Last week we kicked off a poll asking “Is it ok for non-Christians to play in worship bands?” So far the results are very interesting, 50% say no it’s not ok, and the other 50% either say yes it’s ok, or in some cases it is ok. You know you have a good poll question when you split 50/50 in the results

This past Sunday I had a meeting with my worship team that would have been absolutely disastrous had any of my team not been a mature Christian, being discipled and united in vision. Perhaps some other time I’ll blog about that meeting, which was one of the most amazing moments I’ve ever had in ministry. For now I’ll talk about why I think it’s important that if we are leading a congregation in worship that only mature, discipled, called and gifted Christians do that.

The criteria we use for any position of leadership uses this set of criteria in order of importance:

1. Character
2. Calling
3. Gifting

Anytime we get those 3 things out of order we put our self in a dangerous situation. I’m not even going to discuss the practical problems and dangers though they are many, instead I’ll focus again on what’s more important and that’s the spiritual problems. I’ve played in a lot of worship bands and many of the times not all were mature, discipled, called Christians. Some of those were gifted and effective musically but none of them had a chance of being effective spiritually because we were modeling that gifting was more important than character and God’s calling. If confronted with that we surely would have said, “no no we don’t believe that“, but then why are we modeling that?

Some might say, “but we’re a missional worship band so for us it makes sense.” To that I’d say then it’s even more important for you to get this and not have non-Christians on your band. Because now the lost is looking at you, and from experience, here’s the 1 question they’ll have that you’ll never be able to answer:

• How important can it be to give your life to Christ if that’s not even a requirement to lead in the worship of that same Christ?

Please re-read that question if you didn’t get it the first time. Now re-read one more time. Worship leaders, let’s model what’s right, let’s not compromise in what’s most important in the kingdom to which your worship band should be leading people to. I’m not promoting legalism, maybe there’s some confluence of circumstances that it makes sense, I’m just saying let’s examine the heart of the issue and keep an eye on what’s most important.

Thanks everyone for all your feedback, I value it greatly.