Worship Ministry: A Course In Overcomplication

Hey you, worship pastor guy! I have some questions for you. For all of us in ministry, actually. Has worship ministry gotten too complicated? Have we been working so hard to make it easier that we've inadvertently done the opposite? Do we need the BPM of every song to be robotically the same from start to finish? Those are just a few to whet your appetite. Keep reading for a thoughtful if not somewhat cynical examination of worship ministry in the modern era.

What We Bring

What's Your Platform?

I believe in honesty.  I believe we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, should be open about our struggles, our fears, our doubts...about things that trouble us.  We're all in this life - this Faith - together, and we in the universal Church of Christ are our own support system.  So, I'm just going to share some thoughts and emotions that got shaken loose over the past couple days, in hopes that you all can take something I'm tossing out there and learn or grow from it.

What is Worship Anyway? - Part Two

A not-so-brief introduction to part two...

What do you think of when you hear, or read, the word worship?

Go ahead and think about it, but not for too long! I want to know the first thing you think of. Well, I want you to know the first thing you think of.

Got it? Okay, now write it down, or type it into the comments, or tweet it at me, scrawl it on your palm with a Sharpie... whatever. It'll be useful later.

Worship Tips Part Three: 5 Ways to Show Your Team That They Are Valued

This article originally appeared on worshipleader.com's online section, but as it turns out they don't have unlimited space to store archived articles, and they publish them pretty frequently, so I figured I'd put it up here as the third entry in my recently renamed Worship Tips series (Part One, Part Two). But hey, if they liked it enough to put it on their website for a brief moment in time, then you might want to just set aside five or seven minutes to read this bad boy! I have altered it ever so slightly to match my current style better, but when I say "ever" I mean it!

Worship Tips Part Two: Three Not-So-Simple Steps to Authentic Worship

Worship leaders walk a precarious line as the modern-day facilitators of sung worship.

Worship Tips Part One: 4 Worship Leading Questions the Bible Doesn't Answer

In my experience every well-meaning worship leader comes across questions about worship ministry from time to time which he or she finds difficult to answer from Scripture.

Very often, especially when Google is employed, we are able to find what are advertised as biblical answers to these questions, and almost just as often those answers are nothing more than the closely-held opinions of someone who is great at rhetoric, and maybe not as great at discerning between moral issues and matters of taste. Following is a sampling of these questions and what I believe to be more balanced answers for them.

1) What clothes should I wear?

The One Lesson Every Worship Leader Must Learn

Lists are a popular medium now for communicating information, so I have composed this comprehensive list of all one thing every worship leader must learn. 

Not that there aren’t other helpful, practical, or theological bits of information we could stand to learn, but this is the one lesson...

P&W

As a worship leader, I have come to separate all church music into two very broad categories. Understanding that there are many subcategories, I am confident that every song we use in church will fall somewhere in the spectrum beneath one of these two categories. 

My purpose for writing this is to bring to attention an issue which I have run across various times in my decade or so leading worship through music, and an issue which I have confirmed to be present for others in my field. So, I'll quickly share these two categories, and then talk a little about the issue I mentioned.

Before I reveal them, please understand that I am not speaking theologically with these categories. They have nothing to do with lyric content, but rather the overall feel and tempo of the song. So, with that in mind, here they are:

Cross Songs and Tomb Songs

What do I mean by Cross Songs and Tomb Songs. It's really simple. It's just a fresh way of saying praise and worship. But since the term "praise & worship" has been used for so long in conjunction with church music in general the two separate words have become fused and are used together to describe all music used in church, regardless of tempo or theme.

So, I chose these two category titles based on the fact that there are two major points in Christ's primary ministry to us, and those are the crucifixion and the empty tomb. The Crucifixion is the quintessential sad moment, while the empty tomb is possibly the happiest moment in history. The Cross Songs are those which are more mid to down-tempo, reflective, somber, worshipful. The Tomb Songs are those which tend to be more up-tempo, celebratory  praise songs. All church music can be placed under one of these categories. Sure, there are songs which seem to be near the middle, but all of them can fit into one of these two groups.

A few examples might be, Heart of Worship - Cross Song, Forever - Tomb Song, Mighty to Save - Cross Song, Everlasting God - Tomb Song.

Now that I have explained the categories, here is the issue I run into. I think we can all agree that both of these categories are equally important. Without the cross the empty tomb would have just been any empty tomb, never having been occupied. Without the empty tomb then the story of Christ ends on a cruel Roman cross. In the same way, the Church of Christ needs both types of songs. We need to praise, and we need to worship. We need to celebrate but we also need to reflect. Many worship leaders run into an issue where the pastor only wants Tomb Songs. They just want the church happy, happy, happy, singing loud, clapping hands, smiling wide. And to them those Cross Songs are something they see as a necessary but unsavory condition to appease worship leaders who tend towards the mid or down-tempo songs. Of course, it goes both ways, but most gifted and experienced worship leaders understand that, while they may not prefer one category, both are necessary, because... well, that's our job.

