I have been playing Jazz trumpet for the last 4 or 5 years now and enjoy presenting the music in various venues. I have played in nursing homes, assisted living places, dinner meetings, and weddings. What started out as a casual interest has become a large part of my life and time. This past year or so I have added a new twist and started playing at churches as an "outreach" to the community. I started with my own church and had terrific success in drawing people from our community and provided a venue for good music that non-church, as well as church people can enjoy in positive environment.
How we do this is to set up the basement (fellowship hall) as a "jazz club" without the typical things you might find in such establishments such as booze and tobacco. Most church people don't go to places like that and have missed out on a tremendous experience of hearing good live music - in this case Jazz. I do this purely for the love of it and don't ask for money. I am targeting small churches in my denomination (at first) to help them provide an venue for people from the area to come to a place where there is excellent live music, friendly people, and FREE everything. My thinking is that the "church" is associated with wanting money all the time. So to counter that we serve coffee and light refreshments for free, as well as no charge for the music.
One observation is that when people come into this type of environment, there is a tendency to talk and enjoy the company of other during the musical performance. At first this bothered my, however, that's what you do at a Jazz club! The music is sort of a backdrop to the social gathering that takes place.
Last evening I presented a Jazz program at a local church that had never done anything like this...ever. It was a truly exciting event and of the 60 or so people that attended, more than half were NOT from that church! The idea is that the pastor and church people have an opportunity to sit down and just get to know people and develop relationships that will open the the door for further contact. It is not meant to be an "evangelistic meeting"... it is prequel to possible further contact. The idea is to open doors of familiarity, so that the non-church people who come to an event like this might just be more inclined to make further contact when they are in need, or are just curious about the fine people who provide a fine music event and don't ask for money!
Last night's event was particularly gratifying, not just for the good reception, but for the fact that all our objectives were met, and people left having a good opinion about this church and people.
