worship leader

Oxymorons: Jumbo Shrimp, Virtual Reality, Worship Concert

Manuel Luz — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:24:03 -0700

There’s a relatively new term being used more and more often by Christians, one that appears both sacred and oxymoronic: “Worship Concert.”

Recently, I’ve had a few conversations about the term. What does it mean, and what does it imply? On the surface, a worship concert is simply a means by which worship artists perform in a concert setting. The point of the music, and the point of the musicians, is to point people to God in some musically compelling way. As the Christian church has done for the last two thousand years, She adopts the cultural setting and technologies and uses them to express the timelessness of the Gospel. And there is great validity to this.

But then I got to thinking. Just for grins, what would happen if the Old Testament worshippers adopted a worship concert approach? Would we see Levitical priests advertising an evening concert featuring a particular name artist? Would they sell tickets? Would they play an encore? Would they have a merchandise table in the back with logo’d T-shirts and hoodies? Would the band be signing autographs and having photo ops with fans?

I was recently at a worship concert where the focus was directed specifically and unapologetically to God. And I was at a worship concert where the focus was seemingly blurred toward the performer in spiritually unhealthy ways. The thing is, these two experiences happened at the same concert.

Certainly, there are dangers as well as opportunities here. So I polled a few of my worship pastor/leader friends, and asked them a question I think might shed some light: “What is the difference between a worship concert and a worship service?” Because I think the answers might help us better understand the role of the up-front people in our worship experiences. Here’s what they shared, in no particular order.

“A worship concert is designed for passionate response from the crowd. A worship service is designed for passionate participation from the crowd. Hopefully both produce passionate disciplined life-change.”

Dave Bollen, Twin Cities Church

“Perhaps it is simply a matter of direction, as both are acts of worship, an invitation. A worship concert offers people the beauty of music well performed. The audience is blessed and directs gratitude for that to God. In a worship service, the audience is an active participant and becomes part of the musical/artistic offering.”

Eric Aiston, Church of the Foothills

“If the concert results in both personal and public worship of God, then great. However, the typical concert setup makes it very easy for our human nature to applaud the ‘Leaders.’ Therefore, a concert is a risky (but not impossible) thing to associate with worship. Any time you have people on a stage, with lights, sound, talent, cameras, everyone looking at them—we take the risk of ‘concertizing’ it. That is why leadership is such a critical gift in helping make the ‘Front’ become transparent and point to who we are worshipping."

John Broadhead, Village Church

“Where both the worship concert and the worship service intentionally seek to engage the audience and usher them into the presence of God, a worship service is more likely to include components such as offering, preaching, and communion, and the worship concert has more of a presentational environment. Both are great and valuable, but they serve different functions.”

John Plastow, First Covenant Church

“’Worship Concert’ means the worship band will be bringing lots of music in a wonderful way. ‘Worship Service’ means that I, the layperson, bring my gift of worship.”

Cate Morris, Artist and Worship Leader

“For me it is a heart thing and about being intentional in the experience you are trying to offer. I believe people are blessed at both even though the overall purpose and experience can be different. I also believe the above two can be woven together artistically as an evening moves from moment to moment. And I believe God honors both when He is the focus of our hearts.”

Len Jones, Journey Church

“In a worship concert, I listen and am blessed (for me). In a worship service, I participate for Him and (I am blessed). I’ve usually looked at a worship concert as us being the audience. What’s the difference between a concert and a worship concert?"

Jim Heinze, New Hope Fellowship

The last response brings up a good point. Soren Kierkegaard once compared worship to a stage play. People typically see God as the “director” of this play, the worship leaders as the “performers,” and the congregation as the “audience.” But he argues that in corporate worship, this is completely backwards. When we worship as we were intended, the worship leaders are the “directors,” the congregation is the “performers,” and God is the “audience.” Of course, this is a simplification. But this metaphor may expose the differences in intention between a worship concert and a worship service.

The question then is this: What type of worship are you experiencing in your church?

How Many Lead Singers Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?

Manuel Luz — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:46:34 -0800

How many lead singers does it take to change a light bulb?

One. The lead singer holds the bulb, and the world revolves around him.

