The Set Up: For a few months we’ve been in the process of readying a new facility for our church offices and rehearsal space. We’re a mobile church so the location we use for Sunday gatherings (movie theater) isn’t available to hold rehearsals in. Our present facility is only business licensed for office use (can’t have anything other than office type stuff in it so says the city), so we’ve been meeting at a small vintage clothing store/cafe for the last few months to hold rehearsals. The owners of the cafe are closing the store so this past week and maybe next week, we were technically out of a rehearsal space.

The Experiment: I decided to take this week (or 2) of what could be a chaotic search for space and try something different. Wednesday night I invited only the vocalists over to my place for rehearsal and dinner.

We sat comfortably around the living room, me with a guitar, and the other vocalists with their voices. We went through our line-up, pausing here and there to laugh and goof off or work on particular harmonies. All in all, it took us about half an hour to go through the line-up.

Before everyone arrived I prepared a simple chicken pot pie that I put in the oven to be baking while we rehearsed. Right as we finished we pulled it out of the oven. My wife and a friend that was over baked cookies from scratch.

We sat down and had a great time together. We looked like one big diverse family around our dining room table, laughing and talking, eating the pot pie (which was pretty good, I might add).

The Results: I could definitely tell that our vocalists enjoyed the entire evening. It was casual and relaxed. We worked specifically on vocal part without ever having to tell the guitar or drummer to quit doodling so we could hear what we were doing. Of course, we missed the full band run through, but it was definitely a refreshing even “quiet” approach to our rehearsal status quo.

The Band will be joining me tonight for Pizza and walk-through. We won’t be using fll instrument set ups. More like acoustic guitars and a snare drum, but I think the casual relaxed atmosphere will do our musicians good in the same way it did for the vocalists.

We’ll get together Sunday morning for full band/vocals run through.

All in all, this is something that I can see us implementing on a regular basis. Not weekly, but maybe once a month. I really enjoyed just “hanging out” with our team outside of the normal rehearsal environment.

What are some ways you mix things up when you feel like things are in a rut?

Are there ever times when you’re forced by circumstances to try something new with your team?

Please share.