Beyond Sunday Worship

Worship Podcast & Blog

Leading Your Team & Congregation Through Worship Tensions

This new blog series is all about the differences we have when it comes to worship. Head and heart. Skill and passion. Unbeliever and Christian.

We all come from many church traditions. Everywhere we’ve been affects what we believe and where we are going. What you value may be different than what I value.

The question is, do you now what you value? Why do you do the specific things you do as a worship leader? In this series we’ll face these tensions head on and discuss practical ways to lead our teams and our congregations through them.

I had a very insightful Twitter conversation a few days ago in response to a great post from Tim Hughes. He talks about how we’ve become too song-centered – how in our focus on excellence and creativity we’ve forgotten how to simply cry out to God for extended periods of time.

If this is the case, something needs to change. And I agree with Tim.

But are we supposed to throw all our eggs in one basket?

How do we hold these tensions together?

Which is better? Should we hold them together? Are any of these wrong? That’s what we’ll discuss in this series. I look forward to interacting with you.

Question: I need your help with this. What are some other worship tensions you would like me to write about? Please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

You should also check out my other blog series. You can find them here!

Comments

  1. Arny says

    You know, it’s a hard thing to be a worship leader…well, it’s easy to be a worship leader (per say) in a big church maybe where mostly everyone is enganged…

    But when you lead worship to not so enganged and bored like teenagers and young adults in groups of like about 30-50 count….then it because a little more difficult to intertwine these tensions together…

    So i would say another tension is still worshiping with all your heart even when you look at the audience and they are NOT engaged whatsoever! that is tuff…

  2. Brandon says

    Great thoughts…maybe you could do something about fresh, new music vs hymns. Should we or should we not use hymns in the service because they are old. I have heard this a lot…

          • Brandon says

            Yes there is. I am not totally against hymns or anything, but I do think that we need to play music that is newer and more intune with today. God can speak through any song, but those are just my opinions about it…

  3. Elizabeth Rhyno says

    How about:

    Worship for the individual AND worship for the community
    Beauty of creative expression AND everything stripped away

    I love where your series is heading – looking forward to reading more!

  5. Sam L says

    How about the tension of working with a senior Pastor who doesn’t “get” music, or maybe one who is very particular about it?

  6. Thomas Pryde says

    There are a lot of good topics for consideration…looking forward to it. Here is one I have thought about a lot recently: Using the Psalms as a pattern for worship music should split the difference between the questions of old vs. new and the hymn vs. pop in an interesting way.

    Another tension that might be interesting to explore is the tension (“balance” is probably better) between speaking toward God and speaking toward one another.

    In many of the tensions you have mentioned, I am not sure there really is a tension, except in underlying assumptions about whether and how music communicates (without words).

    • David Santistevan says

      Good points Thomas! I’ve never thought about that tension between speaking to God and speaking to one another. Thanks for the comment!

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