The art of life and worship
May 15, 2010 Leave a comment
UPDATE: James Emery White has a great post with his thoughts about the video and the implications behind it.
Check out this satire video from North Point Ministries. It’s the funniest and most true-to-life thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s not mean-spirited, but is done in a spirit of love and fun. If you would describe your worship style as contemporary or relevant, you will probably see a little bit of yourself here.
May 9, 2010 3 Comments
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?
May 8, 2010 Leave a comment
Today St. Louis Christian College will hold its graduation ceremony. I’m especially excited because this year we have five Worship & Music students who are graduating. I have seen these guys (and gal) go from being freshmen who didn’t know much about worship leading (and sometimes aren’t aware of it) to men and women ready for the challenges life has in store for them. I’m so happy for them, but I’m also surprised at how melancholy I feel about it since I have been especially close to this group of students.
There’s really no way to measure or quantify the influence you have on someone’s life, but just for kicks, I wanted to estimate the number of hours I’ve spent with these guys since their freshmen year. This is not only face-to-face time in class, but also time spent doing homework for my classes, in several semesters of guitar lessons (which most of them have taken), worship teams, serving in Chapel in one form or another, advising appointments, conversations, and whatever else may have come up where they have either spent time with me, or have done something I’ve asked them to do. The best estimate I can come up with is somewhere around 4,000 hours, including all five students.
4,000 hours. That’s an awful lot of time. That represents 167 straight days, or around 2 years of 8-hour workdays. It’s incredibly humbling to think these students have opened their lives to my teaching and influence for that amount of time.
SLCC is a small school; there are other school with graduation ceremonies this month that would dwarf ours. But when you look at the numbers, even at a small school like ours, one single teacher, over time, has enormous potential to influence someone’s life. This fact drives me to my knees, seeking God’s wisdom in how I can become a better teacher and lead our program more effectively.
But guess what? You don’t have to be a teacher or have a title to influence someone. The fact is, you’re probably already doing it and don’t even know it. We all influence others, every day. The issue is what we do with that influence. And for those of us who lead, teach or spend intensive amounts of time with people helping them become better Christian leaders, 4,000 hours is a big deal. Perhaps this is why James 3.1 says, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”
So, congrats guys (and gal), you made it through! I’ve done my best to point you in the right direction. Now go change the world!
Questions: Who has God put in your path to influence, teach or lead? (This could be formal or informal; the best teaching doesn’t usually happen in a classroom.) What is one concrete step you can take right now to improve yourself so that you can better influence others?
May 3, 2010 Leave a comment
I love this promo video for David Crowder’s upcoming conference. Wouldn’t you love to go to this?
February 6, 2010 Leave a comment
This year I have been doing a lot of reflecting on life. I’m 35 years old and by this point, nearly all of my friends from high school and college have settled in their lives. Most of us have families, careers and a life trajectory that will probably not change too drastically over the next few decades.
This is also the age where some hard realizations begin to set in. Despite having success in one form or another, everyone realizes that certain things will probably not come to pass. Some of the dreams you had ten or fifteen years ago will never become a reality.You realize you are getting older and it’s time to let go of the “what ifs” and “might have beens.” You may never have the job, notoriety, family situation, body, business or whatever else you thought would make you truly happy.
I have a question for you. What makes you truly satisfied and happy in life? What is the real source of your joy? For many Christians, the real answer is, “Christ, and _____.” We fill in the blank with all kinds of things: children (and their performance in school or sports), a career, our ideal image of the perfect husband or wife, church involvement, positions or titles or degrees, financial success, and a hundred other things. We would never admit this, and we certainly don’t mean for this to happen, but it’s there all the same.
God is helping me to see that Christ is truly enough. For many years I have trusted Christ as my Savior, but I haven’t always looked to him as my Lord and the source of my true contentment. For a long time I looked to my ministry/career as my source of real joy. As long as that was going well and people liked what I was doing, all was well. But whenever I was criticized or people didn’t respond as positively as I’d hoped, I felt discouraged and depressed. But that’s what happens when you try to find joy in temporary things.
By God’s grace, I am learning to let go of my expectation that my career, other people, material possessions, or my performance in life will bring real contentment. I work hard and do my best to make a positive contribution in my job and in other areas of life. But those roles, titles and positions of influence will eventually fade, and I don’t want my joy to fade with them. Rather, I want my joy to be based on something that doesn’t fade away.
I may or may not be a sought-after worship leader or speaker. I may or may not be the most popular professor. I may or may not be famous, have books published, or be “the man.” I have limited control over those things anyway. There are many Christian leaders today whose sense of self-worth and self-identity is very closely tied to their perceived “success” in ministry. My heart breaks for them because it is a dark place to live and I don’t want to go there again. Ministry can become its own form of idolatry if we’re not careful.
