I have been doing a lot of thinking over the last few years on the majority of our church's paradigm shift to (I hate the word due to baggage) "contemporary worship". In this post I want to talk about what I think are two main keys that in my opinion will help any worship leader in this paradigm or in any other. These would be:
1. Song Selection, and
2. Player Selection
In the past I did not give much attention to these factors, focusing more on service planning, transitions, rehearsing the band, and thinking through personal instrument choices. In recent days I have come to embrace different values in leading worship. Not that the former things are bad, but I believe they need to take a back seat to song selection and player selection.
Song Selection:
Are our songs Christ-Centered? There is a wealth of "contemporary" songs out there these days. There are almost too many to pick from and we could lead our congregations in a new song every Sunday if we wanted to. But how many of those songs really point to the gospel in a clear and worshipful way? I want to know that after each Sunday we have provided a vision of the cross and all that entails and not just an "emotional high". Not that emotions are not important, biblically, we know that they are, but too often in our current worship culture we can sing songs that just speak of OUR love for Jesus and not focusing on what he has done and will do for the sake of his glory. Second, are our songs hard for our people to sing? We need to be presenting music that is accessible to our congregations. Is the range of the song too diverse? Is the verse to rhythmic for people to follow after the first few times? As leaders in music it may be easy for us and satisfying for us, but we need to bend to the needs of our people and serve them with music that is not over their heads.
Player Selection:
Excellence should be defined by the leadership of each local congregation, and especially by the lead pastor and lead worshipper. Thus, standards of excellence will vary greatly from congregation to congregation. That being said, are the people that we are putting up front to facilitate worship hindering our focus on Christ, or helping? Are we placing people in positions simply because we feel the need to fit into some “contemporary” form of bass, drums and guitar, rather than looking to who God has provide in our congregation who can play with excellence? Maybe you only have a violin, and bass guitar and piano, but if all of these people can play up to the standard of excellence that the leadership has set it would more effective than trying to fit people who are less skilled into some prescribed form that we learned from the current “contemporary” worship model. Is excellence king? By no means, humility is, but if we discredit it we may fail to honor God and our people.
Let us cease to believe the lie that God’s spirit moves through basses, guitars and drums. Ministry has always been and always will be about God’s spirit moving through faith filled people, not through forms that come and go. Thus we don’t NEED anything other than surrendered hearts to reach a post-modern generation. All the hip techniques that we learn about in conferences and in books about reaching people will come and go. The great commission and the great commandment will stay the same. May we primarily focus on these things first in our preaching, praying and loving and perhaps give all those techniques and forms secondary attention.
If a humble worship leader would spend a majority of time picking the right songs and picking the right people I think they would be well on their way to God-honoring worship leading.
There is much more to say, but we’ll save that for later…
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