As proof of the content of this post, I must add a disclaimer to this before I even get started. This post in no way, shape or form is a testament to Our Rising Sound worship band at Life Connection Church. Our Rising Sound is an amazing group of talented musicians and wonderful servants and this post is not a testimony of experience with this band in particular but a collective observation on life experience in the church and specifically worship bands.

A worship leader always has to be aware and sensitive to the feelings of members of the worship team. There is an emotional connection to this area of service that is quite unique, and much of the time unhealthy, in the body. If you ask those who are cleaning the building to make sure and vacuum the kids room better cause the kids are really messy, I don’t think they’d get offended and leave the church over it. They’d just take the advice and go along with their service. But I’ve seen many musicians/singers leave the church when corrected musically. There is such a strong emotional bond and the road to offense seems like a short walk most of the time.

You’ll commonly hear a few things in defense or at least in explanation of this phenomena.

1. Music is emotional in itself
2. Music is very personally important to people
3. Taste in music is everyone’s own preference and when you correct they take offense because they feel you are saying your idea of music is better than theirs
4. Musical expression in worship is a right a Christian is (re)born with, who is the worship leader to comment on it or correct

I think all of those are factors but I’m beginning to see the most important cause is not amongst those. Let me respond to the above list first:

1. True
2. Some people yes, musicians and singers I would hope so
3. People often confuse music structure/theory with preference. If you play the wrong chord, have no sense of dynamics, have bad time, sing out of key, those have nothing to do with your musical style. You are playing music bad, not different, just bad and making correctable errors.
4. The root of this problem is the improper coupling of music and worship. Everyone is reborn to praise and worship God, that is something we all must do. And of course we are always worshiping, the object of our worship shifts. However, expressing worship through music corporately is not everyone’s right.

Now onto what I really see as the root of the problem. I’ve found an unhealthy relationship between serving on the worship band and creative outlet. God has created us as creative beings, we should seek to glorify God is increasingly creative ways, musical creativity included. I do believe there is a place for a lot of creativity in corporate worship music. Much more than traditionally is expressed. That being said, the worship band and corporate worship should not serve as your creative outlet.

The problem is born when you view worship as a chance to express yourself creatively while worshipping God. Instead of what should be the case, your desire is to worship God and to do that use your body, soul, spirit, mind, all of you, including creativity, in your worship. Another way and perhaps a better way of putting this, is the problem of creativity around our worship instead of fitting inside of worship. This isn’t as nuanced as it seems, it is a very important distinction and makes a huge practical difference. If Sunday is your creative outlet, then when the worship leader asks you not to play or sing on a song, then that can become very hurtful because it seems to you as if the worship leader is turning off your God given creativity and your avenue of worship. The nerve! But if instead your only desire is to worship God and creativity is only a tool in that, then not playing doesn’t matter, because it’s only a tool and not the avenue of worship.

I can’t tell how important it is to get a proper perspective of how creativity fits inside of our expression of worship and not around our worship. This is much too broad a topic for a single blog post, perhaps I’ll split it up into a few posts soon. For now, we’ll leave this as an intro.

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There is a series of 3 videos on You Tube that is a great documentary on the christian persecution happening inside of Egypt. This isn’t meant to be the most extreme example of persecution, although it is very bad, but it really puts into perspective what people sacrifice for a life after Christ. This is nothing I have any sense of, even after watching this I feel so humbled that I most likely will never face 1/10th of what these people face every day.

I don’t want to summarize what the videos will tell you, but one of the most amazing quotes comes at the end of the 3rd video. The Zebeleen is a Christian community that lives in garbage, there’s no real other way of explaining it. But their entire community is a garbage dump, it’s in their homes, they live with rats and rubbish, it’s just terrible. So this Christian man and his family was living outside the Zebeleen and was getting tirelessly persecuted amongst the muslim population and decided to move his family into the Zebeleen garbage community. Even though he was a successful businessman in Egypt, he moved into squalor by choice. He at first thought there was no way they could survive there. But he goes on to say this:

“I didn’t even think I could survive…but it’s because of the Christians and the faith that I am here. Even if my children have diseases from the garbage I want them to live here with other Christians. The most important thing is that my children are raised in a Christian environment. It is much better to be in a place with garbage that has Jesus than to be in a place [without Jesus] even though it may be clean.”

