As I prepared for this past Sunday’s worship set I had a very heavy heart. The stories and images coming out of Haiti are truly heart breaking and challenging at many levels. This past week Dennis Miller was asking for Christians to call into his radio show and explain how God allows this to happen. I listened every day as people would call in and espouse 1 of 2 theories.

1. God had nothing to do with this, this was Satan. or…
2. This is direct punishment for Haitians sin.

It was frustrating and painful to hear people either run away from God’s sovereignty and appoint the power to call creation into action to Satan, or to run from grace and appoint judgment onto Haiti that all nations deserve and are under. It pains me to hear Christians disavowing the sovereign rule and reign of God over all creation, but it also pains me to hear Christians claiming they know why this happened. What a disgusting measure of pride in both circumstances. If you haven’t read Albert Mohler’s post on “Does God Hate Haiti?” I implore you to go read it.

So all of this is happening in my mind as I pray about what my responsibility is as a worship leader in light of what’s happening. It was a very similar feeling I felt after 9/11 and I remember the feeling that the church had no songs to sing after 9/11 because we tend to overlook worshipping in lament. Though the Psalms are full of worship in lament, our churches are usually void of them.

I felt it important for our church to not run from the gospel and hide in either of the extremes I mentioned above. That in light of what’s happening in Haiti we should respond corporately in a few ways:

1. We should grieve and mourn with those in Haiti

Romans 12:15 spells it out clearly, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Starting out the service with big smiles and happy clappy, dance in the aisles music seemed ill-fitting at best when viewed in the shadow of 50,000 dead with another 100,000 yet to be found. Paul says we should rejoice in our suffering, but doesn’t say we should rejoice in other’s suffering. In fact he says quite the opposite in 1 Corinthians 12:26 when discussing church unity:

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (ESV)

Before and during our worship set we had a lot of prayer, acknowledging the heartache and suffering. And we mourned with those in Haiti dealing with this devastation first hand.

2. Worship the all sovereign God

The church has to recognize God’s sovereignty in all things. That God’s ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts and he has plans and purposes that we don’t see. I don’t see the number of earthquakes God has held back, the hurricanes he’s calmed or the tsunamis he’s diverted. Matt Chandler said,

“The entire universe is built around communicating to you that you’re tiny and you’re fragile and you control nothing.”

We are tiny and God is great, all powerful, all sovereign and all good. This earthquake as well as all creation should point us to God and illuminate his divine attributes (sovereignty being one of them). Romans 1:20:

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Our worship set was filled with these songs, every song had this at its core. Our God Reigns, The Solid Rock, Whole World In His Hands.

3. Worship the merciful, loving, good God

God loves Haiti, he loves the people of Haiti and his heart is grieved. At the cross we see God’s perfect justice meet his perfect mercy, grace and love. We live in the aftermath of that collision on the cross and our hearts should be eternally grateful. Ephesians 2:4-7

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

We opened with God of This City, a song I think does an amazing job of communicating God’s sovereign rule, but that things aren’t yet as they should be. That God is still at work.

4. Serve the broken and minister to the lost

If all you have is great context and point of view without your heart being impacted and propelled towards acts of kindness and mercy, then there’s a disconnect with the gospel. My heart is warmed by the tremendous outpouring from the Christian community towards Haiti. There are so many different avenues of service and help happening right now and they all are orchestrated under the mercy, grace and sovereignty of God.

I think it it incredibly important for our worship to not hide from any of these things in this time. Our view of the gospel in our worship needs to be enriched not diluted. We can’t hide from this and we shouldn’t try and cloak God or any of his divine attributes to make it more palatable to the world. I beg my fellow worship leaders to point their churches, their community to the gospel in this season. In devastation and loss their is great opportunity for God to be magnified, for the lost to be pointed to Christ and for the church to be mobilized to show Christ’s love.

One of the songs we did which I really felt God appointed for us in this time is a song by Tim Hughes called “Whole World In His Hands.” I’ll finish with the lyrics to that song.

Verse 1
When all around is fading
And nothing seems to last
When each day is filled with sorrow
Still I know with all my heart

Chorus
He’s got the whole world in His hands
He’s got the whole world in His hands
I fear no evil for You are with me
Strong to deliver, mighty to save
He’s got the whole world in His hands

Verse 2
When I walk through fire
I will not be burned
When the waves come crashing round me
Still I know with all my heart

In Part 1 I discussed how dangerous it is for our worship to be uninspired and in Part 2 I talked about how often our worship music can be cheap and its impact on the gospel. In Part 3 I discussed the prevalence of the fear of man in our often safe worship music. For part 4 I’m going to discuss another aspect of worship that can turn it into bad hotel art — unoriginality.

