What if Volume in Worship Became Less About Preference and More About Discipleship?

Zac HicksSound and Audio, Worship and Pastoral Ministry, Worship Technology, Worship Theology & Thought3 Comments

Refreshing Old Dialogues I’m always grateful for articles, thoughts, posts, and insights that reopen dialogues that feel simultaneously over-worn and under-productive. The volume-level-in-worship dialogue feels like one of those to me. It all too often gets downgraded into an issue of pure preference, sounding like this: The old people can’t stand how loud it is and just want it turned down.The young people can’t stand how soft it is and just want it turned up. I have also heard the … Read More

Rhythms of Grace – A Book Every Worship Leader Should Read

Zac HicksSound and Audio, Worship and Pastoral Ministry, Worship Resources, Worship Style, Worship Technology, Worship Theology & Thought1 Comment

A few weeks ago, I picked up Mike Cosper’s Rhythms of Grace (Crossway, March 2013) and quickly devoured it.  Mike is Pastor of Worship & Arts at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY.  That I knew I would love and highly recommend the book is a no-brainer, because Mike and I have tracked along the thought-patterns of many of the same theologians, philosophers, thinkers, writers, and practitioners in the field of Christian worship today.  I want to point out a few … Read More

What Technology’s Democratization of Worship Songwriting Means for Us

Zac HicksConvergence of Old and New in Worship, Culture, History of Worship and Church Music, Songwriting, Worship Technology2 Comments

Ones and Zeros Chuck Fromm, publisher of Worship Leader magazine, recently summarized and explored the implications of the shift of the church’s song from paper to bits and bytes in the January/February article in that publication, “The Hymn Cloud: Generation to Generation.”  The transition from hard publishing to web publishing has much more de-centralized and democratized the enterprise of hymnody for both songwriters and publishers (“hymns” being used in the broadest sense of “the Church’s body of sung prayer”). Fromm, … Read More

Sound in Reverberant Spaces, Part 2: The Most Important Thing

Zac HicksSound and Audio, Worship TechnologyLeave a Comment

nerdy sound guy shirts from zazzle.comThis is the second installment in a series of posts on identifying and addressing the difficulties of mixing ampliied sound in reverberant spaces.  It is a series of guest posts by Steve Bailey, Chief Sound Engineer at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church (Denver, CO), where he mixes both classical and modern (amplified) music in a traditional, hard-surfaced, reverberent room. Last time we talked about the science behind why your room sounds the way it does. This time … Read More

Sound in Reverberant Spaces, Part 1: Why It’s Hard

Zac HicksSound and Audio, Worship Leading Tips, Worship Technology1 Comment

I’ve had the privilege over the last year to work with Steve Bailey, a musician and sound engineer who I believe has “conquered” our hard-surfaced, reverberant, classically-oriented worship space at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church here in Denver.  As a worship leader, my vision for a good mix is not about making our musicians sound awesome as much as it is that the music we make sounds inspiring enough such that we eliminate distractions toward the people of God singing boldly … Read More