Category: Leading a congregation

Don’t Treat Sunday Morning Like It’s Youth Group

I cut my teeth leading worship at youth group for my church. Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, retreats, and mission trips provided invaluable opportunities to grow. I got to gain experience, make mistakes, learn, receive input, run something resembling a rehearsal, learn how to operate a basic sound system, and enjoy some sweet times of worship.

I think every worship leader should start off this way. Even if they’re out of the youth group age bracket, starting off small, starting off in a casual setting, and starting off with lots of freedom is a great way to build confidence and competence.

But for those who grow up or start off leading worship in a youth group environment, an important shift has to take place at some point. When we begin leading worship on Sunday mornings we can’t treat it like it’s youth group anymore. We can’t be as loose, as cutesy, or as casual anymore. We have to grow up, the way we lead worship has to be more mature, and the way we present ourselves has to be different.

I recently saw a worship leader start off a service this way:

“Good mornin’ everybody! Get on up ya’ll. Hey Willy! Everybody say hey Willy! (Scattered hoots and hollers). If ya’ll don’t know who Willy is just clap anyway. Let me read you this Scripture now…”

Seriously? You’re going to start off a Sunday morning worship service that way?

Call me old-fashioned (and I’ll laugh at you) but I think a teeny bit more decorum is appropriate for the central worship gathering of a congregation. Having everybody clap for Willy is fine for youth group. But on a Sunday morning it smacks of flippancy, and I’m not sure that does a worship leader any favors, especially with the older generations in the room.

My guess is that a good majority of worship leaders who are serving churches right now and leading music of the more contemporary flavor started out doing so in youth group. Many of them serve under pastors or music directors who have helped them mature in how they present themselves. But others haven’t. Maybe they serve under a pastor who’s the same age as them and doesn’t really care if they treat Sunday morning like it’s youth group. Maybe no one has ever mentioned this to them.

Here’s why this matters.

If you treat Sunday morning like it’s youth group, the young and young-at-heart won’t really notice, but the older and old-at-heart will. This will turn them off.

If you treat Sunday morning with a bit more maturity and preparation, no one will complain.

If I were you, I would choose the second option.

Yes, be yourself. Yes, relax. And yes, help people feel comfortable. But don’t take that too far. Don’t be flippant. Don’t be cutesy. Don’t draw attention to your relaxed-ness by being so relaxed that people can’t help but notice how relaxed you are.

You should lead differently depending on a wide range of factors: the venue, the time of day, the average age in the room, the average (can this be measured?) spiritual maturity in the room, the repertoire they’re used to, time constraints, etc. The list is endless.

But the point is that part of growing as a worship leader is growing up and learning to adapt how you lead and how you present yourself in order to serve God’s people more effectively. No two services are the same. No two sessions at a retreat are the same. You need to adapt.

Don’t treat Sunday morning like it’s youth group. Treat it like it’s Sunday morning. Treat youth group like it’s youth group. The two are very different, and so should your approach to them be.

A Song of Trust in God

A few Sundays ago, June 17th, at our 11:00am service I got the sense that as we were singing familiar songs we were at risk of, yet again, doing what congregations can so often do, and that’s rush through, hurry along, and miss opportunities for heart-felt engagement with the living God.

We had a choir of men from our congregation that morning since it was Father’s day. I had chosen several familiar songs since we didn’t have much time to rehearse. But as we got to the end of “Shout to the Lord” I had a strong impression that God wanted us to put the brakes on, to come to a halt, to slow down, and to simply rest.

As a worship leader you can’t always bring things to a place of rest when you want to. We often want more time than we get, and we have to honor the Lord by honoring our pastor and keep things in the confines he’s given us. And we also have to be conscious of the fact that just because we’re a little frustrated with a disengaged congregation it doesn’t mean we should say so!

But on this particular Sunday I felt strongly enough about it to discern it was the Holy Spirit’s leading, so instead of rushing on to the next song, I sang a simple, spontaneous, song of trust in God. Several people mentioned after the service that it was helpful, so for them and for you, I’m posting it below.

So we run to you, O Lord
We hide ourselves in You
We come to you, O Lord
We trust in You

We cast our burdens at your feet
We lay our worries in your hands
We bring our lives to you, our Lord
We give our hearts to you, our King

You are our shelter, You are our help
You are our comfort and our defender
You are our Savior, You are our shield
And you never fail, You never fail

Time after time, day after day
Morning after morning your mercies are new
Lord, we love You. God, we trust You

You are our shelter and our comfort
And our shield

You’ll notice pretty quickly that these aren’t the most impressive words in the world. They didn’t need to be. They served a simple purpose that morning which was to help people settle in to a place of trust in God, instead of rushing through the songs and getting on to whatever was next.

Be sensitive, as you lead worship, to the moments when God wants you to put the brakes on. It’s in those moments that you might end up taking risks — some of which might not work at all — and God reveals himself afresh.

Where is Your Confidence?

Do you feel panicky when you’re not as rehearsed as you’d like to be? Do you feel anxious when you see a really full room looking back at you (or empty chairs)? Does your heart start racing before the service is about to start? If you make a mistake (say something dumb, forgot to take your capo off, mess up a song) do your agonize over it for days and replay it in your head?

If you’ve never experienced these sensations while serving as a worship leader, you’re not normal. But if scenarios above describe a regular experience for you as a worship leader, you’re missing the point. God very kindly allows us to feel all of these things – panicky, anxious, nervous, obsessive and embarrassed – so that we cease to seek our confidence in ourselves.

