A Letter to the Worship Music Patriarchs

1Dear worship music patriarchs,

I grew up listening to your cassettes and CDs. I watched your tutorial VHS tapes. I went to the conferences where you led and taught. I sang your songs in my bedroom. I led them in my youth group. I cut my teeth leading them on Sunday mornings. I wouldn’t be where I am today without your influence. Worship music wouldn’t be where it is today without the foundation you laid.

Thank you. Thank you for paving the way. Thank you for giving to the church a repertoire and a vocabulary to sing heartfelt songs of praise to God. Thank you for taking risks. Thank you for taking a lot of the bullets during the “worship wars” of the 80s and 90s as pastors, musicians, theologians, congregations, organists, choirs, and bands all tried to figure out what in the world God was up to.

Now it’s 2013. Now you’re surrounded by new trends, new fads, new songs, new albums, new singles, new sounds, new everything. Your role has shifted. It seems to me, from my vantage point, that you’re trying to figure out exactly what your role is now. I’d like to offer a few suggestions.

As a young guy who grew up influenced by you, here is how you could continue to have influence.

Don’t try to be cool. It looks kind of silly when you try to pull off the skinny jeans and scarves and hats. Most of us aren’t really into all that stuff either.

Be an open book with us. Tell us where you’ve made huge mistakes. Tell us what you regret. Tell us what you really think about what you’re seeing in the worship world today. Warn us about pitfalls you see us heading toward.

Demonstrate humility. When you retweet every single compliment about yourself, it makes us think maybe that’s what we should do too. It makes us think that we should be pursuing fleeting fame.

Get on our level. OK, so you’re working on a new album. So you’re singing at a festival. So you’re touring China. So you’re co-writing with Charles Wesley himself. Big deal. How do I deal with my bass player who just wrote me a blistering critical email and copied my whole team? How do I deal with my micro-managing pastor? Help me out.

Write good songs. Maybe all of you could lock yourselves up in a room for two weeks and churn out 10 really good (I mean really good) songs. That would be really helpful. You guys obviously know how to write songs. We could use good ones out here.

Be accessible. Are you the kind of guy who’s accessible only to the rich and famous? Or, if I have a ministry question or a leadership question, can I call you on the phone sometime? Could I bring you to my church for a weekend or do I need to jump through your manager’s hoops? Can I talk to you over Skype sometime? I could really use your wisdom, if I don’t have to pay a whole lot of money in order to get it from you.

Show us how to spend our 50s and 60s well. When I’m your age, is the pinnacle of my worship leading ministry only to be realized as an itinerant, touring, conference-speaking, pseudo-celebrity? That’s what I think sometimes when I see what you’re up to. Or, is the pinnacle of my worship leading ministry going to be realized by hunkered-down, not-glamorous-but-more-rewarding-and-stable service in a normal, local church? I’m interested to see what you do.

Use your platform to exalt Jesus. There’s a whole lot of fluff out there right now. An awful lot of hype. Could you please use your platform to influence the whole worship music industry and movement to retain a Jesus-centrality? Use your platform, your articles, your teaching, your albums, your Twitter feed, and your life to point to Jesus.

Don’t think that your best, most-influential days are behind you. They don’t have to be. A whole generation of worship leaders that grew up listening to your stuff is still looking to you for cues. What cues will you give us?

Gratefully,

Jamie

Three Possible Ways to Help a Congregation Better Engage in Worship

1If your congregation is consistently disengaged in worship, then you’re probably pretty frustrated. There’s no one single solution because there’s not one single problem. But, if I may, here are three possible ways you might be able tinker with things and see a positive result:

1. Have your pastor on stage at the beginning of the service, to welcome people, but more importantly, to call people to worship
In many, many churches these days, during a worship service, the pastor isn’t visible until he appears on stage to preach. He leaves the opening words of welcome, prayer, and invitation to worship to the worship leader. I think this is a mistake. Whether a pastor likes it or not, he is the primary worship leader of a church. When he doesn’t show any passion for sung worship, people get the message that sung worship isn’t important. The pastor of a church should regularly start the services off with words of welcome and an invitation to worship. And by “invitation to worship” I don’t just mean a nice, safe little sentence that no one disagrees with. I mean really encourage and invite people to exalt and encounter God. Make them a little uncomfortable. The pastor should build expectation and model whole-hearted engagement. When he doesn’t, then good luck to any worship leader who tries to get his congregation to not notice.