Recently, I was talking to someone new to the Christian faith. Which is also to say that he is new to the evangelical Christian subculture. He knew that I was a worship and arts pastor, and so our conversation eventually drifted to the weekend services at his church. In the conversation, he said something that jolted me momentarily. He referred to the person leading worship at his church as the “lead singer for the band.”

At first I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was a new Christ follower, and without a Christian background to give you a frame of reference, the obvious equivalent phrase to “worship leader” is “lead singer.”

But that got me thinking. What was his experience of his church service? Was he experiencing worship? That is, was he being led to an encounter with the Living Triune God, and responding to that encounter in a transcendent way? And if so, what was the role of the “worship leader” in the actual “leading” of worship?

My friend was experiencing some really good music in his services. And the truth of the matter is, music and all the arts are transcendent by nature. The arts take us someplace, spiritually as well as emotionally. Art is, as Jeremy Begbie asserts, “capable of affording genuine knowledge of reality beyond the confines of human self-consciousness.” Just go to a rock concert and watch. People are being ushered somewhere. The question is, to where are they being moved?

In my experience, I’ve been a lead singer for a number of bands. I know what the role entails, and what is expected of it. And I don't see anything wrong with being one. But I shudder to think that some people might experience me as a “lead singer” when my role and calling and obligation in church is to be a “worship leader,” to serve my congregation and lead them to encounter and glorify God.

A. W. Tozer tells a story that goes like this: Jesus fulfilled scripture when he rode a young donkey into Jerusalem (John 12:12-16). The great crowds came to meet him, taking palm branches and spreading them out before him, praising his name, shouting “Hosanna! Hosanna!” The donkey, looking around at the crowd, then thought to himself, “Wow! I must really be great!”

In the grand scheme of things, I have to remember that as a worship leader, I’m just the donkey. And there’s a big difference between a donkey and a jackass.

More about this in my next blog. Please feel free to comment.

Simons in the Pews

Manuel Luz — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:41:44 -0800

Hair fashionably mussed, a soul patch beneath his lower lip, the Singer steps onto the small stage and eyes the small audience seated before him. A man in a dark T-shirt impatiently eyes the Singer. Pen fidgeting in his mouth, he inquires tersely, "Okay, what do you have for us today?"

The Singer takes a deep breath before answering. "Well, I'd like to start out with 'Not to Us' by Chris Tomlin."

"Okay," the man responds without emotion. "Good luck."

Apprehensive, jittery, nonplused, the Singer takes a step forward. And with all that he has, and all that he is, he opens his mouth. And sings.

"Not to us, but to Your name be the glory," he proclaims. "Not to us, but to Your name..." he repeats, each time with greater conviction. The certainty of his beliefs seem to steady his voice, and he digs into the phrase deeper. Taking a deep breath, he readies himself for the first verse.

"I'm sorry," another man in the group interrupts bluntly. "I think I've heard enough."

"You have a very nice voice," the woman beside him advances, trying not to sound condescending. "And I really like your look. But I'm afraid it's...well, it's just not good enough."

"Yes, thank you very much," the first man concludes. The verdict is sudden and final. The group will not be listening to the Singer any more.

No, this isn't a scene from American Idol. This is a scene from a typical Sunday morning worship experience. Every Sunday, our increasingly consumeristic congregations take their specific wants and desires and preferences into church services and rate them: Song selection, quality of the worship leader's voice, how loud or how fast the songs are, how much the band rocked, even the appearance of the worship leader. Our congregations have become Simons (as in Simon Cowell) in the pews.

And that consumeristic mindset spills into the entire Sunday experience: how big (or small) the church is, the length and content of the sermon, how many people greeted them that morning, what ministries does the church offer, how long the service lasts. And in their self-evaluations, they ask the "me" questions: Do I like this? Does this meet my needs? Does this make me happy?

They have bought into the lie that the church—the bride of Christ and the hope of the world—is simply a purveyer of religious goods and services. And as it is for all good consumers, it is our right to have our needs met, even as it relates to the things of God. And so they vote, mostly with their attendance, but also with their giving, and in other ways as well.

The biggest problem in my mind is not that people take their highly-honed and highly-personal consumeristic expectations and apply them to the church. It is that they do this—and they don't see anything wrong with it. They have forgotten that to be a Christian is not to be a consumer, but to be a disciple. And the two are diametrically opposed in so many ways.