I pray that you would understand one thing: Christ is enough for you. He is enough for your strength, contentment, self-worth, satisfaction, and joy. He has called you to serve in whatever you’re doing, but don’t look to external measurement of “success” to measure your worth. Your worth as a person–and your deepest joy–comes from knowing that Christ loves you deeply as his uniquely created child…without condition.
The writer who has helped me explore these things more than anyone else is Henri Nouwen. Earlier this week I took part of an afternoon and re-read In the Name of Jesus, the single book (besides the Bible) that has influenced my thinking more than any other. I just started a newer book of his called Spiritual Direction. I would highly recommend his works to any Christian who wants to grow in their love of Jesus.
January 12, 2010 10 Comments
For those of you who to go church regularly and participate in contemporary worship, I have a question for you: Have you ever noticed that worship leaders and those who are singing and playing on stage sometimes close their eyes? This occurred to me tonight as I was leading worship at our Convocation service at St. Louis Christian College. I was on stage with the worship team and during the last couple of songs (“Holy, Holy, Holy” and “Revelation Song”) I noticed myself closing my eyes.
This has always seemed to be a natural response for me when leading worship, especially during slower, more intimate songs. But what does closing your eyes really accomplish?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I close my eyes or step away from the mic for a few moments it’s a way to focus on God and the meaning of what we’re singing. I guess it’s also an attempt to shut out my view of the people facing me. When you’re on stage with a guitar and a mic, and lots of people are in the congregation, it’s very hard to escape the notion that on some level it’s a performance. When I close my eyes I remember that this is for God, as well as the people.
I don’t claim to be anything special when it comes to leading worship. In fact, I feel a little bit rusty these days and have been longing for the opportunity to do it again week to week. But one thing I do know: it is tempting to overestimate the importance of the human factor in worship. It’s easy to “pump up” the crowd when you know the songs they love and what kind of things will draw a response from that particular group. But the point of worship is not to get people excited, it’s to help us re-tell and re-call the Gospel, which is the content of worship.
Worship leaders are like dinner hosts–we prepare the table and invite the guests, but it’s God who provides the actual nourishment. I think if we faithfully serve what God has provided, it frees us from having to rely on manufactured emotion to make worship worthwhile.
So if you see me on stage and I close my eyes while I’m supposed to be leading, it’s because I’m trying to remember that despite all the appearances of modern worship, it’s not a performance.
December 13, 2009 Leave a comment
As a follow-up to my previous post describing my experience with the online service at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, I wanted to share a few random thoughts:
Most Christians today still hold the mindset that we have to attend church in a physical location on Sunday morning. But this mindset has been challenged over the last couple of decades with mid-week worship (i.e. Willow Creek), Saturday night services, home groups, and now online church. Online church is simply one more addition to the growing number of alternative to traditional Sunday morning worship. Or is it? Is there something fundamentally different about attending an online service?
Yes and no. Probably the most notable difference (from a worship standpoint) is that you can’t participate in congregational singing while sitting at home. On the other hand, it’s also possible to sit in a sanctuary with 1,000 people and not participate either. In fact, you can pretty much do everything “alone” at a physical service if you want to. It is entirely possible to walk into church and not speak to anyone, sing, or participate in any other way. It is not difficult, especially at a large church, to come to a service and leave without speaking to a single person. My point is this: if your main criticism of online church is the fact that people experience at home alone in front of their computers, this solitude isn’t necessarily corrected just by being in a church building with others on Sunday morning. Attending a physical megachurch service doesn’t guarantee that you have any real relationships.
I would make the same case for communion. In most evangelical churches, communion is not really a corporate activity. We pass trays, we each take bread and juice, and it’s a very individualized thing. There is not much that is truly “communal” about it. That’s why I like celebrating communion in a fashion where you interact with people or have to get out of your seat.
What about the fact that Central doesn’t celebrate communion weekly? This seems pretty radical for a Restoration Movement church. I confess I don’t know why they don’t celebrate it weekly, but I assume they have good reasons for doing so. The New Testament doesn’t command weekly communion, but it was the practice of early Christians to do it weekly. I don’t think a person’s faith lives or dies by weekly communion. I prefer it weekly, and that’s what I have done my whole life, but there is no biblical command to do it weekly. Read more of this post
December 13, 2009 Leave a comment
One of my responsibilities as a Professor of Worship is to keep tabs on new developments in my field. For a while now, I’ve been wanting to try out “online” church. Over the past few months I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few different churches and share a little of what I experienced. Since I didn’t have any teaching or music responsibilities at my church this morning, I thought I’d attend church “online” and see what it was like.
