Jon Duncan: Tim Studsdill has served Texas for nine-plus years, three years as director following our friend, Don McCall. Tim was a friend to all, and I've asked him to facilitate this because I'm in charge of the exhibit area and I have to go out from time to time to check thing. So Tim will ably lead us. The topic is open ended. Last year we dealt with a lot of issues, such as conflict mediation, and that might surface again, but this year we wanted to hear some success stories from your state. I, personally, am always looking for success stories. One example is what we saw was happening up in Arkansas for their youth choir festival. We kind of tweaked ours a little bit where it kind of looks a little bit more like Arkansas' and it worked. So there are a lot of things happening in our states that we can benefit from by hearing. If you are not leading state, your input is still very important because many of you have been to a lot of these events and can share from your side of things and we'll find that even some of you that have retired, I know that I have learned a great deal from being around people like Warren Fields and Paul McCommon, because a lot of the old things that we think don't work, may still work. If we get off on another tangent, that's okay, too, because from here on Tim's going to run it. So let me introduce Tim Studsdill. Tim, thank you for leading this session for us.

Tim Studsdill: I would stand up and be more official, but I'm not. But thank you for this opportunity. Missed being with you last year. We had a death in the family and I wasn't able to be here. Let's go around the room and tell our names and where you serve, or what you are doing.

Tom Westmoreland: I am Tom Westmoreland, retired director of church music for the South Carolina Baptist convention. This is my fiftieth anniversary with the state convention, so this is an important meeting for me.

Jim Gill: I'm Jim Gill, and I'm the soon to be retired director of worship and music for the South Carolina Baptist convention.

Julian Suggs: Julian Suggs, I'm  retired from the Tennessee Baptist Convention, and I serve my wife now.

[laughter]

Bill Leach: Bill Leach, retired from the Sunday School Board. I don't know what I'm doing.

Paul Clark: I'm Paul Clark, and I'm worship and music ministry in Tennessee, and fill the cowboy boots of Julian Suggs

Tom Eggleston: Tom Eggleston, I'm associate director of worship and music in South Carolina, with Bro. Jim Gill.

Jane Burdeshaw: I'm Jane Burdeshaw from Montgomery, Alabama.

Ray Burdeshaw: And I'm Ray Burdeshaw, director of worship and music for the Alabama Baptist State Convention.

Hugh Ballou: I'm Hugh Ballou, and I work as an independent consultant and facilitator, helping church leaders do strategic planning, manage conflict, and do anything that involves teams.

Jon Duncan: I'm Jon Duncan, and I'm music and worship specialist for the state of Georgia.

Tommy Keown: And I'm Tommy Keown, from LifeWay Christian Resources.

Todd Goodson: I am Todd Goodson, I'm the new director for the state of Kentucky. Jim says, he's "on the beach," I don't know.

Steve Blanchard: I'm Steve Blanchard from Indiana. We did away with titles, because it's so hard to describe who we are and what we do, but I do worship, partnership missions, Asian church planting, and community evangelism.

Carlos Ichter: I'm Carlos Icther, currently in Arkansas, and I'm in Limbo right now. The convention is going to, hopefully, vote me in to be the new convention music representative on Thursday, so pray for me. Pray for them, too.

Jere Adams: I'm Jere Adams, retired from LifeWay Worship Music group.

Martha Kirkland: I'm Martha Kirkland, retired from LifeWay, too.

Tom Ingram: Tom Ingram, I serve as Worship and Spiritual Development Consultant for Virginia.

J. T. Owens: I'm J. T. Owens, retired from Florida Baptist College, and also from the Mexico mission field.

Blimp Davis: I'm Blimp Davis, I'm thinking about retirement. I'm associate, Florida Baptist Convention, and started under Paul Bobbitt, back here, and appreciate the opportunity he gave me to do this.

Keith Hibbs: Keith Hibbs, associate in Alabama.

Paul Bobbitt: Paul Bobbitt, retired from the Florida convention staff, director of music, my wife, Mary.

Paul Shelton: I'm Paul Shelton, music missionary in Argentina.

Paul McCommon: I guess I'm the dean of this group, now. Gene Quinn's gone. I'm Paul McCommon, Music Secretary for thirty-four years in Georgia, and the thing that was a real help for our state, which I'm excited about, Jon is there as the head of our department, and is doing a great job.

