Get Your Nose Out of Your Music Stand

This morning in our services on Mother’s Day, one of the guys on our worship team performed a special. (Side note: For those who are wondering, a “special” is a song that is performed, as opposed to songs that are sung by the whole congregation. I have no idea why we call it a “special.” I have heard some specials that were not very special.) About halfway through the song I looked back toward the sound booth and realized the words of the song were projected on the back ceiling. The band could see them, but they were out of the line of sight of the congregation.

This, in short, is a simple yet very effective way to address the problem of having your nose stuck in a music stand on stage.

Back in the old days of contemporary worship (the “old days” meaning just a couple of decades ago), worship teams were tied to a music stand that held paper music that was copied from a songbook or hymnal. If you were a guitar player or worship leader, you might have a chord chart consisting of only words and chords. This is how I led worship for many years in a former ministry: a control sheet (detailed order of service) and a bunch of chord charts sitting on the stand. For a long time I put the chord charts in a notebook and would have to flip the pages every couple of songs. Our worship team vocalists did the same thing.

The problem with being tied to the items on your music stand is that it puts an emotional barrier between you and the congregation. When you’re constantly worried about playing the right chords or singing the right words,you can’t focus on the more important task at hand. You are more concerned about the technicalities of worship leading than the spiritual dynamics of what is happening in the congregation.

I should point out that is a small but important distinction between the worship team and the worship band. The worship consists of the worship leader and the vocalists (or worship choir, if you use one). The worship band, of course, are the instrumentalists. It’s almost inevitable that the band will have some form of sheet music or charts. While they should be well-rehearsed, there’s no critical need for them to memorize their music. (But as a general rule, the better they know their music, the more fully they can enter into worship. The instrumentalists are leading worship through their example.)

The worship leader and vocalists, on the other hand, should try to remove any barriers that keep them from engaging with the congregation and with God. (When the worship leaders aren’t engaged, the people in turn don’t engage in worship very well.) At our church, the vocalists don’t use music stands at all, but we have the words projected on the back wall. (This is a mirror image of what the congregation sees, except in the case of special music as noted above.) It does mean you need to have your vocal parts memorized. But once you do this a few times, it’s no sweat.

Even when I play guitar on the worship team, I do my best to have all the music memorized. I still use a music stand to hold a control sheet and chord charts just in case, but even as an instrumentalist I find it very freeing to not rely on any charts or written music. (This would probably be impossible for instrumentalists that rely on sheet music.)

Even when I’m in situations where there is no projection in the back of the sanctuary, I try to rely on the music as little as possible when I’m leading worship. I have found the extra preparation to be well worth it because I can focus on actually leading worship instead of getting bogged down in musical details. I certainly don’t do it perfectly, but once I started doing this I began to enjoy leading and playing even more.

Questions: How can you help your worship team (and yourself) commit more of their worship set to memory? Has your church considered installing a projector in the back of the sanctuary just for the worship team? If you already do this, how it is working?