2. Videotape your team on a couple Sundays and have them watch it back
There’s a reason why this option feels so unattractive at first glance. It’s because you (and your team) don’t want to know how they look leading worship. Well, news flash: your congregation sees it every. single. Sunday. Here’s the number one thing I notice about vocalists on worship teams: they look like they’re auditioning for a singing competition. For goodness sake, it’s not rocket science. If you’re on stage leading worship, you should be worshipping Jesus. Stop trying so hard to nail “the look”. Just worship Jesus. And here’s the number one thing I notice about instrumentalists: they don’t sing. They look bored to tears. They stare at their music stands. And when they start to sing, they actually seem to stop themselves as if it was an accident and they hadn’t really meant to. Get your vocalists and instrumentalists to watch themselves leading worship. How do they look? Bored? Engaged? Embarrassed? You might need to make some people on your team very uncomfortable so they realize they have room to grow.

3. Give your congregation a year of consistency in repertoire, musicianship, and tenor
Here’s what I mean: your congregation might not be engaged because they’ve become defensive. Why have they become defensive? Because they don’t know from Sunday to Sunday, or even from song to song, what to expect. They don’t want to be jostled to and fro, so they batten down their hatches. Use a repertoire that’s consistent, familiar, includes the best of the old and the best of the new. Don’t try too hard to be clever or inventive. Set a bar for musicianship that’s higher than average, and see to it that you meet it every Sunday. Give people confidence that they’re not going to hear better music while on hold with an airline that they’d hear on Sunday morning. And finally, lead with a consistent tenor from week to week. Don’t be happy clappy one week and Taize the next. Yes, you can have variety in your services. But when people wonder from week to week what in the world they’re getting themselves into, they might just stand and watch as spectators.

Two Upcoming Albums

1The last few months I’ve been hard at work recording two very different albums with my church that will be released this Fall. I’m excited about them both!

The first project, “We Will Proclaim: Live Worship with The Falls Church Anglican” was recorded live a few weekends ago (July 13th and 14th) and features many of the same musicians who participated on our first album last year. This album features 14 congregational songs, a mix of familiar/original/contemporary arrangements or retuning of hymns, and follows a liturgical pattern of an Anglican worship service. We incorporated many liturgical elements such as a Call to Worship, the Prayer for Purity, Apostles’ Creed, Confession, General Thanksgiving, and a Benediction. We hope to cram as many songs and liturgical elements onto this album as physically possible! This album features a full band, strings, organ, and loud congregation.

The title “We Will Proclaim” comes from the Matt Redman song “How Great is Your Faithfulness” that we recorded. The chorus of that song says: “The heavens ring, the saints all sing / Great is your faithfulness / From age to age we will proclaim / Great is Your faithfulness / How great is Your faithfulness”. If you know anything about the story of my church over the last few years, you’ll know that we’ve been clinging to this reality that God is faithful. The heart behind this live album is to capture a congregation that’s been tested and tried, and continues to proclaim the faithfulness of God and the power of the gospel. I’m trilled with how this album is turning out, and I’ll share snippets of it with you as soon as I can. You can preorder this album at www.tfcamusic.org.

The second project, “For Our Salvation” is an Advent EP that was also recorded in mid-July using the same musicians from my church, as well as friends from Nashville and L.A. who played on the worship album. This EP features 6 songs, one of which is an instrumental piece, four of which are traditional Advent hymns, and one of which is an original song of mine. An amazing youth choir conducted by my sister-in-law sings on three of the songs, and the whole EP features some of the best string players from Nashville playing original orchestrations by my friend Joshua Spacht.

The title for this EP comes from the hymn “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending” which has the line “Lo! He comes, with clouds descending / Once for our salvation slain”. This echoes the line from the Nicene Creed which says that “for us and for our salvation (Jesus) came down from heaven”. Some of the hymns of Advent can get treated as dusty relics that are inaccessible as songs of worship. This is a shame. The heart behind this EP is to offer these songs as vibrant, powerful tools to worship Jesus as the one who came down for our salvation as a “beautiful baby boy”, and the one who will come again “robed in dreadful majesty”. I’m thrilled with how it’s sounding and I will share it as soon as possible!

My sincere hope and prayer is that these two albums are a blessing to my congregation, a blessing to anyone else who hears them, a tool to help people worship Jesus, and a gift to worship leaders who are always looking for songs to incorporate in their own setting. Every measure of every song was designed to be singable for the average congregation and playable for the average worship team. I’d appreciate your prayers over the next two months as we get them both ready!