Tim Studsdill: Several of you made references to your titles. What's happening in your states with your titles. Good, bad, indifferent, is it making a difference?

Blimp: When we had a new director, following Bob Burroughs, we had some meetings around the state, to try to find out what we should be called, what we should be doing, and those kind of things, and decided that we should change our name, which has to go through the state board of missions. We eventually settled on the name, Music and Worship Ministries, which is pretty normal, common we felt. But when it came time for the state board to vote, the upper-level management said, "We don't need to change that now." So we decided that we would be the Music and Worship Ministries of the Church Music Department of the Florida Baptist Convention.

Tim Studsdill: What size business card do you have? Do you just hand-write those out on a five by seven card?

Jim Gill: We are no longer creative in South Carolina. We used to be called Music and Creative Worship for about five years, and now we are Worship and Music Office. That has happened just recently.

Tim Studsdill:You are no longer creative, but you do have an office to go to.

Jim Gill: Right. [laughter]

Voice: Our executive director was really concerned about us being perceived in the state as missionaries, so even though we call ourselves associate directors, we are really state missionaries, and that's resonated throughout the state.

Tom Eggleston: That is a trend that is going through the state execs. They started referring to that in South Carolina. We have not taken on those titles yet, but I suspect that will happen.

Paul McCommon: What difference does it make what you are called, has the work changed?

Voice: Oh, yeah.

Julian Suggs: I was grateful, though, in Tennessee, about the mid-Nineties, to get music connected to worship, because many people thought of it as an end unto itself, and I always lamented the fact that the WMU and Brotherhood, as they used to be called, had probably a dozen people and sixteen times the budget, yet music was an entity in every church, and when it was connected to worship it worked better.

Tim Studsdill: How has the work changed? When I look at the web pages and such things, most of us look like we have less staff than in previous years. Has the work or the workload, job assignments, changed?

Voice: I was referring to ours, we were called a group because anytime you had a director and associates you were called a group, if you only had a director, then it was an office, it was only one. But now several states use contract workers. I can be replaced by one person, it takes seven to replace Tom Eggleston. But that seems to be a trend. I don't know if that's financially driven, because of the benefits, or what that's all about. How many of you do contract?

Voice: Very individual kind of a thing...but nobody on a year's contract person, it's just, "Will you go lead this meeting, and such."

Voice: I think Mississippi probably is the biggest user of contract workers. Graham has a lot of contract workers.

Voice: I think he started the contract worker idea.

Voice: Gene Quinn had that in Kentucky.

Voice: Jim transitioned it, to the best of my knowledge, when he took over.

Voice: He was Gene's associate.

Voice: Right, then he became full time. Obviously, there are drawbacks, having people working part time, people who are working two, three, four jobs, seminary students trying to get through. But the benefit of the division of labor, of focus, effort and energies, there are a lot of positives also.

Paul Clark: Ours have specific assignments, like preschool, children's choirs--

Blimp Davis: Are your contract workers paid a stipend? In other words, like you would a lawyer so that they are there when you want them?

Voice: Basically, yes.

Voice: So are they responsible for planning events, or coordinating, or consultations as needed?

Paul Clark: We have a beginning of the year meeting, a planning time, where the calendar is set, then from there it's either continued via e-mail or phone.

Voice: I have a monthly meeting with them, a little additional interaction; also meet with them once a month in a two- to four-hour meeting, then wait two weeks and set up an individual consultation, one or two hours, to keep the communication face to face with them, but they are all located there in Louisville.

Voice: We have two contract workers currently, one person in creative arts ministry, with a specific festival, an annual festival that we plan, and then we have a children/keyboard contract consultant, Paula Joy, who works throughout the year on various projects related to children and keyboard, and she's paid a different salary than our other contract worker, who is really gets only hourly pay, but she spreads it over the whole year. They are going to be adding an additional five or so contract workers when my position ends in August...

Voice: On these consultants, do you use them to do only specific events, or what?

Paul Clark: Yes, in my case, they are assigned to a specific area of ministry, like children's choirs, handbells, technology. But before I enlisted them, we had kind of a set plan, how we were going to do the calendar, and then they add those events to the calendar.

