How many of us growing up got chills down our spines at the sound of these three little words? Clean Your Room! Hopefully it wasn’t a phrase you heard very often. If you did hear it, hopefully it was said with love. Well, our music areas in our churches are in some ways our rooms. It is amazing to me, as I go around to different Churches, to see the state that most music areas are in. Maybe I’m wrong, but they have shelves for books now, they don’t just have to get stored on top of pianos and organs anymore. I know, I’m being sarcastic, but really…
Our places of worship should be places of beauty. It really doesn’t matter how good the Art & Environment is if half of the assembly attention is diverted away from the sanctuary because there are microphone cables running seven different directions all over the floor. Great care and time should go into preparing for the Liturgy and we as Music Ministers need to do everything we can to make sure our places of worship are places of beauty.
During the Week
During the week put away all the music books in your music area and organize them somewhere else other that in the music area in the Church. Try to set up music books for your groups so that they don’t need to have 2 or 3 books to keep changing between in the middle of Mass. Have all the music organized before the Musicians arrive on Sunday in an orderly fashion. Your Music Group will appreciate it and the Liturgy will run much smoother. Get a volunteer to help if you can’t make enough time on your own.
The Day of the Mass
First of all, we need to allow ourselves some time to get set up in an orderly fashion. Set out all the instruments, amplifiers and monitors before running any cables. Think through in your head exactly how the cables will run and try to lay as many as you can right next to each other in a line. Get some Velcro straps for your cables so that when you’re done running them in place you can use a few straps to bundle them together. Avoid running cables underneath where people will walk so musicians aren’t tripping over them in the middle of Mass.
Great care needs to be taken to present quality to the people of God. Others will follow our example and eventually it will inspire others to do the same.
