MPB Music Strengths / Weaknesses/ 5 year goals

The following is a set of notes from our initial strategic planning session for our music ministry. Please know, that many of these statements or resolutions are intended to spur and focus our discussion of plans for the future. I apologize that I was not able to involve the whole choir in this initial process; Our group, however, needed to start somewhere. So far, I received feedback from Laurie Carroll, Silke, and Priscilla Kramer.. Thank you so very much! I invite everyone to share their thoughts and comments on this post... I would like to re-publish these notes reflect the input of the whole music ministry. I would also be open to setting a meeting for the whole ministry to review some of the more ambiguous or challenging resolutions of this plan.

Most Precious Blood Catholic Church, Oviedo FL
Music Ministry Strategic Planning Meeting
Ministers present: Ted Mosley, Cathy Tardif, Kristina Tardif, Teri Fosket
Strengths/Weaknesses/5 year goals

Strengths

• “Heart”

  • Music ministry is very mission focused on spreading the gospel.

  • Musical prayer is heart felt.

  • In the past months, we continue to see growth in choir and instrument ensembles showing the attractiveness of the ministry.

• Diversity in People

  • We have young and old working side by side.

  • All age groups can contribute to the final worship experience.

  • Need a chorister model to more formally engage young people - See goal for 5 year plan

• Diversity in music

  • Blended service (Traditional + Modern worship songs)

    • This model has been practical; one rehearsal serves three masses; this model also supports CCM since there are minimal changes to mass to make for Campus Ministry worship experience.

    • Using praise and worship in mass helps draw protestant visitors to our community into worship; Praise and worship music brings new charisma and energy to a Catholic worship experience

• Instrument ensemble at mass has been awesome and improving.

• Our ministry up to this point has been fairly approachable

  • People feel welcome to get involved and share their talents with the ministry.

  • Music programming errors on congregation participation rather than choir performance; (see Points of improvement for additional thoughts)

Points of improvement

• Diversity in music – Blended service

  • Praise and worship

    • We always need to be sensitive the rate of new songs introduced into worship.

    • In contrast to the campus ministry congregation, we need to be careful about making sure the congregation is taught songs. Musical notes help a great deal!

• Sound System and Staff Enhancements

  • Mic for instruments - We need to budget for microphones for instruments; instruments can be lost.

    • We may need to invest in getting a slightly larger board or using smaller mixers to expand our current system.

    • CCM's sound system will be able to augment our current sound system.

  • Can the sound engineer for a given mass make sure to walk around the worship space to make sure we are blending and balanced?

  • There's a perception that the sound engineers need more training.

  • Can we implement a default “non changing” set of levels for our board? There is still too much variability of sound between masses.

  • It would be great to have a monitor for lower frequencies("sub-woofer")

    • Idea: CCM has two speakers that do not do anything right now but gather dust -- It is not a powered amp, but perhaps we can figure out how to use it.

• Need more workshops for local ministry development

  • The cantor workshop the other week was great!!! We should have vocal development workshops like that quarterly
    Note – Kristina mentioned that she was interested in helping with the development of such workshops or master classes

  • We should try to offer mini-voice lessons

    • Idea from NPM - One and one vocal check-up -- Such a meeting allows directors to get to know the voices of their choir members while allowing them to set goals for vocal improvement.

• Worship aids - Worship aids need to target those who are not familiar with our faith; People get lost in some of the longer prayers and psalms (i.e. gloria and creed) ; The faithful should always be aware of the outline and flow of the mass. Gil Tardif may be interested being the PM for this activity.

5 year goals and other ideas

• Chorister model for engaging young musicianship and ministers; adults should mentor the teens; teens mentor the middle school; middle school should mentor the kid's.

• It may be prudent when space and people resources permit to establish contemporary and traditional masses.

• Once a month, try to conquer a really cool SATB piece; On such Sundays, we would turn the other masses into cantor masses; The choir mass should rotate in schedule.

• We hope that choir space for future MPB structures will be sufficiently large to account for the growth our ministry will undergo.

• The choir and instruments should lead people to sacred silence before mass begins; Since we don't have explicitly sacred space, we can use music to always start mass with a tone of prayer. The music ministry should always strive to set a prayerful decorum before mass.

• Placement of the tabernacle?

  • Instead of putting the Blessed Sacrament in closet, could we inspire a more prayerful worship space by placing the tabernacle in a more prominent location visible to the faithful? This change would require education from our staff so that the faithful are reverent.

• Great sounding spaces that we should consider modeling?

  • Chapel at St. Peter and Paul

  • Chapel at Margaret Mary

  • American Adventure at EPCOT

• Ways to divide an conquer the music ministry;

  • Install a director per mass; Each director would be given a guide of suggested songs for the weekend; They, however, would have the ability to change the program of mass to meet the pastoral needs of the congregation. (i.e. more traditional or contemporary, bilingual, etc. )

  • One director should focus upon instrumentalists

  • Other directors can focus on choral needs per mass

  • Directors focus on choral direction and not performance (i.e. playing piano)

• Clearly, the larger the choir becomes, the greater the need for better choral direction.

• Cantors should be utilized more in leading the congregation in worship; St. Stephen has a lot of good ideas in regard to the use of cantors. Cantors have their own raised platform allowing them to be more visible to the congregation; This empowers them to lead the congregation entrances.

• Director of worship needs to delegate more!!!

• Cantor led masses are okay; Such masses enable the music ministry to enjoy the opportunity to explore SATB literature. Even though we are a small ministry right now, we should exercise every opportunity to build choral discipline.