Voice: When you are using your contract workers for setting up the events, who negotiates all your contracts as far as with the churches, with the hotels, with food services, whatever.

Paul Clark: It's kind of a shared thing, it all depends on the size of the event, how complex it's going to get, and we're on a time-frame basically with them, most all of them work past that time frame, but they are mostly full-time employed in church settings.

Voice: Have you had a problem with people dropping the ball, some of these, so there has to be a high level of accountability there?

Paul Clark: We're finding that in the building in general, with less staff, so in trying to outsource certain things, so that it can become a logjam, sometimes going both directions -- going up-line, trying to get things approved and set on the calendar, then down-line if you want to call it that, in the art department, promotional side of things, lots of ways for it to go wrong.

Todd Goodson: Ours have, I've pushed the responsibility back to them through the accountability, because I do see them twice a month, I'm able to do that, plus I'm big on communication -- let me know what's going on, keep me updated -- so the accountability, whether they're part time, full time, volunteer, that's just an issue in our society, I think.

Voice: Did you inherit the contract worker situation?

Todd Goodson: Yes, I'm trying to change as little as possible.

Blimp Davis: But you mention they're all in Louisville, that gives you the opportunity to meet with them frequently, is that correct?

Todd Goodson: That's right, but in other aspects of my life, though, there's a lot of communication through e-mail, through telephones, cell phones...but there are a lot of ways to communicate. We are in that age when we can use communication technology to our benefit.

Paul Clark: I think the key is, that you've got -- especially as you get closer to an event, we have a different way now of doing clusters of associations, and they can request events, and while that's going on, you've got communication that you've got to do, of course, in your state work with the minister of music and pastors, bi-vocationals, people like this. I think the hard part for me is being where you are.

Tim Studsdill: What's working really, really well in your state, something that's great?

Carlos Icther: Tim, I've been in Arkansas just a short time, but I've been there previous years, but it seems like there's an excitement toward youth choirs. PraizFest, PraiseWorks (a summer camp), and people just rally around and each year they get bigger and bigger. I know that PraiseWorks was a big part of John Dresbach's heart, and just really invested a lot of time in that, and I think they are starting to see a lot of rewards from that ministry. I would say, too, there's a wonderful group of Arkansas Master'Singers, that's the men and women singing groups, and there just seems to be a wonderful camaraderie, and I don't know, Tim, you could probably validate what I'm saying, but it's a real special place.

Tim Logan: Amen. It is. We've had some great leaders in the past and another on the way.

Jon Duncan: We've seen a renaissance in youth choir work as well, in Georgia. More churches are moving in that direction, we're having more ministers of music taking the step to make it happen. They realize it's hard work, but it's the most challenging and rewarding, at least in my experience. But we've seen that part of our work really take off.

Voice: What form does that take?

Jon Duncan: I tell you, it's pretty much traditional youth choir. The literature they are doing is very challenging. It's not just an expanded praise team format, but it really is good solid choral literature, more solid than it's been in many years. At our youth choir festival the youth responded so well to the Gilbert Martin "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," and things of that nature -- I mean, it kind of surprised us, one of our youth choirs intentionally sang an atonal piece [much laughter], so it seems like the greater the challenge, the greater the young people are responding towards it. I think we saw that here. That has been, I think, expedited in many situations throughout the state of Georgia, and I think they are wanting to share that with other youth choirs. We had seen nice growth, and we try to make changes before we get too comfortable in the setting we are in. I asked the committee to consider a radical change, and try to take every excuse out of the pocketbook of the minister of music, why he couldn't come to youth choir festival. When I did the youth choir festival in Arkansas a couple of years of go, I said, every excuse was taken out of their hands. No preparation was required: show up, move right into sectionals, mass rehearsal puts a lot of pressure on the director, but we got it done, and it was a very nice festival. We did that format, but also inserted a parade of choirs. We saw major growth. We anticipate next year that we might be approaching a thousand kids at festival. We'll be disappointed if we're not pushing that button.

Voice: What kind of church is it?