We need to learn to communicate with our pastors these truths, and we need to be patient and loving in the process. And that goes for every area in which we might differ from the pastor, like maybe when that super reflective, somber, serious song ends and you purposefully leave some silence for reflection, and suddenly, within a nano-second, there's a pastor on a microphone with his ever cheery tone moving the service along. That's who they are, and it's every bit as appropriate as the way we are. It's just poorly timed, sometimes...

There is a great need for loving dialogue between worship leaders and their pastors and I am the first person I know who needs to take this advice to heart! What are your thoughts on the issue?

A Few Thoughts On Worship - Part Two

In the first post, I quoted A.W. Tozer as an intro into asking the question, "as worship leaders and worship team members, what are we striving for?" I'll include the original quote here for your convenience.

"Worship is no longer worship when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us."

What I'm getting at here is pretty simple. I have a suspicion that some of us, some of the time, are trying harder to be relevant, to impress humans, than we are to impress God and to point people towards Him. I don't know if Tozer had any problems with the sung worship sounding modern - I don't believe he did - but I assure you I take no issue with that. In fact, I believe that our worship music, in most congregations, needs to sound current (that's a subject for a different post). So, what am I saying then? Well, I'm trying not to say anything. In the tradition of the leaders of the leaderless Emergent Movement (which I do not endorse) I am rather asking the question, again, what are we striving for?

In order to more effectively ask this question I have devised a series of other questions. There's no scorecard or anything, but you'll be able to see where I am going with this as you answer these questions.

Remember, this quiz is concerning your ministry as a worship leader, not your spiritual life in general. I'll start by telling you I didn't do too well... Also, some answers are purely for comedic value.

1) Do you spend more time
a. Praying and studying the Word to align yourself with the Spirit before choosing a set.
b. Searching the CCLI Top 100 in order to stay "now."
c. Working on transitions and artful musical interludes to engineer an emotional response.
b. Choosing an outfit, squeezing into your skinny jeans, and styling your hair to look un-styled.

2) When building a band, what is most important in the musicians/singers? What's least important? 
a. Musical skill
b. Spiritual discipline
c. Stage presence
d. Wardrobe
e. Hair (of course this includes beards!)

3) What percentage of the time during your personal practice and band rehearsal do you spend working on your:
Ad-libbing skills?
Dramatic facial expressions?
Dynamic stances?
Just standing and looking natural in skinny jeans?

4) How often do you do any of the following? 
weekly, monthly, every few months, yearly, almost never, never
a. Thoughtfully and prayerfully choose a set based on the pastor's sermon theme or Scripture
b. Thoughtfully and prayerfully choose a set, but not in relation to the sermon theme or Scripture
c. Choose a set arbitrarily, but being mindful of keys and frequency of new songs
d. Choose a set arbitrarily, not being mindful of keys and frequency of new songs
e. Just straight up copying a set from a past service
f. Rewrite a secular song to be used in your set
d. Cram a secular song into the service somewhere, regardless of lyric content, you know, as a hook for those people that will only get saved if the band at church is cool enough to play a Bruno Mars song right in the middle of the service

5) Why did you get into worship ministry?
a. A leader at church recognized the call of God on your life and/or musical talent, and the rest is history.
b. You learned to play/sing in order to be used of God in worship ministry in response to what you believe is the leading of the Spirit.
c. You just KNEW that you could do a better job than that other guy!
d. You are aiming for KLOVE and you know that the easiest route is on the stage Sunday morning.
e. You want to break into the mainstream music industry but don't want to compromise your morals and play in those icky bars, and coffeehouses just don't have enough space for the kind of audience you want, so you are using the worship ministry to get to KLOVE, and then from there of course you'll do an article in a trendy music magazine about how you don't believe in music that's Christian or secular, because all music can contain spiritual truth, or some crap like that
f. other (please use back of blog to write in your answer)

I hope you had fun with the quiz, but more importantly I really do desire to get us all thinking about some of these little nuances of worship ministry. Are we enjoying our extremely-minimal-local-celebrity-Christian-rock-star status just a little too much at times? If so, there's the strong possibility that we may be compromising in some area or another in order to "reflect the culture around us" while possibly neglecting to ask ourselves if Christ in us is shining out as brightly as possible.

I covet your feedback, and of course those "follow" and  "share" clicks :)
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