Last night, I was approached by an ESFJ and asked to participate in the singing of a hymn, Amazing Grace, that she wants to do in the church. She said that my voice was the most similar to the voice of the video that saw and presented to me. She sold it as if it had a surprise that other people liked.
When she made her approach, these things came to mind:
- How horrible the rehearsals were going to be. I might have a good singing voice, but I can’t seem to be able to control my voice very well and singing songs that other people wrote is hard for me to accomplish. This is the reason that I mainly sing my own material, and when I sing songs by other people I play the song myself.
- The voice wasn’t like mine.
- I would be working with an ESFJ. She doesn’t give the greatest impression. She has the uncanny ability to make me want to run away from her. I don’t hide it from her either; I just do it in the form of a joke. I just think that it’s better for everyone for us to not work together in such a direct manner.
- I don’t want to do this and go through the experience of having to carry out a vision that I don’t believe in. She is not representative of youth style, so her vision is… of someone that is middle aged. I wouldn’t find anything wrong with that if it’s portrayed in the right manner, but the way that she carries herself is indicative that she has some repressed desires that manifests itself in some unhealthy ways. I don’t want to deal with that.
- I’m a musician, you can’t tell me what I can and cannot play. When she talked about me singing it, I wondered what would happen with the drums because I was waiting for the drums to come in the song. She told me that I wasn’t going to play anything: bad idea.
- Where is the big surprise in the song? What’s so great about it?
She spoke about what she wanted to do: give the background of the hymn and then have young people sing it with her. I wasn’t impressed with the idea. It’s not us young people making the song our own. It’s her making young people sing it in the oldie style. To me it’s not something that will have the intended effect.
What really pissed me off what to know that she spoke to another young person in the church about it under the assumption that I will do it. Wasn’t I clear? I don’t want to be a part of it! What that did was make my “no” have more reason of being. This is the type of thing that brings out my “rebellious” nature of wanting to not do that which is ordered just to make a point clear. This ESFJ has no idea what she caused.
intjness.wordpress.com 
Treat it as a drug….Just say no!!!!
LikeLike
A drug is supposed to have better effects than her. Besides, I am just saying no.
LikeLike
Reminds me of a lady from my former church, she was like Hyacinth Bucket of Keeping Up Appearances, whenever anyone told her no, she would ignore them and plan on their participation anyway. It’s like they don’t care about how others feel as long as their vision is realized. Mine told me I’d be teaching the high school students and then she said that teaching actual theology was too deep so we would use the book that said: “God is like … a starfish, a pod, and other ocean metaphors. She was not amused when I asked her, “Will this be before or after showing them veggietales?”
Musicians have it worse though, the church tends to impose and infringe upon your art for the sake of their entertainment. I’m reminded of this one kid who was exploited “sing this, dance to that, play this piece” she felt like a dancing monkey and grew to resent both the treatment and the church.
LikeLike
Musicians, based on my observations and experience, have to disregard their emotions at times in order to get through some of the things the other members of the congregation throw at us. We are considered the puppets of whoever is singing or ministering the church. We get appreciation for tolerating them, not for giving the Lord praise through music. We are meant to fill the silences and play whatever song is desired at a particular time. We are not viewed as people that can minister through music, that can actually be the main characters in a moment of praise.
LikeLike
But that also means that they don’t view you as people with feelings and opinions and ideas of your own, either. I heard the other day about a drummer in my family whose church imposed upon him to (1) repair the drums (2) teach the usual drummer to drum better and (3) replace the usual drummer and play every Sunday indefinitely. The guitarists in my family are usually told that they have to do specials – thing is, music is a prayer language for them and it’s just weird to have to pray in public loud enough for everybody to hear and they’re just not the sort to do performances anyway.
LikeLike
Yeah. the co-pastor of my church tried to impose on me about two months ago (when he and her daughter tried to get a young person to play the drums at a particular service even when I said no because she hadn’t rehearsed and she is still a beginner at the drums [and all other instruments she tackles] after asking for the Pastor’s blessing on the decision) that I had to allow this young person to play the drums one church service a month and to give her drumming lessons. The co-pastor had “adopted” her as his daughter as a byproduct of a trip that the young person and the co-pastor’s family had to Spain earlier this year, so this to me was a biased action on his part. I am not planning to follow through on this anytime soon. This situation also had some serious consequences in the music and sound system ministry, among other things.
Sometimes, us musicians are playing while the ministers are doing their thing when all of a sudden they sing something that is not even remotely close to what we were playing in the first place. We are expected to stop playing and switch gears. We can’t impose our will. We can’t tell them that they should either have better timing and/or flow with us. But no; they are not capable of such a thing.
Two of the main problems is the of lack of appreciation of what we musicians do and that the existing paradigm of praise in certain church’s sucks.
LikeLike