Jon Duncan: It's a mixture. We had quite a few churches come that don't have a youth choir. We had Ogglethorpe, Georgia, between Macon and Americus, and a lady, part time minister of music, Cheryl Dorsey, had wanted to start a youth choir, and she got about fifteen young people that signed up early, and she called later and said, "I've got about fifteen more that want to come," and they started a youth choir out of that experience. And so one of the nice effects was that we actually birthed about four youth choirs out of that event because they didn't have to prepare ahead of time. And that was quite different in Georgia from the past, because you had to have your music memorized before you showed up. It was a nice part. We stole that from Arkansas, but the festivals are showing great increase, particularly with youth. Florida, we've borrowed some ideas with your young musicians festival that's going so well.

Voice: One of the festivals that has been successful for us has been our creative ministries festival. We've had as many in the last five years, over a thousand have attended this festival. Our numbers have fluctuated. We had close to seven hundred that attended this last March. One of the areas that has grown the most is the interpretive movement groups. We offered five interpretive movement classes. One of them had 150 students in it. It's amazing the interest these kids have in interpretive movement. This festival has been going on about fifteen years now, and we've had good leadership, we've had a contract worker that has given specific help to it and given guidance...that's probably our largest festival that we've had.

Voice: How many of you have creative arts, clowning, drama, different things as part of your responsibility.

Voice: It's in the state, but not under the worship department.

Paul Clark: Tim, we do an every-other-year music leadership conference that's kind of a two-day Ridgecrest kind of experience, training for everybody, and we tried to capitalize this last time on the celebration of those people coming together. Everything's built on relationships, so that between our state singing groups, they kind of just gather and we do a sugar-stick or two. After our youth choir event, which happens in January for us, with parents and music ministers saying, "Isn't there some time that these kids can get together and do this somewhere, other than coming here for this recording," and I said, I wonder if they could come to do the closing session of our big music ministry event, and sponsors come and brought their kids. That was an eye-opener for a lot of folks who thought that youth choir was dead, and all of a sudden here were 300 kids up here singing. We had Gerald Ware as the clinician, leading them. That was a neat thing.

Voice: Another thing I was going to say about our creative ministries festival, one of the features that we started about three years ago was just to try to model for our groups getting outside the four walls of the church to do ministry in the community, so we started with this festival, we started having the last showcase -- we've had it in the same church for the last three or four years -- and right across the street is a mall, so we set up in two or three stages some years. The great event of the gospel was presented, and we had a good relationship with that mall manager, and they've allowed us to be in there, and it has been a great outreach tool, and was a good model for these kids, using ministry beyond the four walls of the church. We've done the same thing with our Baptist all-state group, we've taken them to different venues to perform, like the Peach Festival, we sang at the triple-A baseball team, sang The Star Spangled Banner for 5,000 people, July fourth event, and televised in Monroe. This past January we sang the Star Spangled Banner at the USC-South Georgia men's basketball game, had fourteen-thousand people there, and our chorus and orchestra played. It was a great experience.

Voice: Our children's honor group sang at the state fair, trying to get outside the walls of the church. Good experiences.

Tim Studsdill: How many of you have children's honors choirs? How is that going?

Voice: We're not having it next year. We had a young musicians' group, but last year decided to combine the age-groups. Did not go well to combine younger youth and older youth, even though most of your more professional choirs in cities, like Nashville, go through eighth or ninth grade. But it didn't work for us. There wasn't a strong desire for that.

Voice: Ours has done extremely well. My biggest regret is that there are over a hundred children that audition every year, sometimes two-hundred, that we are not able to include because we try to keep the number to 150, and it's usually 160-170 that are in the group. It's just awesome how it has continued to work, the parental support across the state. The biggest thrill to me this year was to see so many of our graduated students come back. I had some come for rehearsals, they knew where the area rehearsals were going to be, and big old high school boys coming in to sit in on rehearsals, and that said so much to those children. One of their mothers had just passed away the week before, and we were able to pray for him as a group. Then when we sang this year in front of our capitol, and had so many representatives in our state government present -- even our treasurer spoke, our attorney general spoke, talking about the value of our children and their future -- it was so awesome to see the connection between the society and community that way. At the end we have one song we repeat every year, and we asked those that were present -- there were between thirty or forty of them that came up and sang. That night when we sang in a church, a few of them stayed over, but there was an additional group, I'd say all together there were about sixty young people that had returned from all parts of the state to come and be a part. And of course, the boys are suffering. But it is so neat to me to see our young people across the state who say to me, "Miss Jane," because they begged me to start another group when they graduated out, you need to talk to these guys, and Keith has done that, and we have some that have gone through the Junior High group and are now in the high school group, and Keith has done a wonderful thing every December, he takes the youth group up to New England, and they have really connected up there. They go and present the gospel in whatever venue, whatever opportunity they have, and some of the young people in that group came out of that children's program. They take that back to their churches. Some of these little girls sang for their uncle's funeral, a song they had learned in children's choir, singing two different parts. It's just a joy to see how that happens.

