Worship Podcast
To the frustrated worship leader…
Thank you for serving the people of God week in and week out.
Thank you for choosing songs carefully and for singing your guts out.
Thank you for the hours invested in making your band sound great.
Thank you for caring about the local church – loving what God loves and prioritizing His priorities.
I know you may not feel appreciated.
There isn’t a soul among us who wishes that musicians would stop showing up at our church.
Nobody longs for the day when high quality, skilled, volunteers would just find somewhere else to go. No one.
If you and I could have coffee right now, I’m sure we could talk for hours about the volunteer positions we need filled – about the amazing crop of musicians we just lost to the impending fall semester.
We all need more musicians.
The line between rockstar and worship leader seems to be getting closer and closer in our culture.
We consumers travel from concert to concert, album to album in search of the latest greatest talent.
Because of this, we can almost equate worship ministry as a talent show. Whoever has the greatest, most crowd-pleasing talent leads the best worship.
Today, we’re going to strip it all away and look at worship ministry at its foundation. What if worship ministry was more of a local, pastoral calling than it was a platform for your gifting?
If you lead worship, there’s a question you should be asking on a constant basis.
Not…what songs should I do?
What creative elements can I add?
How skinny is too skinny when it comes to jeans?
Should we use two electric guitars?
What loops are we going to use?
These questions are great, but there’s something that needs needs to come first. The problem is, so few are asking this.
We can be so caught in our worship subcultures that we don’t see clearly enough to ask this most important question.
Today’s post is more of a poll than it is a teaching.
I want to know…what worship style are you?
Piano? Banjo? Organ? Guitar? Synth? Vocoder?
A few weeks ago I shared my criteria for selecting new songs as well as how I find new songs.
A friend of mine messaged me privately when I mentioned who the “staple” songwriters were that I look for.
You see, he leads worship with predominantly “Black Gospel” music. The most “crossover” artist he does is Israel Houghton. But he’s into songs from Judith Christie-McAllister, John P. Kee, William Murphy, Vashawn Mitchell, James Fortune, Charles Jenkins, Kurt Carr, Byron Cage, and Fred Hammond.
Me? These songwriters and artists aren’t even on my radar. But the question begs to be asked: should they be?