SAWM: The Hallelujah Chorus series has been one the main tools developed by The Salvation Army to achieve blended worship.  How/why did the series come about?

PT: Many years ago I attended a conference at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL.  At that time, Willow had thousands in attendance at their weekly services while our attendance at Norridge was around 200.  The curious thing for me was that Willow Creek started just two miles from Norridge.  What were they doing that we weren't?  Why were they experiencing such dramatic growth?  That conference introduced me to a whole new way of doing Sunday worship.  Their praise band merged with the studio orchestra.  I witnessed great drama and impactful media.  Their equivalent to our salvation meeting was on Sunday morning, ours was on Sunday night and was dying.  Their equivalent to our holiness meeting was on Wednesday night, ours was Sunday morning.  I came home thinking it was time to really look at what we were doing in worship and to incorporate some of the things I experienced.  

If a praise band could merge with strings, why couldn't they merge with brass?  Maybe it was time to introduce drama and media into our services.  There were just all sorts of questions.  So, I began working on merging the praise band with brass.  The problem was, we didn't have a praise band.  I contacted Chris Jaudes, who I thought might know someone who could help me.  He connected me with a guy named Bill Ancira who was the music director of a church of 9,000 members in St. Louis.  I went to St. Louis and met with Bill and he agreed to do 5 arrangements for his praise band and my corps band merged together.  Two arrangements would feature Chris.  We set up a recording weekend and his band came up to Chicago to record.  The end product was a CD called Trumpet of Jesus.  The problem with the arrangements was that they were very difficult, mostly in 5-7 sharps and I wanted to provide the arrangements to other corps bands.  It turned out they were just too difficult for most army groups.  

So the idea continued to evolve.  I contacted Bill Broughton and asked him if he would arrange 20 choruses from our SA songbook and that the arrangements needed to merge the praise band with the brass band.  At that time,there were no band arrangements for the chorus section of the songbook.  I wanted 4-5 part brass, piano, guitars, and trap set.  Each tune needed to be simple but the arrangement would develop rather than just repeat each verse like our hymn tune book.  He agreed and we produced the first Hallelujah Choruses recording.  I realized that these arrangements would be very useful to other groups so our department decided to publish them.  The rest is history.    

SAWM: How do you think it is used most effectively?

PT: The purpose of the series was to merge rhythm instruments with the brass band.  I have always said it's great to hear a brass arrangement of the chorus Shout to the Lord.  It's also great to hear the same song sung by a praise band, but when you merge the two, something very special happens.  The series can be effective however it is used but the intent was to add keyboard and guitars to the band.  When the series was created, at that time praise bands were starting to emerge in many corps.  Soon, many places around the world were experiencing 'worship wars' between the band and the praise band.  I have always believed there is a place for both independent of one another but there is also a wonderful opportunity to merge together and create great worship.  

SAWM: How are songs selected for the series?

PT: Every fall, the members of our department get together and discuss which songs or choruses should be chosen.  During the year, if we hear songs that might work, we save them and then review them together.  We also have quite a few people who send us songs for consideration.  

We try to include a few traditional hymns for each series of ten tunes.  We also try to include some seasonal tunes whenever possible.  If there are any new songs, especially written by Salvationists, we try to include those as well.  

How has it changed since the beginning with almost 300 published HC arrangements?

The early Broughton arrangements were much simpler than the present day arrangements.   The first 20 arrangements were mostly choruses.  Along the way, we decided to include some fresh arrangements of hymns.  These have proven very popular.