Voice: For auditions, we asked them to sign a commitment, the child and the parent, and when they send their audition in, so we can be sure that if they make it they will follow through to what they've committed to.

Voice: And these guys are probably not going to say anything, but I think that what they do for our bi-vocational people is great. We have so many. They do have conferences and things that they can come to to help them be more prepared in their churches. It's a sweet fellowship that we need.

Voice: We do two state-wide events for bi-vocational. We have a ministry catalog request that come from the associations, and we prioritize those requests and we try to answer every one of those requests. We have from 18 to 24 requests for bi-vocational events every year.

Blimp Davis: Sometimes we would do an associational event, where the DOM would do something without consulting anybody, and very few people would show up. So I said, let's do something where we give a personal invitation to these people. I called them, then followed that up with a letter. I fed them, I gave them a book, I gave them a music packet, and a lot of enticements to be there. The meeting had no pressure, it wasn't really a training event, it was just a time to see if we could meet these guys and exchange some information on paper, and to hear from each other and to realize that you are not out there by yourself, there's another guy across the table who is in the same boat you are in. I didn't intend to have huge meetings, I had ten to twelve at each one. It worked out pretty good, so we're going to continue it. It's a lot of work, because you've got to -- to try to catch a bi-vocational guy by telephone is a pretty good job. We'll work at it.

Tim Studsdill: How many of you have bi-vocational training events? Formal approach, what are some of the things you do, some of the things you're seeing that they need?

Blimp Davis: I'll follow up on that, I had two guys who are ministers of music, and we read through the music packet and these guys said, "We don't read music," and one of them said, "My piano player doesn't read music," and I said "What? I've got to see this." I went to that church the following Sunday, and it was true...you would never know that the piano player didn't read music. He sang all kinds of stuff and they had projection systems. It was amazing. Why train? [laughter]

Voice: I think the worship war thing is finding its way through the bi-vocationals. I think they need some help in concepts of worship, how to transition, if they need to transition...

...

Voice: We started several certificate programs, we have a certificate program for children's workers and others, and we're starting a music certificate program, eight eight-week courses over the course of four years. Basic musicianship is part of that, voice class, how to get along with people. We tried to find eight topics that really meet at the heart of where bi-vocational things are. It basically was based on what you were doing, Julian, in your Saturday Skills Shop thing. We're partnering with one of our colleges, I think we're going to do in on television in three locations, over the internet.

Julian Suggs: By the way, in fairness, that was barred from Kentucky.

Blimp Davis: Mississippi does an actual degree program.

Voice: This is kind of like that, that we've taken to a different area.

Voice: We've had two different emphases, just in the last year. Jim and I did a program called Coming Your Way in eleven regions in our state, and it was designed for the small- and medium-sized churches, bivocational, part-time, and minister of music volunteers. Those who were moderately, I mean, we made some good contacts. We sent out a brochure, had a meal with them, them had an hour and a half conference time. We had small numbers, but we did make some good -- we made some cold-call visits that were pretty significant. We went to one church after this conference, and the minister of music was there and the pastor was there, and we said, "Is there anything we can pray with you about," and the minister of music said, "Well, I'm having brain surgery next week." He had a brain tumor he was having removed the next week. It was kind of a "divine appointment" kind of thing.

Voice: We taught an Easter musical last January, they brought their choir members to the event, and we actually taught the musical in the hour and a half session, then they could take that back to their churches and finish it up for their churches. That met a need. And we had a music reading class and a worship resources class for leaders. Our state has been doing an Epic Conference for a few years (Equipping People in Church) that's kind of a convention-wide event that pretty much comes out of our team area, but it covers all the areas.

Voice: On a Saturday morning.

Voice: Six of those, seven, but they do it around the state with several associations going together to support it. That really met a need. We had music classes in those, but they also had Sunday School, Discipleship Training classes in that, but one interesting thing is that we've reached outside Baptists by buying mailing lists for all the churches in a fifty mile radius.