I started crying at that point in the video. For a father with 2 beautiful little girls to say, their place in the kingdom and body of the church is more important than their health is just incredible. That it is by choice, is even more incredible. I’ll link the 3 videos below, but I wanted to tie this into worship.

I started thinking about what place persecution has in our worship songs. Of course in the English speaking countries that generate our worship(US/UK/Australia) there really is no persecution, just ridicule. So our worship stance becomes a “I’m not ashamed” anthem. An admission that we’re prepared to accept ridicule and I think that’s great. But I’d love to hear what these Coptic Christians sing, what they are prepared to accept as a sacrifice for the Kingdom. I think our disconnection to the reality of persecution foreign Christians face does us a true disservice and undermines the depth of our understanding of sacrifice and strength through Christ. I’ve never before considered persecution in any of my worship writing, but I will now.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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We’ve all been there. The band starts playing the worst song ever written and you feel yourself gasping for spirit filled air. Be honest with this one. I know all you religious people are going to say you worship right through it as we should, but I want honesty. So answer the poll on the right hand side bar after really examining what you do, not what you want to do.

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Thanks for everyone’s votes on the tattoo poll. We got a lot of feedback on that one. 70% of you had a balanced approach and thought the worship leaders responsibility with his/her tattoo depended on the tattoo and the congregation. Almost 20% took the Crazy Town approach and said, flaunt those suckers. 15% of you said the leader should hide their tattoos. And the other 15% said it was a mistake to get the tattoo in the first place. That’s a pretty diverse set of responses so I’m excited.  I promised my take when we finished up so here we go.

The Levitical law (19:28) that states “do not cut your bodies or put tattoo marks on yourselves”. This is the foundation of the argument against tattoos and the belief that they desecrate the spiritual image of God, the functional image of God due to a mutilation of our body, relational image of God due to the dis-unity it may cause in the church body, and lastly the vision/purpose/being of God by glorifying the vulgar or ungodly things. Many in the church believe this, a small portion believe just the opposite that tattoos actually glorify God and his image by demonstrating our God given artistic body in a exalting way to God.

I, as you might expect, fall between the two positions. The Levitical law exists due to the nature of tattoos in that time, which were a symbol of ownership and devotion. Slaves were tattoo’d to show who they belonged to, or were tattoo’d with a name of some pagan god. Many Old Testament scholars(including rabbis) say this prohibition was to combat idolatry and worship of false gods, in fact some believe there was even an exception to this law where a tattoo was ok for a slave so he did not run away. There’s layered problems in that, but that’s another discussion.
I believe tattoos are not inherently immoral, but rather amoral with the potential to be moral or immoral. I am not bound by the Levitical law but deeper than that the spirit of God that wrote the law. As long as a tattoo is not idolatrous in nature, and that it does not cause dis-unity in the church, I believe it to be a liberty and not sin. There is a very good and in depth ethical evaluation on tattoos done by the Christian Research Institute from which many of my positions basis derive. It’s a really interesting read and if you are thinking of getting a tattoo or already have I highly recommend reading it and devoting a lot of prayer time and practical evaluation of the consequence of the tattoo relationally.

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As you know by now I’m a huge Helio Sequence fan. They just released a their new album “Keep Your Eyes Ahead“. It’s absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend picking it up. This record actually has some killer acoustic tunes on it, something I haven’t heard them do before. I cordially invite you all to join me at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix March 18th to see Helio Sequence along with Grand Archives. It’s an all ages show too so all you wacky youngsters should come too.

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