Free Music Resources for This Challenging Season

Churches have been or are headed back to an online-only format. And if not, even keeping a hybrid model up and running on Sundays is challenging with limited volunteers. This is where Reawaken Hymns can help, and it will cost you nothing or next to nothing.

Before continuing, please know that SaltyBeliever.com is receiving no monetary reward for promoting Reawaken Hymns. I (Bryan Catherman) hope that small and struggling churches will continue proclaiming the gospel through the preached Word and song and maybe Reawaken Hymns can help.

COVID has certainly made ministry challenging. But before COVID, churches without a musician or worship leader were using Reawaken Hymns lyric videos to lead the church into congregational musical worship. Musicians were using Reawaken Hymns to help arrange hymns for the guitar. And many other resources were helping small and large church. This help was nearly or totally free. But there's even more help available in this season of COVID. (More on that below.)

Here's more from Nathan Drake about Reawaken Hymns:

How can Reawaken Hymns help churches through COVID-caused challenges? Here are a few ideas:

Guitar chord charts. Hymns arranged to simple chord charts for the guitar allow the worship leader to lead worship even if they are away from that big grand piano or there's no worship ream.

Lyric videos. Lyric videos have the music and the lyrics playing from a single video. No worship leader or tech person to change the slides, no problem. If you can hit play, you can use these videos. They are inexpensive, and if you buy them, you have the right not only to use them for your in-person worship service, you can live-stream the ones in the public domain (which is nearly every song on Reawaken Hymns.) If you have a CCLI license with the streaming ad-on, you can stream everything Reawaken Hymns offers. (Here’s a YouTube sample.)

Simple Tutorials. Nathan Drake offers online lessons to help worship leaders play hymns on a guitar. Learn chords, gear, how to incorporate a band, how to modernize classic hymns, and more. He even teaches some hymns that only require three chords.

Legally streamable music. Music rights can be complicated, but with this resources you can legally stream pre-recorded Reawaken Hymns songs. For example, Redeeming Life Church plays songs recorded and performed by Nathan Drake in the lobby and sanctuary before the service begins. Their live-stream starts about 5 minutes before the service begins. They don't have the right to play other artists' recorded worship music on YouTube, and neither does any other church. However, by purchasing the rights from Nathan Drake, often for less than $1 per song, they can play Drake's pre-recorded hymns on the live-stream too.

Pre-recorded worship sets. During COVID, Reawaken Hymns has offered entire pre-recorded worship sets. If you are leading something from home, these could be really helpful as you put something together for your congregation. He has also provided sets for the Christmas season.

We recorded two podcasts that are scheduled to release in a couple weeks; however, they might prove extra helpful right now. Here’s a sneak peak:

Episode 1: Nathan Drake on Reawaken Hymns

Episode 2: “The Soul Felt Its Worth

Please visit Reawaken Hymns to learn more.