Voice: Jim has been teaching a class on beginning use of doing a multi-venue technology, some software kinds of things, because even the small churches are using the technology, and yet they don't always know about all the resources. Jim's a "techno man."

Voice: Jim, with your EPIC conferences, how did you break outside the walls of Baptist convention, did you have to get your exec to put the stamp on it, did you have to go to the mission board?

Jim Gill: We just did it. Our team director, that was his concept. Roger Orman. We actually borrowed that from one of our associations, but they decided not to do it any more, so we actually bought the name and everything and spread it around the state. You can buy the manuals.

Voice: No pushback, no fallout?

Jim Gill: No.

Paul Clark: What are you doing on the contemporary side in the worship wars? Training?

Voice: As a part of our big event, we usually offer praise band training as a part of that, and also had a praise team training workshop that was very well attended. We used one of our strong teams within the state -- not one of our Baptist teams, by the way, but from the Horizon Church -- they were the teachers of that thing. They had classes for keyboards, drummers, bass players, leaders, then had general sessions.

Paul Clark: Did they presume music literacy...

Voice: We had more adult team members there than we did youth members.

Voice: We do some of those too. Praise team, worship team training.

Voice: Bivocational is hard to reach because they are afraid they will be embarrassed by what they don't know. Large churches are hard to reach because, frankly, they have more money in their budgets than I do, and they go wherever they want for their training.

The emerging churches and those with praise teams are just another world. Most of the guys there aren't musically trained, they came out of rock bands, and they just kind of do their own thing. There is no standard. You go from church to church, and the big thing is to write your own songs, and it becomes your church's song. So they don't need us for that kind of training, they do for worship, but they usually don't come for that.

Paul Clark: I'm running into that, in fact I'm right in the middle of it with a group, what they see the need for is the worship training, especially for youth bands, and they are wanting to bring some depth. I applaud that, but to get them there, you've got to give them some kind of music training, and then to do that, you've got this division between those that have some understanding of music.

Voice: You mentioned, Jim, the problem of youth. They'll do things in connection with the youth ministry offices, like missions and Sunday School. If they are are there for those things, they'll come to a section that's strictly for youth music or praise team portion of a youth ministry conference. That seems to work.

Paul Baloche has three DVDs out, and they are excellent, and they zero in on what those guys are interested in. He does a super job. What I try to address is musicality in addition to the worship concept. Their whole idea is that "we're out there on the cutting edge, and our instrumentation is different from what is done in the traditional church," but I tell them, yes, but your instrumentation has become standardized now. Paul, in your conference, I asked them what their instrumentation is, and every one of them is the same. They've become a cliché. I try to help them understand, "this is how you make it musical, more presentable, add color."

Voice: Last year we added a sound tech portion to our praise band weekend, and it just exploded. We knew that there were so many people who thought they knew what they were doing, but they don't have a clue. We let the Shure company guy set up a system with in-ear monitors and all this stuff, and then we gave him a session with everybody, and he talked about mic technique, different kinds of ways that technology can help you, and we dealt with performer approach as well.

Ray Burdeshaw: I'm doing that in Alabama. I go to churches and do a consult on installation or training sessions. I'm doing probably two a week now. I don't go and sell them anything, I just go and tell them what they need, help them to find where to get it. It's mainly small churches.

Voice: All size churches need it, and the small churches that have the vision are going to go places, too.

Voice: I was at a conference where a sound company brought in about thirty sound boards and had hands-on training. It was super. I learned what all those buttons are for.

...

Voice: One of the issues that we've had to deal with -- and it happened at our youth music arts camp two years ago -- we have a youth ministries team that has a youth ministry week at our conference center, and they put together a band to do all their music, and we were encouraged to use them as our praise team leaders for our camp, and we did. The issue was that the volume was so loud, the decibel levels were unbelievable, and we had to fight with this all week. The older I get, the more hearing problems I have, but this was not just loud, we're talking -- we had kids leaving the room.

Paul Clark: Don't you think that the longer this style has been in fashion, that the decibel level has come up, and we run in to this at the convention, and of course, they are used to Sunday by Sunday running close to 98-plus decibels, and they are running --

Voice: Over 80 is injurious.

