship music reflect this change? Consider programming songs and music from a culture that is part of your community. When strategically adding to your music library, assess your community’s needs for diversity. World Communion Sunday is often one day (the first Sunday in October) when all are encouraged to share in global expressions of faith through song. Other days may be part of months that highlight a particular culture and heritage, such as Black History Month in February, Hispanic Heritage Month in September/October, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, and Native American Heritage Month in November. Music is a critical way we worship with the whole body of Christ of all times, places, languages, and cultures.
The world’s rich cultures and languages are now more evident on our screens, in our curriculum, and in our ever-changing communities. How does your worship music reflect this change?
Music library maintenance is an important way to help congregants sing, engage, and experience the diverse voices of Christ followers. A great place to start is with the music in the United Methodist Hymnal, The Faith We Sing, and Worship and Song. Singing some global songs as prayer responses or as a call to worship or benediction begins to teach the congregation about the richness of global song. Next, create your own hymn anthem or determine whether there is an anthem version of one of these songs you can purchase and teach your choir. You can stretch your budget by creatively using these songbooks to teach songs the congregation may have never experienced. Be sure to share the history of the songs so the congregation can appreciate how these songs came to be written and loved. Giving them context is the key to helping the congregation be willing to learn new music.
Using and Tending
Anyone who has been responsible for meals in their household knows there’s a point when some things have passed their expiration date, and it’s time to throw them away. The same is true of your music library! Don’t be afraid to throw away or recycle music that is no longer relevant and will not become relevant again in your context. Perhaps your community expresses its theological identity differently than it once did, your congregation size has changed, or your ensembles are a different makeup than in the past. Whatever the case, some music served your community in the past but may not serve it now or in the future. Take this opportunity to clear the clutter and free up room for the music that will serve your congregation now.
Tending your music library also includes planning creative ways to use what you have. If you have several hymn collections that you have not used recently, take some time to look through them and identify selections that you could “anthemize” for the adult, youth, or children’s choir. For example, you could turn a hymn like “Living Spirit, Holy Fire” (Worship & Song 3109) into an anthem by having high voices sing the first verse in unison, low voices sing the second verse in unison, high voices sing the melody; have low voices sing the bass line for the third verse, and then all voices sing four-part harmony for the fourth verse. By “anthemizing” the hymn, you not only can create anthems for ensembles based on resources you already have, but you also have the opportunity to introduce a new hymn that you can then program a week or two later for the whole congregation to sing.
After assessing and strategizing about additions to your music library, research the background of certain anthems, hymns, spirituals, and other songs. Are there stories about upcoming anthems or congregational songs that would help contextualize the piece for the congregation? Are there performance practice options to explore that could help guide how you rehearse, program, and share the song with the choir and the church? For instance, if you program an African-American spiritual, find articles and resources that can help you guide your choir and congregation in singing the spiritual in an authentic manner that respects the tradition and connects the gathered body to the saints who sang these songs and the context in which they were written.
As you tend and use your music library, keep a running list of hymns, songs, and anthems that indicates whether the pieces are heart songs, familiar songs, or brand-new songs. In that list, include voicing and/or instrumentation, as well as the origin or stream of music of each piece. Over time, this list will become a valuable asset in helping you continue to assess, tend, and use your music library to meet some strategic concerns without purchasing new music.
Conclusion
The important and meaningful contributions of a church’s music ministry are made possible by good stewardship of resources, including the music library. Regularly taking stock, planning for strategic development, and using and tending the music you have will help your ministry continue to grow and adapt as you form disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world through music.
Contact Us for Help
Contact Discipleship Ministries staff for additional guidance.