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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A New Song: To Sing or Not To Sing?

How many is too many? How few is too few? How frequent or infrequent is too far in one direction? These are questions worship leaders ask themselves (hopefully) when planning the how-many-and-how-often of new song integration. These are the questions I want to tackle in this post, and I hope you, gracious reader, will offer your input as well, since apparently I don't have all of the answers (according to my wife).

I've heard advice on both ends of the spectrum and several points in between as to how often new songs should be introduced. My guess is that, as in most situations, the right answer is probably someplace between the two extremes. In fact, there are likely going to be as many right answers as there are different worship communities, but my goal is to strike a balance that will speak to the majority of our congregations.

To start the conversation, my personal experience has been pretty steady across the several denominations I have served within. Introducing 1 new song in a set of 5-6 songs every week, repeating it the following week, and then skipping a week and doing it a third time has worked pretty well in familiarizing the congregation with new songs.

This way, out of each week's set there is always a brand new song, a second time song and a third time song, plus 2-3 familiar songs. As an example, let's say I introduced One Thing Remains three weeks ago, and two weeks ago I introduced Oh Our Lord, then last week I introduced Revelation Song. This Sunday I am introducing Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), and it's a six-song set, so the set looks like this:

Revelation Song                           2nd time
Hosanna (Praise is Rising)            familiar
One Thing Remains                      3rd time
10,000 Reasons                           familiar
Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)      1st time
To the Ends of the Earth               familiar

The set opens with a simple song of adoration we've sung once already, and it's one churches seem to pick up pretty quick, then right into a known celebratory song. The third song is one we've sung twice already and rolls right into a familiar worship anthem. The brand new song comes out of the silence following 10,000 Reasons and flows naturally into a known song of responsive action. Most congregations, in my experience, would do very well with this setup.

Just looking at the above illustration it's easy to see that, when the set is arranged properly, a brand new song every week is not completely out of the question. To be sure, I don't religiously stick to this plan, and will often go a week or more without introducing a new song or without repeating a new song because, either the congregation wasn't particularly responsive to it, or else it just didn't fit with the theme. But I do try to follow this plan whenever I can.

Now, I really hope to get some feedback here, but just so everyone knows where I'm coming from, I have a few reasons for favoring the above outline for introducing new songs when many of my peers are doing it at half or a third of my rate.

1) The first reason is an obvious one, the Lord exhorts us to "sing a new song," and He does it more than once (see Psalm 33:3, 96:1. 149:1, and Isaiah 42:10).

2) Second, the example of godly people (and beings) in the Bible. David - Psalm 40:3. 144:9. The Elders and the Four Living Creatures in the throne room - Revelation 5:9. The 144,000 Witnesses before the Lamb - Revelation 14:3.

3) The third is that, with the ridiculous amount of amazing songs being crafted and supplied by the world's best worship songwriters, there's no reason not to obey God's exhortation to sing a new song on a weekly basis. I have seen more amazing songs never be used than I have seen actually get some play. This grieves my spirit! So, I have a desire to get as many of these great songs to my faith community as I can without overwhelming them.

4) Lastly, I just LOVE learning and leading new songs. As my worship leader friends can attest to, leading new songs can be incredibly refreshing, like a cool breeze on a hot Summer day. After playing Mighty to Save for the eleventy-millionth time it's great to bring in a similarly themed song that we've not used corporately, like say Jesus, Thank You, by Sovereign Grace Music. It tells the same story but does it with a fresh melody and different wording, and that feels darn good.

Now, as well as my system seems to work, and as many good reasons I have for using it, there remains opposition. This generally comes from well-meaning pastors who just want more than anything for their flock to sing! Let me tell you, I can sympathize. My ONE aim is to gather more worshipers around the throne. More worshipers equals more glory, honor, and praise being heaped at the feet of the One who deserves it all, and that's exactly my aim. It needs to be said also that it's always the right thing to submit to those in authority over you in ministry if there is unresolved conflict, so I happily use a different system whenever it is unsatisfactory to a pastor or supervisor. 

That said, I don't think we're giving our fellow humans enough credit. For instance, think about when you hear a new song on the radio. Generally, it doesn't take more than a listen or two before you're at least humming along, if not picking up the words pretty well. Now, in church we have words on the screen, we have worship leaders often leading out before a verse or chorus so that the body has a verbal queue as to where we're headed in the song, and we generally have plenty of repetition. If you are picking songs that speak to your people and/or are musically catchy then you should have no problem helping them to sing a new sing to the Lord on a weekly basis.

So that's my take on it. As confident as I am about my stance I am sure there are those of you who believe differently and have some good reasons, I would love to hear from you. What outline, if any, do you use, and why?

Worship Set: Numero Uno

I have been thinking about it and I would like to start blogging about my worship sets as well as just posting lengthy, opinionated ramblings. So, I'll start with this here blog!

Last Sunday I used a few Christmas songs, combined with a couple of modern worship songs, for the Sunday morning setlist. The set was as follows:

1) Lord, Let Your Glory Fall by Matt Redman - I used the "Calvary Chapel" arrangement with the cool Collective Soul World I Know chords that are so popular nowadays. Eb (D, capo 1)
2) Angels We Have Heard On High - transitioned into this song using the same chords as above, played over "Glo-o-o-o-ria, in excelsis deo," then into the standard D progression. We did 3 verses; "Angels we have...", "Shepherds, why...", and "Come to Bethlehem...". Eb (D capo 1)
3) O Come All Ye Faithful - we used three verses; "O come all...", "Sing choirs...", and "Yea, Lord..." Ab (G, capo 1)
4) O Come O Come Emmanuel - we transitioned into this song by ending on the Em7 chord rather than the G chord. I wrote a really pretty Em7 riff a few years ago for this that is played as the intro and outro and at the end of every chorus, which we used as the transition from the previous song. It worked really well. Fm7 (Em, capo 1)
5) Your Love Never Fails by Jesus Culture - ended previous song on the Em7 riff and then right into a muted downstrum in the tempo for this song, using the verse chords muted and then building into the bridge chords with non-muted strums. At the end of this song we tagged Matt Redman's modified chorus for O Come All Ye Faithful, which is just different words sung to the same tune as the original chorus. Google it :)

The last song was the most energetic song in the set, and was fitting as the previous songs dealt with the Advent, the coming of Christ as a child, and for the most part had a slower, more contemplative feel. The set actually had a pretty cool thematic flow. Starting with a request for God to send His glory, with lots of pre-Christ, Old Testament references, then singing about the manifest, incarnate glory of God coming as a man, then ending with a song about the love of the Son for His redeemed, which is the very reason He came. Overall it was probably the best Christmas set I have ever done, which isn't hard really, since most of the time I have just thrown together carols and hoped for the best.