Man everything you have said just makes perfect sense. The problem is i am just the lowly keyboard player and have almost no input. We have not even had time to absorb the songs before we are given a new song to learn. So what happens is we patch together something and then move on. It really is not helping us IMO. Plus frankly i am tired of learning a new difficult song every week.
Man, I feel u on that. When I first started learning, the church came to me with all kinds of songs they wanted me to learn. I just had to put my foot down and say "Look, I'm not able to play that at this time, yall need to chill." It would be a different story if the tables were turned and people were looking at them to play all these songs.
Non-musicians need to step in our shoes for a while and see what we go through, especially beginners & others who don't feel they are at a good level yet.