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. For part 3 I’m going to discuss how safe our worship music can be.

3. Safe

The ugly art on my hotel room wall was meant to be as inoffensive, innocuous and unspectacular as possible. It’s vanilla, bland, no rough edges and probably shown to a panel of people making sure they see nothing that could possibly be misconstrued as inappropriate or offense. Hmm this is reminding me of about 90% of the Christian music I’ve heard, despite us writing for and singing about Jesus, the most offensive and divisive person in all of human history.

Music

Many would argue that our worship music should be safe, that the music should be as broadly appealing as possible. I understand the argument and even agree with the intention, but I don’t believe having a band play bland music accomplishes the desired goal. Safe, bland, plastic worship music may not offend your congregation but it certainly won’t captivate them either. I much more appreciate strong reaction to music either positive or negative, as opposed to apathy.

If we’re reaching diverse people in our community you can imagine how much diversity you have in music taste in your congregation. I’ve found trying to have a single band appeal to all those tastes is a lesson in futility. In my church context we hope to present multiple bands that each excel in their music style and don’t play safe. In that collection of bands hopefully we show that Jesus is glorified in through many different styles.

But whatever the style, if the fear of man (congregation’s response) is the motivation in your music rather than the gospel and the passion gifted to you by God, and safety and refuge are found in human approval rather than Jesus, well that’s an incredibly dangerous position to be in.

Lyrics

A quite similar situation is found in our worship lyrics. It’s almost like we want our congregations to be able to zone out and sing without even thinking about what they are singing. Why else would we have such a narrow context in worship and use so much stale language to communicate the glory of Jesus? When I listen to a lot of Christian music it sounds like the words were written during their lunch break at work. I don’t often get a sense of toil, struggle and meditation in worship songs on what should be sung and how best to deliver it lyrically. You can’t read the Psalms and not hear the struggle and toil in those words and stories.

One huge reason for this is the sense that many songwriters have that as long as it’s from the heart it’s good. Spill our guts and God is glorified. Can we engage our minds in the process? Can we worship with all our heart and all our mind? You can’t read the Psalms and not see David’s mind spinning around the majesty of God, the metaphors that bring it to light, the examples found on earth, the implications of it on our lives. God is so rich and when we take the safe, well traveled path lyrically I think we’ve disengaged from the wonder of God in either our hearts or minds, and sometimes both.

Example

Your congregation is really struggling to deal with the recent diagnosis of cancer among members of your congregation and leadership and your pastor asks you to write a song about it. The safe thing is to sing about the goodness of God in heaven, God is the great physician and will heal, that we should cast fear aside and worship in joy. All true, but is there even a greater truth to be sung here?

The dangerous thing to do would be to sing of the goodness of God in cancer, sing of God as our healer and whether we are healed in the flesh or if we die that he’s healed our spirit and Jesus has reconciled us to the Father and that we fear nothing but God himself and worship in joy, but also through our pain, disappointment, sickness, success, failure, through all of it because we are obsessed with his glory.

Conclusion

Worship leaders, remember you serve the church and it’s not about you, it’s about Jesus. Serving them doesn’t mean gaining their approval though. Serve them by glorifying Jesus by singing about all of who God is. Do the music God has gifted you to play, given you the authority to play and given you a passion to play. Push yourself creatively in your music and lyrics to find new ways to tell the story of the gospel and majesty of Christ. Some people may hate your music, does that bother you more than compromising the conviction in your spirit? Some people may love your music, does that give you more joy that the smile of the face of God? Stop fearing man more than God. Stop seeking the applause of man more than the delight of Christ.

Previously I discussed how our worship music can easily become uninspired or inspired by something other than the gospel and the person and work of Jesus. For part 2 I wanna focus on the cheapness of bad hotel art, how our worship music is very often cheap and how that impacts our presentation of the gospel. I will go through 3 reasons this happens, though there are plenty more and each reason below is probably worthy of its own post so hang with me.

2. Cheap

The value of the art hanging in the hotel is a direct product of what went into making it. What did it cost the creator of this art in time, effort and material? That value determined how much it sold for and to whom it was sold. What if each art piece was commissioned and an artist labored over each piece, meditated on what was required for the room, what would fit the context it would be displayed, what the audience needed to be presented with and how best to capture the beauty that was his inspiration? Well those art pieces would be much more valuable.

Worship leaders very often cheapen the gospel through our cheapened worship music and this happens due to a few reasons:

• We don’t invest prayer and labor in our songs as on overflow of inspiration for the glory of Jesus and edification of the body, but instead seek the fastest route to receive our earthly payment.

For some the earthly payment might be an immediate emotional response. If you’ve been in church any length of time it’s not hard to perceive what people respond to in worship at an emotional level. There’s nothing wrong with an emotional response because it should be there, but it’s cheap if that’s the depth of the response and engagement, purely emotional. This kind of worship is very much like the seed sown on rocky ground(Matthew 13:20-21), it’s received immediately with joy but has no root in our spirits and when met with trial, fades away. I find this to be the evil, ripened, low hanging fruit in front of most worship leaders, especially those who serve in a charismatic environment.

Our earthly payment could also be industry success and respect amongst our peers, creative goals accomplished, the praise of our audiences, the list goes on.

• We write music out of emotional desire and spiritual angst but never get around to presenting the gospel and the treasure…Jesus.