4. Unoriginality

This is a delicate topic because in some ways our worship is intentionally unoriginal. We are singing the praises of an unchanging, everlasting God, who gave us the greatest revelation man will ever know 2000 years ago in the cross and chose to make his word known through scripture that should never be added to or subtracted from. So at some level we certainly shouldn’t be looking for anything new there, that content remains the same. But the methods of delivery continue to change and that must be purposefully and missionally original.

Let me define the phrase “purposefully and missionally original” as it relates to worship.

Someone who’s inspired and informed by the gospel through the Holy Spirit to reach a specific people with the message of Jesus in an effective way through music and the arts.

The art in my hotel room was copied all over the country or all over the world, no thought was given to the different contexts it might be displayed in and if there might be a more effective art piece in different areas. The thought being if it worked in Beverly Hills it must work in Omaha, or Denver, or Miami, or Puerto Rico. Seems silly right? The culture, the idols worshipped, language used in those areas is so different.

But how silly are we in the church when we say the same thing? If it works in Australia at Hillsong, it must work in Phoenix, or in Santa Barbara. We attempt to carbon copy the missional expression without doing any of the evaluation or prayer to see if that expression would be effective in our mission field.

Being purposefully and missionally original requires worship leaders to find how best to use music and the arts for the people in their mission field through prayer, study and practice, for the glory of Jesus Christ. All being attractionally unoriginal requires is a CCLI license and a few hours of band practice to cover the latest CCM hit.

I’m not saying that Hillsong or Tomlin won’t work in multiple churches, locations and cultures, I’m just saying don’t blindly assume they will. And then perhaps you can find an arrangement that better suits your church rather than just ripping the cd.

Let’s be purposefully and missionally original.

The number of songs a worship leader has in regular rotation can really make a huge difference in how easily a congregation enters into worship, how bored the congregation and band are with the songs, how well the band performs, etc… It’s an area of worship I hope leaders put thought into and not just leave as an afterthought. In an attempt to find out how many songs worship leaders have in their rotation I began a poll that asked simply how many songs are in your worship rotation? Here are the results.

The value in bold is how many I have in my rotation. I understand that 78 worship leaders is not a huge sample so there’s probably a large margin of error here. But just play along and lets assume this is an accurate representation.

When I saw over 60 in rotation I was blown away, if that’s the case that means you’re only playing certain songs once or twice a year. At that point I’m not sure why you’d even have those songs in “rotation”. Sure maybe you bring them out for a specific purpose, but rotation? Maybe others are just way more talented than I, and that’s not hard to believe. But here are the problems I see with rotations that large:

1. The congregation spends more time reading words and remembering the melody than worshipping.
2. The arrangement isn’t all that tight and tends to be simplistic because it would be extremely difficult to have over 60 songs arranged in creative ways and not struggle to pull it off.
3. You end up keeping old (possible stale) songs in rotation longer because you play them so infrequently they seem fresh, though years have passed.

Some benefits I see:

1. Lots of material to be able to build more content focused sets that support message series and such.
2. Keeps the band on their toes.

What benefits and drawbacks do you see from having such large worship song rotations?

I was flipping through some music reviews of some worship albums and I just had to laugh because there’s no such thing as a bad review. Well actually there is, if the review is out of 10 stars, 10 is great and 9.5 is awful, they just don’t get any lower. This same attitude exists in worship bands and church leadership as a whole. Leaders many times have to walk on egg shells cause they feel if they critique the persons gifting or execution that person will get offended and leave.

As leaders we can’t be paralyzed by a fear to critique. The root of this fear is really idolatry in that our gifting is our value in the kingdom and when someone critiques it we feel devalued in the kingdom. I’m not trying to go Dr. Phil on you, but seriously why can’t I love my Christian brother and critique what he’s trying to sell me? How far does this go, am I offending someone because I didn’t buy their album?

On a twitter conversation I was having Fred McKinnon mentioned that many people’s policy is:

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”

I agree with his assessment and know that to be the case, but it’s way off in my estimation. What a bunch of babied, insecure in the gospel, little musicians we are if we have a policy of, “hey if you don’t like every single aspect of my music and aren’t prepared to just rave over it all, then don’t say anything“.

I’d like to point out an example of a honest review I did of a Sovereign Grace Christmas cd. I was worried how it would be received, but I thought it would be a disservice to Bob Kauflin if I didn’t review it honestly. I tried to give encouragement on what I thought was done well and honest, specific critique where I thought it was not done well. I was probably insensitive on some points and could have phrased things better. But even with that, Bob responded incredibly well, responded with grace. I don’t think Bob started questioning his value to the kingdom or thought I should live in eternal damnation. Bob correct me if I’m wrong

Do you feel like you’re sinning against God or injuring your brother if you critique their music/gifting? Are you afraid to do so? Do you think that’s healthy? Am I an insensitive jerk?

