Why There’s No Such Thing As A ‘Worship Gig’

By: Rob ‘Beatdown’ Brown
Session Drummer / Educator

I’ve done a good bunch of worship drumming videos and tutorials on my YouTube channel and I’d often get guys asking about ‘church gigs’ how they can get into doing them. My reactions to those types of questions have ranged from an innocent eye roll to maybe a slight chuckle, perhaps the odd raising of an eyebrow. It’s not out of disrespect, so much, but more out of just a ‘Man, these cats think it’s the same thing’.

So let’s talk about it for a few minutes.

I’ve been in music ministry for almost 25 years to date, and will continue to keep at least one foot in that world until I’m unable to swing the sticks anymore. I’ll be that 89 year old dude on the worship team with all of the cool road stories for the youngins. It’s easily one of the most important parts of my life for a lot of reasons. Before I got into it, though, I was solely playing and performing secular music. My introduction to playing in church happened clear out of the blue and very quick. I had just found a church that I ended up going to for a few weeks on the regular and managed to make a small handful of friends pretty fast. One of them during casual post-service conversation asked me what I do and I mentioned that I play drums. Well, that info quickly made its way to the pastor’s son who was the young worship leader there, and timely enough, not long after the church ran out of drummers. I was introduced to him and asked after one particular Sunday service if I wanted to play the next week. So I said ‘Sure’.

Later that week, I found myself on the stage with the team for my first rehearsal with them. And it was an interesting experience. And this is when I quickly discovered that playing in church ain’t NOTHING like playing in clubs! Coming from a few years of strictly secular gigs and zero church experience, I figured it’d just be business as usual up there. Learn a tune, memorize it, set to ‘cruise control’ and play it top to bottom. I know where everything’s going, so I’m cool. No problem. Just drive the bus. Then at one point, after missing a couple cues, the bass player turns to me and says ‘You gotta pay attention!’ Well, that was the first and the last time he ever said that to me. Not because I elbowed him in the throat...but because I quickly realized that this environment is way different and I can’t treat this as I would on a regular club stage. The ‘front man’ is replaced by a ‘worship leader’ and that arrangement you just worked so hard to memorize, might not necessarily be played the same way every time. The structure changes, the dynamics change, sections repeat several times over, etc, and it’s all lead by the worship leader. So you need to watch him or her like they’re about to steal your wallet off the table. Now, that’s not to say this type of thing doesn’t exist on secular stages. James Brown led his band. Prince led his band. Everyone up there was on their toes and ready. But even in those situations, the tunes had a pretty solid structure to a certain extent because they were playing hits off the records and even the element of surprise was still little bit rehearsed, if even just enough to remind you to ‘expect anything’ when you’re up on that stage. Anyways, I ended up adapting pretty quick and I was soon up there every other Sunday morning, then also found myself in the young adult band just as fast. Next thing I knew, I was doing more playing and traveling that summer than I had in the previous five years in the secular field. There was only one thing I didn’t quite anticipate. Not getting paid.

At least not in the beginning. It would be a good six or seven years before I’d see any type of monetary compensation for any church related playing, but I did a LOT of playing during those years - and I never said anything about it. Why, though? As I’ve said off the top, I’ve been in music ministry for almost 25 years. Today, at this current stage in the game being a full time musician, I do get paid for playing in church, whether it’s a regular service or a special event or a church concert with a Christian artist. But in all of the many years I’ve been involved in ministry right up to this day, I’ve never called or considered them “gigs”.

Now I still do secular gigs, and I’ve played plenty of them in my life. Bars, clubs, festivals, arenas, theatre performances, TV appearances, I’ll even lump recording sessions and video shoots in there. But they’re just different. They feel different. When someone watches one of the videos on my channel of me playing in church on a Sunday morning and asks the question, “How can I get into doing church gigs”, the general assumption is that the process is like getting any other gig like any of the ones I’ve just mentioned. The answer to that question is simply that you don’t just get into it as you would from doing an open audition or advertising your services on Facebook or even just knowing the right people. All of my experiences in music ministry over the last 20 plus years started by doing one thing. Serving. Churches don’t place ads searching for drummers or announce open calls for outside musicians when they need one. They look within the church. If it’s not within their own church, it’s within church network. But every single musician inside of that network...serves somewhere. They’ve dedicated themselves to a life of serving God with their talent at a home church. So, you can surely get into playing in church, but step one is finding one that you feel you can connect with, start attending regularly and eventually get involved. I could actually just stop at step one because everything beyond that point will happen for you when it’s supposed to. I’ve developed half of a lifetime worth of friends and connections since my first day playing in church, and that list of people still continues to grow. Every single church event, seasonal concert, Sunday morning sub-in, and appearance or studio session with a Christian artist that I’ve ever played since my very first day on a church platform, I’ve gotten through some degree of personal relationship, whether it was offered to me by a musician friend or recommended for through one I’ve met or played with previous. But it all started with serving at a home church.

So if playing in church and at church events is something you’re curious about doing...it starts there. It’s an entirely different world from the secular scene, man...yet almost totally the same. But when you’re playing for God, you might find yourself very hesitant to ever call it a ‘gig’.