Church Attendance - 090920 - Broadmoor Baptist Church

Today we went to church at Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison, MS.

They have services at 9AM and 10:45, and we were able to get to the earlier service.

They are coming down the home stretch of construction on their new huge and gorgeous sanctuary; I've heard they are hoping to have their first service in the new building on Christmas eve this year. I was able to peek through a gap in the construction curtain-plastic, and it looks like they're rght on schedule.

The reason we chose Broadmoor today is that I've spoken with the senior pastor there, Rob Futral, and he's asked that sometime soon I get together with him and their new music minister, Mike Haight, to share with them some of my observations from having visited numerous other churches. I have called and requested an appointment, and I thought it might be good if I could attend one (or more) of their services to see what the music program was like under Mike Haight.

I was very impressed.

They began the service with an associate pastor calling everyone to worship, while the organ (synthesizer?) played some pedal-drone chords, somewhat like a bagpipe drone, played with an organ voice. This was very effective, especially when the piano began to come in with occasional high chords or arpeggios; it seemed it was building a very good sense of anticipation for what was to come in the rest of the service.

As the associate pastor finished up his call to worship, I recognized the music as it evolved into "Sing To The King."

They had about five praise team singers, and a good (standard) rhythm section, as well as a choir of more than 70 voices, and some orchestral insruments as well. I wish I could report more accurately about how many were involved, but I was sitting near the back and couldn't see very well.

The choir sounded very good, but I could barely hear the orchestra at all. Being an instrumentalist, I might listen more than most for the orchestral instruments in any worship service.

Overall, the balance between all the parts was quite good - namely, there wasn't anything I could see or hear that would get in the way of worship. If someone were to ask me how they could improve their balance, I'd suggest they might decrease the drum volume about 10% and increase the praise team singers' volume by about 10%, and somehow make it so we could hear the orchestra better, but overall, everything was pretty well balanced, loud enough to hear and become immersed in, without being too loud.

After the first song, there was a welcome, while the piano played some excellent improv, still against the organ drone, which was also still very effective.

They then went into the second song, "I Bless Your Name," with an excellent singer from the praise team singing what turned out to be mostly a solo, with some choir and rhythm accompniment, but was also nicely worshipful. I felt this fit very well for this part of the service.

About this time, I looked around at as much of the congregation as I could see, and could see that most everyone was very nicely involved in the worship. I never did see anyone "involved to total surrender," as I have seen in other churches, but neither did I see people checking their watches or heaving sighs and rolling their eyes at the ceiling. Just about everyone had some level of invovement.

From this, they went directly into their third tune, "There's Something About That Name," which started out as a praise team and choir "concert," but by the second verse, Mike had brought in the entire congregation in on the singing. This was a great tune to settle everyone into a mood for worship.

Following this, they had he scipture reading, during which there was some more excellent piano improv, again with the organ drone chords -- at this time, I noticed when the piano would change to a subdominant or dominant chord, the organ would remain playing the tonic chord, which proved strangely effective and hauntingly mood-evoking.

After the scripture reading, Mike taught everyone a new song, "I Will Bow To You," a nice song, and one that led perfectly into the message for the day.

One of the points Pastor Rob made in his message today furnished an answer to a question that looms with anyone who is involved in ministering to others through a worship service -- he gave us a definition of WORSHIP as "Responding to the revelations of God with uninhibited love and devotion."

This is important to anyone working with the music in a worship service, because we absolutely must do our utmost to be sure nothing in the music will inhibit people's responding to the revelations of God.

Today at Broadmoor, they did an excellent job of providing a worship service that did not inhibit our responding to the revelations of God.

I might go back there next week.