Music that moves

It’s not how much you spend on music that matters, but the heart of the band.

BY JENNIFER GARRETT

Everyone knows that students love music – so why not meet them where they are? With the right bands and musicians, music becomes much more than just an attraction or entertainments vehicle.

Why is music so important to kids? Because it’s how a many teens define themselves, says Beth Powell, director of partnerships and implementation for Acquire the Fire. “If we connect with them there, they feel like we are respecting them,” she says. ATF is a ministry for teens that holds conferences across the country, with audiences ranging from 1,300 to 13,000 students. This past year, 205,830 teens attended 37 live events, according to the ministry’s Web site.

Making connections is not just a dream of youth leaders and speakers; it’s a desire of the teens themselves, demonstrated in their passion for social media and the Internet. But teens seek a higher connection as well. A new study from The Barna Group exploring the spiritual lives and expectations of today’s teenagers reports that when asked about their expectations of church, the highest percentage (45 percent) of teens ages 13-18 surveyed said “to worship or make a connection with God” was very important.

As the manager of T&E productions for Lifeway Church Resources, Jason Ellerbrook books all of the speakers and music for Lifeway’s XFuge camps, working with bands such as Casting Crowns, Addison Road and Big Daddy Weave. The heart and soul of Lifeway’s Fuge camps is that life change in teenagers takes place through relationships, and Ellerbrook points to worship music as a way to use student’s desire to connect to accomplish that mission. “This generation is interactive,” says Ellerbrook. “They want to be a part of the experience. When you look at even how they engage with television, with anything online, it all runs hand in hand. The same way they are engaging in their music, from my opinion, is that they want something they not only sing along with but they are a part of the song.

“So I think the music means more to them than just sticking it in their ears and listening to their iPods,” says Ellerbrook. “They are actually engaging in it; they’re the ones singing it.”

From big conferences like ATF, which has packed 25,000 high school students into a San Francisco stadium, to small youth groups, leaders agree that the way a worship leader conveys the message of the event and relates to youth on and off the stage has a huge impact on your event and the lives of students. The attitude of the band is larger than limited budgets, cross-cultural groups or the style of music.

Money is an Object
Not every group has the budget to go out and hire the David Crowder Bands or the Casting Crowns of the world. Dan McKinley, national director of operations for Student Venture, the high school and junior high ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International, handles booking bands for events ranging from small, retreat-style meetings to large conferences. McKinley and youth ministers across the country have learned to use the talent pool around them to get great music for their events.

“The smaller venues often use local or college bands that they pull in from youth ministries or bigger churches in the area,” McKinley says.

Many youth pastors find talent within their own youth groups or from the community. These “house” bands lead worship using the same popular music of well-known worship leaders and may have even more of a connection with students because they interact with them regularly. The benefit of the popularity of worship leaders such as Chris Tomlin and Charlie Hall is that many youth – especially aspiring worship leaders – know their music and can bring that to your event without the cost of a popular artist.

Even for their large events, Student Venture goes after bands on the rise. McKinley cites the 2009 Dove Award New Artist of the Year, Tenth Avenue North, as a perfect example. “It’s been a great relationship with us and Tenth Avenue North,” McKinley says. “We started working with Mike [Donehey, lead vocalist for Tenth Avenue North] when he was in college. He’s got this great kind of ‘Lord, use me. I have this gift and this talent, but I want it to be a ministry; I want to be able to minister to people.’”
McKinley stresses the importance of bands using their gifts to direct attention to God and not themselves – then it doesn’t matter what band you use. “The talent isn’t it; it isn’t the lyrics; it’s getting themselves out of the way and allowing Christ to be the center, and there are certain bands in particular who do that really well,” McKinley says, referring again to Tenth Avenue North.

Fan the Fire, a ministry of Catholic Youth Ministry, is a one-day event targeted at smaller parishes that do not have the money or resources to attend the large Catholic youth conferences such as National Catholic Youth Conference or Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Youth Conference. The conference is on a smaller scale but still seeks high energy worship music that engages students. Scott Anthony, who helped develop the conference and is the director of youth ministry at St. Joseph Parish and St. Patrick Parish in York, Pa., has found that many of the nationally known Catholic youth speakers are also worship leaders, and that is a good way to save money.

Cross Cultural Events
Whether you are trying to attract certain cultures or simply trying to reach a wide variety of people, finding music that appeals to a diverse group can be difficult. Both Student Venture and ATF think about the demographic of the audience when they are picking bands, but the consensus is that when it comes to worship music the style is not the most important aspect.

“The issue, especially with us, is when we are trying to be multicultural in our outreaches, music doesn’t work very well,” says McKinley of Student Venture. “In other words, even within our culture … there are huge differences in taste within music, so to rely on that solely as the draw you have to realize you are only going to draw a certain group.” This challenge has forced Student Venture to rethink how they approach conferences as they seek to reach different demographics than they have in the past.

For an inner city ministry, McKinley says he might look for a band that has a style that fits that crowd yet still has the values of the organization. ATF’s Powell says she looks at both the make-up of the city in which the event is held and speaks with local youth pastors to find out what type of music the kids listen to. ATF uses groups that may not fit the typical mold to reach different audiences such as Christian rapper Da’ T.R.U.T.H., but also includes mainstream groups like David Crowder Band at the same event, she says.

Unhindered, a band based in Atlanta, leads worship at events ranging from small retreats to ATF conferences. Pat Barrett, lead vocalist for the band, says they are more likely to change their approach for different age groups rather than cultures because music still has a way to reach a multitude of people. “It doesn’t mean you need to be a chameleon and change for every situation that arises, but there needs to be some flexibility for the people that are there,” he says. “For the band, you have to realize this might not necessarily be the demographic, age group or people you are most familiar with leading, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a common thing we can grab hold of and say ‘Let’s experience God from this place together.’”

Anthony of Fan the Fire agrees that it isn’t the genre of the music that appeals to young people. It’s that buzzword – interaction – as well as a little fun. When a local praise and worship leader played the bagpipes for the group, a little drama was added by turning the lights out and using a fog machine. “People think that kids are only going to like a certain kind of music, but when he came out in his kilt from the back of the mist, the kids went crazy,” Anthony says.

The Heart of it All
Another challenge often cited when using popular contemporary bands -and perhaps the one that receives the most criticism-is overcoming both the emotionality of music for youth and the performance aspect of worship bands. Each organization stresses the importance of assessing the mentality of the band beforehand.

Anthony has a checklist of criteria he goes through when selecting a worship leader for Fan the Fire: The band or worship leader 1) is humble and prays while leading, 2) has a certain level of professional skill and 3) understands they are not doing a concert but leading people to God in prayer. Ellerbrook uses the reputation of bands as well as the feedback of youth leaders at XFuge to make band selections, and he is always looking for groups that share his organization’s view of ministry. Powell sits down with bands to see where their hearts are before selecting them to lead Aquire the Fire events.

“Their heart is the most important to us,” Powell says. “One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that a lot of times you hear a young band you may have never heard of before, but eventually everyone knows who they are because of where their heart is, which is usually why they connect to people so well.”

The ability of the worship leaders to connect with the students both on and off the stage is a key element of the success of music at an event, as proven by Jenny Simmons, lead singer of Addison Road, who takes the time to hang out and talk with girls during the week while leading worship at XFuge camps, as well as the examples set by Tenth Avenue North and Unhindered.

Whether your challenge is a limited budget, reaching out to a wide variety of cultures and tastes or reaching youth beyond the emotional draw of music, the bottom line is more an issue of the heart than anything else.