An important part of improving individually and as a band is evaluating where you are at, where you want to be and how to bridge the gap. As a worship leader not only are you leading worship for the body as a whole but you are leading a band that requires attention, maintenance and effort to make sure it’s playing well, relating well, operating well and spiritually healthy. I thought I’d expose what this process looks like for us, at least on the surface.

I created an evaluation form that all band members and people behind the booth fill out. Here are the questions that I ask.

1. Are you doing what you feel called to?
2. Describe your current role in view of God’s calling on your life?
3. Are you able to recommit to the worship team? Why or why not?
4. What area(s) do you need to improve in musically?
5. What’s your practical plan to improve in your area(s) of need?
6. How can your band leader assist in this process?
7. How would you rate the musical quality of your current band? (Poor, Average, Good, Excellent)
8. What can you do to help the band improve?
9. What can your band leader do to improve the band’s overall quality?
10. How would you rate your band’s interpersonal relationships overall? (Poor, Average, Good, Excellent)
11. Do you have any relational issues with anyone in the band?
12. What has God shown you about worship or anything else through your service on the band?

After receiving everyone’s input I’ll follow up with each person personally and discuss their input, where they are at musically, relationally and spiritually. This is a great opportunity to catch issues before they are issues.

Do you have an evaluation process? If so what does it look like?

I’d like to start by pointing you to my post on Top 5 things I love about being a worship leader. It truly is an incredible honor, responsibility and blessing to be a worship leader and something I am forever grateful for. It’s really difficult for me to come up with 5 things I dislike without immediately feeling like they pale in comparison to the incredible blessing it is. Even in the trials I hold firmly to James 1:2

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds

That being said I don’t pretend that there aren’t trials and that there aren’t difficult moments. Here are what I see as the top 5 negatives about being a worship leader:

1. You become #1 or #2 reason why people leave the church

You and the preaching pastor will be the alpha dogs as far as reasons people leave the church, in most cases. As much as I joke about this, it does bother me. I understand that there are plenty of churches, better churches than ours for some and that I have to be true to what God’s called and gifted me to do. But when I hear of people leaving because they can’t stand the music, as much as I try to roll with it, it does sting. Not from an artistic standpoint, that rolls of me quite easily. I know lots of people will dislike my music, that’s not what’s important. But I do have to pray a lot about have I failed as a leader to reach out, teach, relate with, minister to these people that are leaving.

On another level I’m glad I’m not immune to some disappointment and hurt when I hear of people leaving because of me. I don’t want to be some ministry zombie. It doesn’t change the truth, vision and mission I’m charged with, but I don’t want to ignore or neglect what I can do to become a better minister and worship leader.

2. Managing creative types can really stink

Artists, and I use that in the broad sense, are the most sensitive, emotional basket cases on the planet. Heaven forbid you tell them they need to practice more, or that they aren’t in tune, or their song isn’t very good. Who am I to judge them and their God given talent? How dare I quench the spirit! *sigh* I am sooooo blessed to have a team of mature Christian men and women who are all leaders in our church in many more ways than music. For me those days are behind me, although once we start building some more teams, there may be more of those days ahead. I’ve been in some pretty awful situations and lemme tell you, they are all too often the norm in the modern church.

There’s a lot to be said about how you organize and run a worship team and develop artistic talent and spiritual maturity. We’ve done polls on this blog about letting non-christians in on worship bands and such and I’ve learned a lot from my past failures on this topic. I could write a valuable e-book on all the ways not to put together a worship team.

3. As you excel in music, you get accused more of not “getting” the heart of worship

If I were to go up on stage with a junky acoustic, with an average band in support, sing in and out of key but do it with passion, nobody is going to accuse me of focusing on music and idolizing it. But if I practice, prepare, write and do all the things necessary to have a tight great band, get up on stage, sound great and do it with passion. There will be a lot of people that say I don’t really understand the heart of worship and that I emphasize musical excellence to a point of idolatry.

I just find it so ill-conceived that the measuring stick for some looks like, poor music quality = band has a heart after God, great music quality = worship leader wants to be Christian celebrity and doesn’t truly get worship. Let me be clear that I just want to be a good stuard and faithful to what God has placed in my hands. The conviction I feel from God on being lazy, inattentive and wreckless with the gifting and gift of this church body placed in my hands far outweighs your weak accusation, so you’ll have to excuse me while I ignore it.