Voice: I got in trouble at one of our state meetings. I went and bought a meter to check it, and they were running over 120 decibels, and I got fussed at for checking it and they said, "disrupting it." I brought it to the sound man and said, this is what you're playing, and he said, "That's what they asked me for."

Voice: I've had several ear doctors tell me they are treating more and more young people now with problems, especially with these I-Pods. It's critical. We're going to have a whole generation of deaf people.

Voice: But I think that the awareness needs to be raised, especially with the churches that use praise bands, we need to be writing articles about it, because these kids don't realize the damage being caused.

Tommy Keown: One thing that would help me is if you guys in the states, as an event coordinator at LifeWay, I responsible for a lot of national events, it is very difficult to find musicians that are a happy blend between the praise bands and the traditional musicians. If you know of people that would be good for primarily adult events, please let me know. If you have a music ministry in your church, in your convention, that you feel would be a good leader or team for an event, I would welcome those names.

Voice: Have you used the Annie Moses Band?

Tommy: Yes. For our national events, we're all needing musicians. Week long, weekends, there's a variety.

...

Voice: One of the things I came across in a meeting, and I don't know if you see this in your churches, but because of Vacation Bible School music, we've made a tremendous turn. I have a church where I was talking about children's choirs. They said, "We don't have a children's choir, we have a children's praise team." And I said, "What do you say for marriage?" And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "If you've got children's praise teams, I said, I really feel like the children's musical really killed the youth choir musical because they've already done that for four years. You're just pushing this further down the line. What's next, preschool praise team?" Seems to be a trend.

...

Voice: We have had a movement in the children's area. We have Centrifuge for kids, and we have Student Life for kids, and Passport for kids, and it's really affected our attendance at our children's music weeks. Student Life is having four children's camps every summer at our conference center, and the decibels, there's no telling what it is. They stand on the pews and the chairs, and it's really affected our attendance, but we are down to one week of older children's music week, but we are having 400-600 kids, where we were up around a thousand.

Voice: Well, we went from two youth music weeks to one older children's week and one youth week, two older children's week, to two children's weeks, now we're down to one children's music week.

Paul Clark: Well, maybe if you wait long enough. [laughter] Seriously, just like this little weekend youth choir we did when we lost our youth camp, we went, "Wow," it's just an old model.

Voice: Well, the youth choir beach retreat is reaching 200 kids. Our school system changes spring break every year, so that's hurt us. I think more people are willing to come to a weekend event than a full week.

Tommy Keown: All of our LifeWay events, we're finding that the week-long events are dying. People won't give you a whole week. Our college events are shrinking, because you've got all these para-church organizations doing events. I don't know where they get the money, but they are drawing them in with big names. It's a real problem for us.

Paul Clark: I think it's important to try to find how God is at work in "two girls singing at a funeral" and that sort of thing, and realizing that at this time, God may be raising up leaders in a different way.

Voice: We need to impress upon churches that they need to help "call out the called." We're having fewer and fewer music ministers, and fewer in the seminaries.

Voice: I would like to plug this conference. This conference is a combination of the local church and the denominational leaders and the educators, and I applaud the fact that through the budget we have that scholarship money, and I wish that more money would be used for scholarships. Maybe if it were made known that we were doing this. If every one of us would go home and try to get five people to come -- look at our membership list, and try to get them to come to Orlando.

Jere Adams: One of the things that I've tried to do this year is cultivate the younger ones that are here, and I told them to send me an e-mail about what they got out of the conference and what they want to see next year.

Voice: And we have so few here in their thirties, late twenties.

Jere Adams: If each one of us here could bring just one young adult or college student next year --

Voice: I think that is the whisper of conversation that is happening outside these four walls, those boomer echoes, Gen-X, Millenials, those groups of people don't just buy in to anything cultural, whether it's the local church, a denomination, a brand, anything. Jim, I think it's hugely significant that you guys were able to break out of the denominational walls for an event. If we want to engage them, it's got to be God's economy, because they are real, unique, different, but they have great value, but it's a different conversation that we don't know how to have. Worship wars is just a symbol of conversation, but it's important to have it. It's going to take a great level of maturity to listen with two ears and speak with one. That will engage those younger people in the conversation.

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The meeting closed with election of denominational representatives.