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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