God is all about revealing the idols of our hearts and mercifully taking them away from us. For worship leaders, a common idol is self-sufficiency and self-centeredness. Feelings of anxiety are good for us because they serve a purpose: they remind us of our utter need for God.

The temptation is to think that if you’re panicky, you should have rehearsed more. Or if you’re anxious, then you’re not a good enough worship leader. Or if your heart is racing, you’re not ready for the big leagues. Or if you made a mistake (by the way, every worship leader in the world makes mistakes every single Sunday) that you ruined the service. None of these are true.

Maybe you should have rehearsed less, not more. Maybe you’re a great worship leader and you just need to relax. Maybe God has prepared you for this exact moment and you need to trust in him. Maybe your mistakes are helpful reminders to you (and your team and your congregation) that you’re a real person.

In all cases, and for all worship leaders, God is consistently reminding us that our confidence can’t be in rehearsals, polish, skill, or experience. All of those things are good things and you should pursue them. But none of them should be where we find our confidence. Our confidence is in God.

This might sound trite to you. It’s not. It’s the first building block of worship leading and if this one gets shaky, then everything else does too.

Allow God to humble you. Allow God to remind you that you need Him. Relax on Sunday morning and don’t stress over all the details and transitions and notes and chords and people and pressures. Fix your eyes on Jesus and you won’t sink. Look away from him and you will. He is our confidence!

God is Not Like Kim Jong Il

On Friday night I watched a fascinating National Geographic documentary on North Korea. Lisa Ling travels there with a camera crew accompanying a Nepalese eye surgeon. He’s allowed in on a humanitarian mission to perform 1,000 cataract surgeries in 10 days.

You might have seen the clips on the news from when Kim Jong Il died this past December. The mass display of mourning and weeping was, literally, unbelievable. This is an entire nation driven by indoctrinated fear to worship its “dear leader” or “great leader” or “supreme leader” or “eternal president”, whomever that may be. This documentary shows this worship up-close, even in the living room of a blind North Korean woman, who dreams of having her blinding cataract removed so she can gaze upon a portrait of the dear leader himself.

The final scenes are breathtaking. Filmed one day after the surgeries, when their eyes have had time to heal, and their eye patches are removed, one-by-one, the North Koreans approach the giant portraits of their dear leader and “eternal president” to, literally, praise him, thank him for healing their eyes, and promise to serve him even better.

I still can’t get past what one woman said. Immediately after having her eye patches removed and realizing she could see again she declared: “Great General, I will work harder at the salt mines to get more salt to bring you more happiness”.

I realized I was watching a worship service. It was unlike the services you or I are a part of every Sunday, but it was unmistakably a worship service. Kim Jong Il was God, the people in the room were his servants, they were there to praise him for what he had done for them, and the goal of it all was to make their dear leader happy. It was dutiful. You could tell they were afraid of him. It felt forced. But it’s what they have to do if they don’t want to get sent to a death camp.

It reminded me of John Piper’s letter to the atheist Michael Prowse who had written in a newspaper article of the absurdity (to him) of Christian worship. Prowse’s main objection was that if a morally perfect God did exist, then he surely wouldn’t demand praise. Isn’t it evil to demand praise?

Yes, if your name is Kim Jong Il. No if your name is God.

Piper wrote:

“…God’s demand for supreme praise is his demand for our supreme happiness. Deep in our hearts we know that we are not made to be made much of. We are made to make much of something great. The best joys are when we forget ourselves, enthralled with greatness. The greatest greatness is God’s. Every good that ever thrilled the heart of man is amplified ten thousand times in God. God is in a class by himself. He is the only being for whom self-exaltation is essential to love. If he ‘humbly’ sent us away from his beauty, suggesting we find our joy in another, we would be ruined.”

He continues:

“…the reason God seeks our praise is not because he won’t be complete until he gets it. He is seeking our praise because we won’t be happy until we give it. This is not arrogance. It is love.”

Our churches are full of people who, whether they realize it or not, think that God needs their worship. And this is why our churches are full of people who don’t enjoy it. Why should they? If it’s all for God and not for them, then why in the world are we singing for 25 minutes? Isn’t one song enough for God? Why should I clap or lift my hands to try to impress God? Why didn’t I just sleep in and run some errands or work on my lawn?

God is not like Kim Jung Il. Or any other “human tyrant puffed up with pride”. We don’t approach God to tell him how much harder we’ll work at the salt mines to bring him more happiness.

We approach God like a deer coming to a stream of water (Psalm 42:1) to drink. We approach God’s throne of grace with confidence because of his son (Hebrews 4:16) to receive mercy and grace to help in time of need. We come to God as his children to the praise of his glorious grace (Ephesians 1:5-6).

As I watched these oppressed, malnourished, terrorized North Koreans approach their wicked dear leader’s portrait to offer him praise and dedication to make him more happy, my heart broke for them. If only they could see, and freely worship, a kind and merciful Redeemer who will save them, love them, and satisfy them.

If only more of our churches could see him too. We may not live in North Korea but we can often be just prone to dutiful, joyless worship as those people in the documentary.

God is not like Kim Jong Il. His demand for our supreme praise is not for his happiness, but for ours. May we pursue joy in God and lead people in that pursuit as well as we can.