Heart attitudes – Page 2 – Worthily Magnify

Four Wrong Turns On The Road To Performancism

The evangelical church is at a worship crossroads.

A generation of older, baby-boomer, not-so-hipster worship leaders are in the last decade or two of their full-time ministry. And a new generation of younger, Generation X, youthfully vigorous worship leaders have taken (or are about to take) the wheel. They are determining the trajectory of worship in music all around the world and will be at the helm for the next 20-30 years.

As a card-carrying member of this generation, I say that we have some very important decisions to make. Can this trend towards performancism be reversed? Can we spend “our turn” stewarding our ministries in such a way that orients the worship of the church more strongly towards the glory of God in Jesus Christ and away from the performance of the people on stage?

It’s important to know the wrong turns that have led much of the evangelical worship world to where it is today: embracing a trend of performancism in worship.

Wrong turn # 1: Away from substance
The message really does matter. The means matter, but when the means become the message, or obscure the message, and when this is OK with us, we have lost our bearings. Sadly, too many in the evangelical worship world have lost their bearings, and the style is predominant, while the substance is subordinate. Our message is the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ. The only hope for the world.

In our different contexts, we can and should use any musical means we can to exalt him. But it must always be about exalting him. Is the message crystal clear? Let’s not settle for obscurity. We must ensure that Jesus (the substance) is always front and center, and the music (the style) is always pointing to, magnifying, proclaiming, exalting, and celebrating him. We can’t turn away from this.

Wrong turn # 2: Away from congregational singing
One of the most stunning descriptions of worship in heaven comes in Revelation 5:11-13 when John says that he “looked, and… heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!’ And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!‘”

Not only is the substance of the worship in heaven crystal clear, but the sound of countless voices worshipping “him who sits on the throne and… the Lamb” together is crystal clear as well. How about in our churches?

Worship leaders: we are tragically losing our priority for congregational singing, under the guise of offering people an “experience”. What people need to experience during corporate worship is the corporate praising of Jesus. There is no greater experience to offer people than to stand among others who are lifting their hearts and voices in praise. As wonderful as good effects, art, lighting, arrangements, videos, buildings, liturgy, and pipe organs are, they pale in comparison to the sound of human voices lifted together in worship of God. A worship leader who doesn’t cultivate a singing congregation over time isn’t fulfilling the number one most important part of his job.

If we continue to settle for offering people worship “experiences” and settling for lackluster or even non-existent singing, we are setting evangelical worship on a sure course towards a crash into a wall of flashy, unsatisfying performances. We must lead with a invitational, pastoral heart to draw others in to singing praise with all of heaven. The best kind of “congregational experience” is congregational singing.

Wrong turn # 3: Away from the gospel
I’ve sat through entire church services, listened to entire worship albums, and attended entire conference sessions where the gospel is assumed, not proclaimed, as if everyone in the room has heard the gospel before, has that box checked, and except for when it pops up in a popular song, we don’t really need to emphasize that whole gospel thing very much.

Practically, the gospel assumed is the gospel omitted. Worship leaders, we have a responsibility to our congregations to ensure the centrality of the gospel in our worship services.

It’s Jesus’ “streams of mercy, never ceasing” that “call for songs of loudest praise”. It’s Jesus alone who makes a way for us to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16). Christ-centered worship isn’t just a trendy new worship catchphrase. It’s our reality. And we can either choose to center our worship around the good news of Jesus Christ, or we can choose not to. Something will be at the center. What will that “something” be?

When the core is compromised, all the branches are compromised. The core must be the gospel. Must. Must. Must.

Wrong turn # 4: Towards the performers
When you’ve lost your substance, when no one is singing along, and when you’re not centered around the gospel, you gravitate towards hiring/elevating a performer as your worship leader, making him into a mini-celebrity, maybe putting his face on the big screen, and hoping he gets your congregation to worship. The performer/celebrity worship leader phenomenon is troubling and dysfunctional, but it’s a symptom of much deeper problems, and previous “wrong turns” that led to this place.

And this is what has now bubbled up to the surface. Performancism, which requires performers to perpetuate Sunday morning worship performances. But under the surface are deeper issues, and significant wrong turns. We need to commit to addressing the underlying issues, and then we’ll begin to see a change above the surface.