How A Full-Time Worship Leader Spends His Week

1I was recently asked the question how a full-time worship leader could spend his week. I put the following breakdown together based on how I spend an average 40-45 hour work week. Of course this is unique to my context, and if my church was different (i.e. offered more services, or had its own building so we could rehearse during the week) this would look different. Recently my “worship recording” responsibilities have swelled to 20-25 hours a week. So, this is an average week for me, when things are normal, and I share it in the event that it’s helpful to you:

Sunday mornings
7:30am – 1:30pm
Set-up, rehearsal, worship leading
6 HOURS

Meetings
1. Music staff meeting (1.5 hours) (this is the meeting of all the worship staff)
2. All staff meeting (1.5 hours)
3. Services meeting (.5 hours) (this is the meeting with all the worship staff and pastors)
4. Misc. meetings (~3.5 hours) (musicians, volunteers, other staff, interruptions, etc.)
7 HOURS

Worship recording responsibilities
1. Overseeing orders and managing finances/marketing/promotion/social media/web presence (2 hours)
2 HOURS

Misc. duties
1. Finances (1 hour) (receipts, reimbursements, check requests, budget, etc.)
2. Email (10 hours)
3. Song research (1 hour) (looking for, listening to, and evaluating new songs and music for congregational use)
4. Professional development (1 hour) (reading a book, magazine, listening to a sermon/lecture/workshop)
5. Maintaining worship leader blog (worthilymagnify.com) (3 hours)
6. Miscellaneous/unplanned needs (2 hours)
18 HOURS

Sunday preparation
1. Song selection (5 hours)
2. Music arranging (1 hour)
3. Rehearsal preparation (1 hour)
4. Rehearsal (1 hour)
8 HOURS

Team management
1. Scheduling (2 hours)
2. Communication/contact/meetings/emails/cultivating (2 hours)
4 HOURS

TOTAL HOURS WORKED, ON AVERAGE:      45 hours

A Theology of Worship

1I was recently asked this question:

What is your theology of worship? Specifically, how do you understand God at work in corporate worship and your purpose and role in worship? 

And I wrote a really long answer. Here’s what I said:

God is infinitely worthy of worship because of who he is and because of what he has done. He is great, he is greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. His greatness and his glory are supremely displayed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, God has lavished his children with undeserved kindness and the glorious riches of his grace. God, the creator and ruler of the world, the judge of all men, and the loving Father who sent his Son as a ransom for many and poured out his Spirit on all flesh, is the object of all of heaven’s praise, and will receive unceasing worship for all eternity.

The glory of God in Jesus Christ must be the central element to a theology of worship. That is the core to which we attach all secondary, yet essential, discussions of corporate worship, music, songs, services, and worship leadership. When the core is compromised, all the branches will die. Worship is, fundamentally, the revolving of oneself around the greatest greatness in the universe: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Why should we revolve our selves, our lives, our families, our songs, our Sunday mornings, and our chapel services around this God? Is it because he’s needy? No. It’s because we’re needy.

In the words of John Piper, “God’s demand for our supreme praise is his demand for our supreme happiness”. Is the deer that drinks from a stream to be accused of being deer-centered? No. Is the baby who feeds from her mother to be accused of being selfish? Certainly not. When one expresses his worship, his neediness, his longing, his utter dependence on another, this is not selfishness. In the same way, we worship God, in view of his mercy, in the light of his great glory, as objects of his mercy who should have known wrath, because it is only in worshiping him – in making much of him – that we are satisfied.

With the glory of God in Jesus Christ as the core of a theology of worship, and his demand for our praise (with the goal of our supreme joy) as the impetus for our corporate worship, we can see that God is at work during corporate worship drawing people to himself. The Spirit of God is moving in the midst of the people of God, pointing them to Jesus, convicting them of their sin and neediness, filling their hearts with songs of praise, guiding their prayers, illuminating the very Word he inspired, comforting the afflicted, and stirring up gifts that he gives as he pleases. The Spirit is not pointing to himself. He is pointing to Jesus. And Jesus points to his Father. We are invited into this community of joy during corporate worship, and reminded yet again that it is purely a gift of grace.

My role as a worship leader is to use music as a tool to help people exalt and encounter the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. With a pastoral heart of humility, musical gifting, prayerful preparation, and skillful leadership, I primarily serve as a pointer to Jesus. I should be like a tour guide at the Grand Canyon who points out the greatness of what the onlookers have come to behold and then gladly steps back so they get as clear a view as possible. My role is to not overly interject myself into the process of God’s revelation to and work amongst his people. At the same time, if he really is great and greatly to be praised, then I should do the best job I can to help people see him and encounter him. A worship leader doesn’t lead anyone into God’s presence. Jesus leads us into God’s presence by his blood. So a worship leader points to Jesus.

Music won’t save anyone’s life. A good song won’t bring anyone eternal joy. A good show won’t feed anyone anything nutritious. Jesus changes lives. Jesus brings eternal joy. Jesus is the bread of life. The fruit of a theology of worship that revolves around Jesus is corporate worship and worship leadership that exalts him above all things.