Until now, whenever Awaken/C3SD has needed a choir for an event, we have gathered members from our worship team to form a temporary, project-based choir. The new Awaken Choir model is a San Diego-based,  year-round ministry that gathers and rehearses throughout the year, raising the level of ownership and excellence of our choir team to unprecedented levels at Awaken Church.

Choir Opportunities

  • Church-level Events (Conferences, Night of Christmas, Awaken Music events, etc)

  • Campus-level Events (Easter, Worship Nights, etc)

  • Awaken Music album recordings

Team Structure

Awaken Choir will ultimately fall under the Worship umbrella but will be considered a separate team in DNA and our recruitment strategies. While the team will start out rehearsing in two areas for driving convenience (likely Bressi and Balboa), for at least the first year, it will be considered one church-level team instead of regional or campus-level teams. This approach will allow us to develop a unified culture across our church’s choir team.

Recruitment Strategies

Ultimately, when considering an “Ideal Team Member” in relation to our Worship team members, there are three models we considered:

Until now, other than Night of Christmas, we have defaulted to the Exclusive model due to convenience and proximity. By operating in the Venn Diagram model, we allow our current worship team members who would like to serve be able to while opening up a new creative opportunity for those who have musical gifting. We will be looking to recruit via DNA, a church-wide email, social media campaigns, potentially a spot in the Preview and sending a message to our Worship and Theater teams.

While Hillsong uses their choir team as a stepping stone to get on the worship team (six month minimum), our choir culture will be more like Elevation’s where the teams are separate but equally as important and an honor and privilege to be a part of. If someone is on the choir team, it’s because that’s their ministry, not because they’re hoping to use that as a launch point to something “better”.

Auditions

We’re looking for slightly different skillsets in our choir members than we would for a small ensemble like the FLVs we have serve in our worship services. The auditions we hold for choir will reflect that. Instead of having prospective vocalists sing by themselves, we will see how they blend with a team of four or five auditioners. There are three levels of harmony abilities:

  1. Only able to sing melody

  2. Able to sing a harmony if it’s given to them (and not get swayed by melody or other parts)

  3. Able to pick out harmonies on their own

While our FLVs should be at least at a level 2 (with level 3 as desirable), it would be desirable for our prospective team members to be at a level 2, but it’s not a barrier of entry. A large amount of choir will be singing melody.

Timeline

Our current goal is to start rehearsals for our choir team in mid-September with a focus on Night of Christmas.

Team Leaders

Choir Director: TBD
Northern Choir Director: TBD
Southern Choir Director: TBD

There is a small team with representation from every region (Elda McGinty, Casie Martinez, Dr Lisa Dunne, Sarah Dessert) that Worship HQ has been collaborating with to create this team. Some of these are being considered for leadership positions, but nothing is set in stone yet.