Final thoughts
Lest any of what I’ve written be construed as exclusively relevant to contemporary churches with drums and guitars, let me say loud and clear that formal, high-church, liturgical churches with organs and choirs are just as prone to performancism. The performance of an organist, the offerings of a choir, the recitation of a liturgy, the sacred movements of the clergy and acolytes can all become the same kind of performance prevalent in the mega-church down the street. The choir directors, organists, accompanists, and worship leaders at those churches have just as much reason to step back and evaluate their ministries as the guy with a guitar at a church whose liturgy is pretty much “songs then sermon”.

This crossroads is before all of us, formal and informal, liturgical and non-liturgical, mega or small.

We can go down the road towards performancism and find ourselves with congregations who come to observe the actions of the select few on the platform, hearing words and seeing sights that have little lasting impact on their life, with worship leaders building their little worship kingdoms.

Or we can experience another reformation, and cultivate congregations eager to exalt Christ, engaged with God as they draw near to him together, with hearts fixed on him, all the while being served by musicians whose passion is to see the Church gathering and celebrating the good news of the gospel, encountering a living God through his living Word, in the power of his Holy Spirit.

I want to spend my years stewarding that worship reformation wherever I am. 30 years from now I want to hand off to the next generation a worship ministry with an unmistakable trajectory towards Jesus, for Jesus, through Jesus, about Jesus, and in Jesus.

How about you?

Let’s All Be A Bit More Childish

I am a big proponent of worship leaders thinking seriously about their role, thinking deeply about their theology, thinking practically about their skills, and thinking critically about current trends and pressures. A lack of introspection, evaluation, and hard conversations will inevitably result in a shallowness and flimsiness that doesn’t serve the Church well. To put it succinctly, worship leaders should always be growing up.

But if there is a downside to all of this serious/deep/practical/critical thinking, it could be that sometimes we lose our childishness.

There is such a wealth (praise God) these days of solid resources/articles/blogs/videos/conferences/books aimed at getting worship leaders to grow up and into their pastoral role and their function as ministers of the gospel. Most of the time it’s all really solid stuff. But sometimes I fear that some of it might run the risk of making us lose our childishness.

In the gospels, we have three different accounts of Jesus embracing children, saying “let the little children come to me” (Matthew 19:14, but also in Luke 18:16 and Mark 10:14). In all three accounts, people bring their children to Jesus, the disciples try to keep the children away, and Jesus tells the disciples to stop. And then Jesus says that he wishes everyone was more like the children!

Fundamentally, we must always come to Jesus like a child. Helpless. Transparent. Needy. Light-hearted. And, yes, clueless. But the thing about a child’s cluelessness is that it’s two sided: (1) they don’t know a lot of stuff that grown-ups know, but (2) they don’t know what they don’t know (and they don’t care). Is it any wonder why Jesus points to childishness as an ideal?

There’s a difference between childishness and immaturity. And to all the resources, articles, blogs, videos, conferences, and books aimed at helping worship leaders grow and mature, I say “the more the merrier”. But when I start to feel like I’m a child being turned away from Jesus because I don’t know enough stuff, I start to get nervous. And so should you.

So where’s the balance?

1. Always pursue growth. And always pursue leading in a more mature, skillful way. That honors the God who gave you the gifts you have (and some gifts you might not know you have).

2. Stay childish. And help your congregation stay childish too. Come to Jesus like little children. You might not know everything, you might not say everything the right way, and (gasp) you might even exhibit joy in your body/hands/feet (children are known to do that from time to time…) But that’s what you do when you’re a child. You’re helpless, transparent, needy, light-hearted, and clueless too.

In the disciples eyes, there seemed to be two different types of people around Jesus: the disciples and the children. Perhaps Jesus’ point was that, if he had his way, there wouldn’t be any difference between the two? Worship leaders, let’s not forget it.

And Now Please Admire My Musicianship

We’ve all experienced that awkward moment when someone tries to say something nice about you but you take it as an insult. You’re not quite sure how to take it, how to respond, or how to process what they’ve said.

Several years ago I was having a conversation with someone I knew fairly well, and this person attempted to encourage me about my worship leading by saying: “Jamie, the thing about your worship leading is that no one walks away from one of your services thinking to themselves ‘wow, he’s a great musician‘”.

