Last week marks five years that Grace Music has been providing free online resources for local church music ministry.
In the past year, nearly 50,000 lead sheets, orchestrations, and other resources have been downloaded from the site. It’s been encouraging to hear from churches who are benefiting from the congregational arrangements and educational tools to strengthen their music ministries.
A reflection
Grace Music isn’t the only site that provides resources for church musicians, and it’s certainly not the most polished or extensive. But the universality of the internet represents a great opportunity for sharing resources with fellow believers around the world, and I believe it will help shape the future of music ministry. The ministry of corporate praise will always be best served by resources created for the needs of the local church.
There are a few “performance” resources on the site (instrumental music and choral anthems). But the majority of the material available is intended to foster and support vibrant congregational singing. This intentional emphasis is borne of theological conviction: whatever musical and stylistic diversity a local church might enjoy in its music, the people must sing.
What’s ahead
Since its inception, Grace Music has always grown out of the needs of local-church music ministry. It’s a self-imposed limitation that has been helpful, and while that policy will continue for me personally, Grace Music will be expanding through collaboration with a handful of other like-minded musicians.
Here are a couple things to expect:
- The number of resources on the site is getting ready to grow pretty quickly in the next few months.
- But in an effort to spare your inbox (yay email!), we’ll be reducing the frequency of posts. Expect less-frequent emails with longer lists of new resources.
- Some of the e-commerce will unfortunately need to be phased out. We’ll be consolidating all the copyrighted resources into one bundled product that will be available on the Grace Music store for a minimal cost.
- The majority of the resources on the site will continue to be free. The only things we charge for are those resources for which we are required to pay a licensing fee.
[blockquote author=”Psalm 115:1″ link=”” target=”_blank”]Not to us, O Lord; not to us, but to Your name be glory… [/blockquote]