Our songs end up consisting entirely of supplication or even demands on what we want and what we feel. There’s not a problem with supplication and emotional expression as long as we don’t stop there, that should be prologue to the truth. We’ve presented the conflict but not the eternal truth in response and if we do that what’s the point? We’re just whining at the throne instead of worshiping and pointing people to Jesus.

If our worship songs do more to make the congregation empathize with humanity instead of see the splendor and majesty of Jesus than we’ve wasted our time and cheapened our worship.

• We present a limited view of the character of God to suit the mood we wish to create and maintain in the church and worship service.

If our idol is joy, then we write and sing songs all about the joy found in Christ. But never sing about the cost paid for our freedom, the wicked deceit in our hearts and sin we must repent of. There’s bright lights, plenty of dancing and shouting, but never bowing, weeping and mourning.

Conversely we could idolize earthly dignity and cultural relevance and never sing for joy in the midst of trial and tribulation. Those in depression could walk in and engage in worship feeling comfortable in our somber presentation of the cross but never get confronted with the joy and victory in the resurrection.

In order for us not to cheapen our presentation of the gospel we can’t ignore aspects of God’s character just because it makes us or our congregation’s uncomfortable. If we do we’ve carved our own image of God and just in case you haven’t read the left hand side of scripture, it never ends up good for those that do that.

I pray that we labor over our worship songs for the glory of Jesus, that we’d present the gospel and our treasure Jesus in every song we sing, and that we wouldn’t carve our own image of God to worship but worship Him for all that He is.

As I was sitting in my hotel room in Boulder CO this week I noticed the just awful art hanging on the walls. It got me thinking why on earth would the hotel put this kind of art up knowing full well how appalling it is? As I thought about it, I realized the reasons were exactly the same reasons why much of worship music can so easily become “bad art.” I want to dive into those reasons and like any average blogger I’ve divided those reasons up into 5 separate posts. First way worship music can become like bad hotel art…

1. Uninspired

The art in this hotel came from no deep well of desire or conviction, no sense of calling, honor or worship to anything great. It’s just something to get the job done efficiently and fill wall space.

As worship leaders very often in our own song writing or leadership we operate not from an overflow of the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts, but from a desert and dependence on our flesh and we end up filling space just the same. We fill that space in our hearts with idols and we fill space in worship sets with things that satisfy the flesh. We can end up doing nothing out of a holy spirit inspired conviction, thirst and desire to see Jesus glorified, but more to see that the obligation is met and that people are satisfied.

When leading worship becomes an obligation instead of an honor, we’ve likely either forgotten what Jesus has done or we hold the ultimate prideful, sin infested position that what he’s done is not enough to warrant anything better from us. Romans 12:1

“Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.”

Maybe we’ve lost view of God’s mercy, maybe God’s grace is no longer sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9) and something else is now inspiring us and motivating us. Idolatrous inspiration has a lot of deadly fruit, the least of which being bad art. If the gospel isn’t motivating and inspiring us, then our works are useless, they’re death to ourselves and at the least, quite harmful to others.

Inspiration and motivation is a heart issue, don’t fill space with idols, let Jesus ruin you and the gospel inspire and motivate all you do.

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?

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.

I received some great comments from a reader and good friend Barrie on my last post about why worship leaders should consider using loops in their worship service. They were so good they each deserve their own post, so here’s the first one.

Have you found any sense in which [using loops] might add to people not engaging since they’ve “been there, done that” exactly the same way last week?

There are quite a few factors that come into play when talking about congregational boredom in worship.

1. How many worship leaders does your church have and how similar or dissimilar are they stylistically?

It would be my hope that churches would raise up leaders to lead with the musical gifting and talent they have and not try and shoe horn every musician into the same musical mold. Sadly this often isn’t the case and week after week, service after service you hear different people singing the same songs with the same inflections, same arrangements, same riffs, same fills, same same same same and that’s neither interesting or inspiring.

2. How large of a rotation does each worship leader have?

I don’t think you need a large rotation, in fact I’d advise against it. In my church I lead every week currently and I have a regular rotation of about 30 songs and we do 5 songs every service. That means we do each song about once a month and I’ve found that to be a pretty good sweet spot. There is still familiarity where people know the song but it hasn’t been beaten into them every other week where they get sick of it.

3. Level of excellence. Quite simply, great music isn’t boring.

Lazy, uninspired, copy cat arrangements with little musical creativity can get very boring very quickly. This is one thing I think loops help address. You can spend a lot of off stage time writing parts, looking for new elements, textures and sounds for a song that you couldn’t do with live instrumentation.

Just looking over my iTunes list at all the great songs I listen to, the play count reaches the hundreds for some. The congregation over the span of a year may sing the same worship song 15-20 times. That’s nothing compared to how we listen to music normally. If anything I’ve noticed the congregation wanting to sing the same songs more often than I do.

After introducing loops to the band and congregation about 10 months ago I’ve noticed an anticipatory attitude in the congregation. They are eager to hear how we’re going to play new songs and how we’re going to remix older ones. They get excited about the new things they hear and are introduced to. I know not all congregations will respond that way and I feel somewhat spoiled in that sense so it’s up to each leader to use wisdom in how they do this. But I hope to encourage you all that stretching yourself in creativity can be done in a way that stays relevant to culture but doesn’t isolate your congregation or lose them to boredom.