Um… thanks?

I know what the person was trying to say. I know the heart behind it. They were trying to say that I didn’t draw attention to myself. There is no higher compliment that can be paid to a worship leader than that. The problem wasn’t with what they said or even how they said it. The problem was with my heart: I wanted my musicianship to be admired.

I didn’t want my musicianship to be admired too much, of course. But I didn’t want my musicianship to be admired too little, either. And that was what I was afraid was happening. I was afraid that people didn’t appreciate me for the musician that I am. And I’m sure you can’t relate to what I’m saying at all.

Yeah right.

We can’t blame it on our artistic temperament. We can blame it on our sinful nature. We want to be the ones lifted high and exalted. And so we feed our desire for adoration with a sometimes-subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle attitude from the platform that basically says to the congregation “and now please admire my musicianship”. While I play this solo, while I do this postlude, while I play five instruments in one service, while I use six different tunings on one song, while I do a three-minute song introduction, while I do this song in a key that’s terrible for most voices but amazing for mine, while I sing this song that no one could ever sing along to and that’s kind of the point, or while I fill all the musical spaces instead of letting someone else.

And so on. We can get really good at doing little things to help people remember and appreciate that they’re really quite fortunate to hear us every Sunday. Lord, have mercy!

When my friend said those encouraging words to me and I took them as an insult, the Holy Spirit was putting his finger on an area of recurrent pride, that if not called out and killed, will grow into a ministry-destroying monster. It’s like those pesky weeds outside my house that never want to go away. I can either feed them or I can destroy them. There’s not really a third option.

Of course you’d never think of actually saying the words “and now please admire my musicianship” on a Sunday morning. That’s too blatantly egotistical! But those might be the very words you send without even realizing it.

Examine yourself. Simplify your leadership. You don’t need to do, in one service, all that you’re capable of doing. You don’t need to operate within the full parameters of your musical gifting every Sunday. No one needs to know how versatile you are. Is that glissando really necessary or do just want to sound awesome? Tie one hand behind your back if you need to. Whatever it takes.

May it be said of us very often: no one walks away from our services thinking “wow, what a great musician”. They walk away thinking “wow, what a great God”. We have got to decrease, my friends. For God’s sake, we must.

Do You Love to Worship Jesus?

For all of the practicalities and technicalities that we talk about when it comes to serving as a worship leader, there is one thing that is the most important of all: that you love to worship Jesus. You can pick great songs, lead an awesome band, have smooth transitions, sing beautifully, play proficiently, and have a command of the stage, but if you’re not enthralled with Jesus then pack it up and go home.

It’s totally possible to become such a professional, to gain experience, to have tenure, and to get really good at your job, that you take Jesus for granted, your heart becomes hard to him, and that you mostly go through the motions, maybe even closing your hands and raising your hands, but without genuine affection for Jesus.

The number one quality you should be seeking to foster in yourself as a worship leader is the quality of a worshipper. Someone whose heart beats to worship Jesus, whose lips prefer no other song above a song of praise, and whose soul is never satisfied by anything else than the goodness of God.

Forget all the programming and performing and fame and stage lights and people looking at you and the camera pointed at your face and the critical guy sitting in the front row. Forget all the current fads and bands and music with whom you’re supposed to be up-to-date. Forget it all. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you love Jesus more. Be a worshipper of Jesus. Love to worship him.

Watch this talk by Gary Millar, given at the 2013 “The Gospel Coalition” conference and let it help you remember just how amazing Jesus is, and what a shame it is when we take him for granted.

Ten Worship Leading Non-Negotiables

There is so much good and helpful advice for worship leaders out there that I thought I’d try my hand at condensing it all down into 10 non-negotiables.

You are not the center.
You make Jesus the center.
Your priority is helping the congregation sing with faith.
You support your pastor.
You choose songs that are full of truth.
You use musicians who are gifted and have soft hearts toward Jesus.
You tailor the keys and arrangements of songs to serve the people in the room.
Your family comes first.
You’re never alone with someone of the opposite sex who isn’t your spouse.
You won’t ever compromise numbers 1-9.

May we be worship leaders who, at our core, love Jesus, love our congregations, and love our families.