Central Christian Church in Las Vegas is the only Christian Church I know that has an online service, so this was my default choice. They have two options: the online campus and the Facebook campus. I brought up both pages and the Facebook video stream seemed a little better, so I logged into FB and experienced the service this way.
The service opened with a worship set, and as you’d expect, the music was very good. The worship team opened with a really creative blending of “Joy to the World” and Chris Tomlin’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” that began with the string riff from Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” It was a brilliant arrangement. The rest of the set was fairly standard guitar-driven modern worship, but done well. I was intrigued by their cover of Mercy Me’s “Little Drummer Boy,” and thought it was interesting to use as a congregational song. (On a less spiritual note, I also thought one of the guitar players looked a lot like Jon Favreau, the actor and director of Iron Man, but that’s beside the point.)
So how does it work to participate in group singing in the comfort of your home? I guess it depends on your perspective. I turned the sound up a little louder for this section of the service to try and duplicate the feeling of being at church. This worked to some degree, but the bottom line is that you can’t really duplicate congregational singing sitting in front of a computer alone. I did, however, really enjoy and appreciate the music and sang along part of the time.
After the music the worship leader encouraged people to greet one another, and said hello to people attending online. (I said hello to the others attending the Facebook service – I recall there were about 13 of us.) Then there was a video just for those online, and host mentioned that around 4,000 people had given their lives to Christ via the online campus, and over 2,300 had followed through with baptism. The host also encouraged us to donate online and thanked those who give online on a regular basis. He also mentioned that about 3,000 people a week attend an online service at Central. Read more of this post
November 24, 2009 Leave a comment
Remember the hit movie “Titanic” that came out in the 90′s? The director, James Cameron, has another movie coming out next month, titled “Avatar.” I would be hard pressed to describe the story, but it looks interesting. (And judging by the 3D trailer I saw in front of “A Christmas Carol” yesterday, it looks great.) Below is an interview with Cameron from 60 Minutes. (I think there is one mild curse word in the interview, just FYI.) The most interesting part of the interview to me was the discussion near the beginning about the story vs. special effects. “Avatar” looks like a feast for the eyes, but Cameron stresses that the story is really the key element.
The most memorable movies have stories that connect with people. They may feature great visual effects, but the movies that last and are universally loved and remembered are the ones with a great story. On the other hand, movies that are long on special effects and short on story and character may do well at the box office, but are quickly forgotten. (The “Transformers” movies immediately come to mind.) Any good director will tell you that visual effects must serve the greater purpose of telling a good story.
Special effects change over time. What was innovative a few years or decades ago seems hokey and out-of-date today because of the constant advance in technology and the tastes of audiences. So visual effects aren’t bad, and in fact can be quite helpful. But they shouldn’t exist for their own sake.
It’s much the same with worship. Every tradition of worship features some form of “special effects.” These can range from the evangelical emphasis on music and technology, to the liturgical and Catholic use of vestments and bells, and to the Orthodox use of icons and incense. Every Christian worship tradition has practices and elements that help people to worship. However, they don’t exist for themselves, but rather to help us remember and enter into God’s great Story: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Re-Creation. They support, enhance, and focus worship, but they should never become the focus themselves.
This Christmas season, I encourage all of us to remember the heartbeat of Christmas: worshiping the God who gave himself unselfishly. The shopping, Christmas music, church programs, TV shows, Christmas traditions… all of those are great, but what really matters is the story of salvation embodied in a tiny child born in a manger.
November 16, 2009 2 Comments
As I sit here at my desk and glance to my left, I see a whole section section of books on the topic of “leadership.” I must have several dozen of them. I also have several of these books on my desk, about two feet away from me, including The Leadership Challenge, We Shall Not Fail (about the leadership of Winston Churchill), and Lincoln on Leadership. Leadership and its related components is a hot topic among not only ministers, but educators, business professionals, and just about every other segment of society.
Here’s what I find interesting: in all of the instructions in the New Testament, and in the words of Jesus in the Gospels, we don’t find very much specific material about leadership. We do, however, find lots of material about what it means to follow Jesus and live our faith in the day-to-day world.
There is a great deal of conversation these days about how the church needs better leaders. Of course we need good leadership; that is a given. But what we really need are better followers. We need leaders who follow Jesus. In other words, we need people who are disciples first, and leaders second.
Jesus never said, “Go lead.” Instead, he said “Follow me.” We are called first and foremost to be followers, and then to be leaders. The funny thing is, I’ve had plenty of training on leadership–innumerable conferences, books, lessons, sermons, you name it–but precious little on “followership” (or what is called “discipleship” in the Bible). Ironically, the better we follow, the better we’ll lead.
I think we should put a moratorium on all the conferences, books and training related to leadership until we can all learn to follow Jesus just a little bit better.
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