So, you want to start a singing ministry. Here are a few tips to bear in mind.
The first thing is to choose which type of singing bands ministry you wish to start. These could include:
- Serving retirement home(s)
- Visiting shut-ins
- Doing a prison ministry
- Ministering in a hospital
Organize Your Team
Before making any commitments, make sure that you have the right team. These could include:
- A leader
- A regular musician such as a guitarist.
- Someone who's good at interacting with who you are serving. Someone with great people skills, a spiritual person, and who enjoys praying with people.
- Enough committed supporters including enough with good voices who can give your group a full voice.
Also, make sure that you have trained Leads who can help lead the group(s).
Organize Your Materials
A major purpose of this website is to provide your group with song booklet and guitar chord notebooks. By downloading and printing out those files and organizing an "official" Singing-Bands-In-A-Box, you can hit the ground running.
Get Permissions
The first two ministries can fairly easily started. First, get permission from any relevant church leaders. For retirement homes, call and/or visit the centers and seek permission typically from the Activities Coordinator. For shut-ins (typically old church members), your church can help you identify who needs visits and then you'll want to schedule the visits with those being visited.
For prison and hospital ministries, it may be best to get your group going regularly with retirement homes so as to know that you have a solid group and also know how each of your team members interacts with people.
For prison ministries, it's best to work with existing prison ministries. For hospitals, it may take some time for the Chaplain's Office to work with their administration to arrange the policies for singing bands to minister within the hospital. It may be that you can be allowed to start by singing in the lobby and family waiting areas. But if the Chaplain's Office were put in contact with those Chaplain's Offices of hospitals which allow singing bands to minister directly with patients in their hospital rooms, then this may be what is necessary to help you hospital understand how this can be done according to appropriate policies.
And Finally
Make your ministry a matter of prayer. You are continuing the healing ministry that Christ did here on Earth and are serving in His name. You want his Spirit to be the true leader of your singing bands ministry.