As a worship leader and pastor, I find that our Simonized culture becomes an increasing distraction on a Sunday morning. And because of that, we as church leaders must strongly resist the ever-increasing forces that prompt us to feed the Simons in our pews.

I don't see my job as pleasing people; it is helping people please God. My job is not to compete with the church down the street; it is to unite with them to make a difference in our community. My job is not to meet people's consumeristic desires, but to call people to be disciples of Christ—you know, to love your neighbor, to put others before yourself, to live in a such a way that one's preferences are merely interesting diversions on the way toward dying to self.

I meet regularly with a group of worship pastors and leaders in my local area. (If you are a worship leader, I strongly urge you to start meeting regularly with your local peers.) We share ideas, pray for one another, try to help one another through the various struggles of doing ministry in the twenty-first century. I take no delight in knowing that my church is larger than my friend's church down the street. I get no pleasure in knowing that our congregants church shop among us. But I do delight in seeing the church act like the Church, in worship and ministry and life.

Do you have something to add? Please let me know about it.

New song for 2010

Christy Tennant — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:41:24 -0800

Expose: What Really Goes On In The Mind of A Worship Leader during Worship

Manuel Luz — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:26:37 -0700

Last Sunday, I once again had the privilege of bringing another person onto our worship team. He is the 21 year old son of a long time member of the team, who picked up the electric guitar a number of years ago. Last Sunday was his first time playing on the worship band. I think he did great.

This is one of the thrills of being a worship pastor. To see people grow not only in their faith but in their artistry as well, and to see those gifts being used for God. Yup. It's a cool gig.

Between services, he remarked to me that he was initially having to think about every little thing he was doing, but as he settled in, it became easier to play and worship. I explained to him that being on the worship team is like driving. When you first learn to drive, you have to think about every act of driving—signaling, stepping on the accelerator, pointing the car in the right direction. But eventually, you get to the point of never having to think about driving at all. You only think about where you are going.

And that got me thinking about thinking. That is to say, I began to think about the act of worship leading, and what it is that goes on in my head on a Sunday morning during worship. Believe me, being a worship leader is a complicated thing. Even more complicated than walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Worship leading is about communicating, both horizontally and vertically. And that communication has spiritual, emotional, physical, and musical aspects of it. So there's a lot going on in my brain simultaneously. I am communicating to the band and vocalists (and sometimes the choir), to let them know what is coming up next—verse to chorus, loud to soft, extending a song or transitioning to the next one. I am communicating to our technical folks, especially the bullet-sweating multimedia person who must follow my lead lyrically. I am communicating to the congregation, encouraging them with my voice and actions and emotions to give themselves to the act of worship, for He is worthy. (Hopefully as we do this, we are pointing people to God and not to ourselves in the process.) I have one eye on the senior pastor, knowing that he might decide to take a left turn somewhere, and another eye on our cue sheet, so I can remember what comes up next during the service. And I am communicating to myself, playing my instrument and singing the (hopefully correct) lyrics, always trying to stay four bars ahead of everyone. I also admit that my mind will wander to the most obtuse and irrelevant things as well—what I had for breakfast, the NFL games going on that morning, the youtube video of that kid saying, "Charlie bit me!"

And then, after all of that, I am vertically communicating to God, dialoging my feelings to Him and intently endeavoring to listen to His Still Small Voice.

Then in the midst of all of that chatter in my head, there is this other thing going on. This inner dialogue. My doubts about myself. My fear of failure. My Catholic guilt. My feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness that come from my family of origin issues and compounded by years of simply living life.

My mind is quite the busy place.

Then there is the essence of grace. That I am worthy, but only because of Jesus, of what He did and continues to do for me—that the grace of the cross is my sufficiency, and the grace of the present moment is my blessing. And then I sense this indescribable thing, this inexplicable awareness: The smile of God is upon me.

And this is the part where I don't have to think about driving. I only think about where I am going. And where I am going is to the throne of God. To kneel at His feet, to sit on His lap, to drink from His cup. To simply be in His presence, with His people, and declare the amazing Story of God once again.

Last Sunday was like that. Just like that.