4. Inability to have a single focus in worship

As a worship leader there’s a lot of responsibilities and trains of thought you have to manage in your head while you are leading a song. From song arrangements, to time management, to engagement of congregation, following where the Spirit is leading, taking cues from the sound booth, signaling your band, the list goes on. When you are the primary worship leader for a congregation and leading 99% of the time you can quickly miss being able to be in the congregation worshiping instead of in front leading worship.

Taking breaks is important and we’re working towards multiple bands at LCC.

5. Walking away feeling completely satisfied

This has less to do with being a worship leader and more about my personality. But I wish I could go through a Sunday, drive home and just feel like,

“Man what a great worship time, sounded great, God moved, the body was united and everything went well.”

Instead, no matter how good it goes I go home feeling like,

“I can’t believe how bad I butchered that one song. The mix sounded like crap today I know it. Lots of strange stares on that new song.”

I wrote a post about the mind of a worship leader the day after that explains a lot of my thought process.

It’s something I’m trying to get balance in, but I am super critical of myself and it’s not often I leave with a satisfied feeling and I’m never completely satisfied. But I do rest in that God will accomplish what he wants to accomplish through these weak hands, I have confidence that His faithfulness, not my talent, is my shield.

The results are in and they are conclusive. 83% of you said worship leaders who speak a lot either annoy or distract you during worship. I heard some complaints about how I started the poll, some saying it’s skewed for negative responses. My response to that is I’m not Zogby, I’m just a worship leader trying to run a little blog here and connect with my peeps. So it may not be the most scientific poll in the world, but I think it gave me a pretty clear idea of where people are at.

Personally I don’t like to talk a lot when I lead worship. I open in prayer and that’s usually the only speaking I do in a set. I may sing some prayerful phrases in a ministry time song or such, but rarely if ever do I do a full talking breakdown. I leave that to my pastor to come up at the end, who’s much better at leading a time like that.

As with everything there is some balance required here. There’s a time to pray, talk, be silent, sing, play…but I agree with the results here that excessive talking is really distracting and annoying.

Feel free to browse our poll archive and vote in any you’ve missed.

In our third installment of answers to questions on the post, “Why should I consider using loops in my worship service?” I tackle the following:

Is there anything that you feel you lose when using loops?

There are certainly some things that have been lost since I started using loops. Though not all of what I’ve lost is negative, some are quite positive changes. Here are some of the things that come to mind when I think of things lost when making the change to using loops.

1. Time

Programming loops takes time…a lot of time. I was naively optimistic about how much time it would take me to get from 0 loops to a full set of loops. If I’m composing a loop fresh, a totally new arrangement, one song can take me a good 10 hours of work. Depending on how quickly an idea forms and I’m able to create the sounds that are in my head it could take a lot more. For a song that I’m simply recreating something I like or a mix of new ideas on top of recreating something, it may take me 4-5 hours. Even now there are a lot of loops I have posted that I have new ideas for and that I plan to rework and re-release.

I try to work on a new song every week. This is in addition to any practice time with the band, songwriting, arranging sets, etc… It’s a huge time commitment and I’d caution everyone to weigh the commitment appropriately.

2. Comfort

There’s a certain comfort level when playing only live instruments. Everyone is just following the worship leader and there’s really not too much room for error, just watch the signals and it’s easy right? When playing with loops there is a big increase in room for error and not just in frequency of error but in magnitude. With loops, you can have absolute train wrecks if you get off time, forget the arrangement, not to mention software failures.

Even when we’re playing songs correctly, inside I sometimes panic and have inner monologues while singing that go something like, “wait is this the second or third repeat? Oh no I’m I totally lost right now? this is going to be a nightmare!” It was a lot worse when we first started, I was so nervous. Now the band is much more comfortable, we have all the arrangements well memorized and haven’t had many train wrecks(I can only think of 1), but the risk is just a lot higher when using loops.

3. Flexibility

There’s no question about it, you will lose flexibility. Everything takes planning, everything requires thought and work. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing and in almost every way this has raised the level of excellence in my music and in the worship in general at my church. But there are the times where you’re playing a new song and something is hitting in the congregation you didn’t foresee and you wish you would have done another repeat in your arrangement. Now you can adjust the next time, but had you not been on a loop you probably would have signaled the band for another go around the block.

I don’t pretend there’s no cost to using loops, but for me and my band, the benefits have far outweighed the cost. As you get more comfortable programming and using loops the cost lessens and the benefits grow. Projects that used to take you 10 hours start to take 5 hours, you get more comfortable on stage and stop panicking internally and as you plan more you see the structure raises the level in the band.

Soon I’ll be starting a more technical series on how to get started with loops and how to use some of these techniques. Thanks so much for your questions and feedback.