Wow, I didn't even realize how old this thread was until I looked at the post dates. I even posted in it. That was a couple of years ago. I've since changed churches. (read my profile for details or check out my Myspace for the full story if you're really interested.) The church I attend is about 150+. On Easter 2006 (before I was there) they had 320 and in 2007 they topped that at 335. This Easter (only a couple of weeks before I started attending full time) they had 180 or so. Our pastor had a terrible head injury (fell and hit his head on some ice) so he was out of commission for about a month. Because of this, he wasn't there to push push push for guests to come, etc... I was there on Mothers Day and they had probably over 200. They had to set out chairs, there was literally no where left to sit. Anyway, here's the groups we have.
Adult Praise Team: 3 plus the pastor's wife who leads the songs. We also have two teams who rotate every week.
Youth Praise Team: They sing on Tuesday nights and it consists of 6 members. Most of them are part of the youth ensemble. There are several though who rotate, including myself.
Youth Ensemble: 8 members and I believe there are a couple of altos or switch off or fill in every so often. The ensemble sings a special every Sunday night and Tuesday night - sometimes on Sunday morning too.
Adult Ensemble: I believe there were 6 members. They haven't sang in many months.
Youth Choir: We have about 15 members. We just started the youth choir about a month ago or so.
Sanctuary Choir: We can pull off 25 on a good day. We probably have 15 dedicated members though.
Musicians: We have several very talented musicians...some I may not even know though yet because we've had many people move to this church since I've been here. I know for sure we have 3 piano players. Me and another guy also play the organ though. Usually I play the organ every other Sunday. The rest of the time I praise sing with the adult praise team that I'm on. When I sing the other guy plays the organ. Usually during altar call or specials, he will switch to piano and I will play the organ. We have 3 drummers who rotate on a regular basis. One of them also plays the "percussion" set (I hope that's the right term) - in addition to him, we have two others who play percussion. Sometimes they are used during the congregational service. We have an awesome guitar player (who plays the bass for the youth ensemble) and a bass player who plays on Sundays. Lastly, we have a lady who occasionally plays the vibraphone.
There is a lot of talent in our church. The pastor and his wife are very open about allowing people to participate in the service. During our worship services, we sing mostly old songs because our church has a great love for southern gospel music. The youth ensemble will even occasionally pull out an oldie. Tuesday nights we have contemporary music for the youth. We just have a diverse style of music here. We don't really have a program during our services. We just let God have His way. A lot of times we'll sing songs that aren't on the little list that we have for every service. Many times the pastor will get up and sing something before he preaches. Many times he sings a song I don't even know but I just follow the best I can since I'm usually on the organ at that time in the service. Y'all know how them old songs are...they all have the same chord progressions, lol. I love it though.
