Tag: Leading a congregation

Proclaiming the Gospel Though Music at Christmas

Worship leaders face a lot of temptations this time of year.

Sentimentality
There’s a great temptation to embrace the sentimental elements of Christmas. Snow falling softly while the fireplace roars and children laugh while eating warm apple pie that Grandma made while singing “Silver Bells” on top of a reindeer. This makes us feel all warm inside but makes no lasting difference to our lives.

Creativity
Creativity for the sake of helping people hear and celebrate the good news of Jesus Christ in a fresh way is a good thing. But creativity for the sake of saying we’re creative is most certainly not a good thing.

It can be easy to get carried away with trying to be creative this time of year. A Christmas pageant with a real live baby Jesus, surrounded by live animals, standing on hay, surrounded by a choir of angels suspended from the ceiling illuminated in bright light, while the choir sings a Christmas anthem accompanied by a 16 piece string section while a video plays and dancers dance and everyone in the congregation holds pretty little candles.

This might really impress people, make some people cry, and be more elaborate than any other church in town, but when we place creativity as the highest priority on our lists, it usually comes at the expense of the simple and powerful clarity of the Gospel. If creativity serves the goal of making the Gospel as clear as possible, then go for it. But if it gets in the way, avoid at all costs.

Tradition
Christmas can bring out the traditions like no other season. Traditions can be very good and helpful. But they can also be boring and stale and ineffective. Just because your church has always done it a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the best way.

Oh, if it were only so easy as telling people this and convincing them to try something new. I know it’s not.

If you’re serving in a church with a lot of traditions that you think could use some reevaluating, my advice to you is to tread slowly and softly. You’ll probably have to live with a lot of those traditions you’re not crazy about for a long time. But build trust with people and you’ll earn some capital you can spend on convincing people that there might be a better song than “Come On Ring Those Bells” to open a Christmas Eve service.

Satan hates this time of year when Jesus’ birth is being proclaimed around the world and in the songs being played in the department stores. It’s no wonder, then, that those songs are increasingly watered down and Jesus made to seem incidental rather than central. Sadly, the church too often goes with this flow. Let’s push against it and proclaim with boldness the good news – the best news – of the coming of Jesus Christ.

The Sister Act Syndrome

In 1992, the movie Sister Act was released and became an instant hit. Whoopi Goldberg plays a lounge singer in Reno, Nevada who one evening witnesses her mobster boyfriend murder a Limo driver. She agrees to testify against him, but is placed in protective custody in a convent with a really lousy choir and attached to a really lousy church.

In a matter of months, but more like two hours for those of us watching the movie, she’s transformed the choir, and leads them in singing to a packed church, including the Pope himself! And he even claps!

We love movies like this. We love stories like this. In real life we know that this scenario is completely ludicrous, but it’s nice to have a two-hour respite from reality.

Even though we might know in our heads that it’s impossible to see this kind and this amount of change happen in such a short period of time – whether we’d admit it or not, we still expect to see it in ministry. If Whoopi could do it, then so can we! Right?

This is what I call the Sister Act Syndrome. You look at your worship team, or your congregation, or your pastor, and you see so much change that needs to take place. And you want it all to happen all at once. And you want to be the person to make it happen. Sure, it’s ludicrous. But that’s in every other church! Not yours… This is what’s happening in our minds as we ignore the reality of life and ministry.

Some churches are like canoes. The good thing about canoes is that you can change their direction pretty quickly. The bad thing about them is that they’re pretty easy to flip over and capsize.

Most churches are like aircraft carriers. The good thing about aircraft carriers is that they’re sturdy, have a good amount of activity and life on them, and won’t flip or capsize easily. The bad thing about them is that it takes a lot of time to change their direction.

I’m convinced that far too many worship leaders suffer from the Sister Act Syndrome. They expect to see a lot of change happen really quickly. Then it doesn’t. Then they go to another church. Repeat process.

Your church – and the Church – needs more worship leaders who are patient. Who learn to love their pastor, their congregation, and their worship team, and instead of expecting to see radical change overnight, understand that it’s going to be more like over a decade.

There are a lot of difficult things about waiting this long to see change happen. But there are many good things. One good thing that comes out of waiting is that you’ll come to see that there’s just as much inside of you that needs to change. It’s easy to come into a church and crack the whip and boss people around and demand that everything goes your way. It’s hard to commit yourself to a community and serve them to see God’s purposes work out in his time.

There are times for quick decision making and vision casting and direction changing. But most of the time, 99% of the time, what’s required of us is to do our job faithfully, in the Spirit’s power, and let him move the aircraft carrier however he wants. If he wants to bring a tremendous wave that will re-point it in a matter of minutes, then he can. Maybe he will. But most often it takes a bit longer. It doesn’t make for good movies, but it does make for healthy churches.

Not Hitting People with a Wall of Sound

On most recordings of congregational worship songs that you find these days, every upbeat song starts with the entire band playing all at once. There might be a measure or two of an electric guitar or drummer on his own, but eventually, the whole band kicks in at full blast.

This sounds great on a CD. And it can work well on a Sunday morning. But sometimes it can be compared to hitting your congregation with a wall of sound.

One minute the pastor is welcoming people and opening the service in prayer. Then when he’s done and it’s the worship team’s turn – KABOOM! – the song starts.

I’m not against starting songs this way. But I’ve found that if you’re going to hit people with a wall of sound, it’s not so jarring if you do that kind of introduction when there’s some level of sound (i.e. people talking and fellowshipping) already present. I might start a song like this after we’ve encouraged people to turn around and greet someone they don’t know and then there’s a buzz of noise in the room.

But when you’re coming out of a moment in the service that’s quiet (i.e. the pastor finishing an opening prayer or an 8:00am service) and there’s no sound in the room except for the air conditioner humming or kneelers clomping against the church floor, it might work better to ease your way into the song, and arrange it in such a way that you’re gradually adding more energy and sound before you eventually kick it up the level of KABOOM.

I did this a couple Sundays ago with Tim Hughes and Nick Herbert’s song “Jesus Saves”. We were coming out of an opening prayer, after which there was relative silence in the room. Instead of hitting people with the wall of sound that the recording starts off with, I decided to come into it a bit more gradually.

Here’s how Tim Hughes’ live recording does it, starting a few measures into an electric guitar riff:

And here’s how we adapted it.

When you’re leading your congregation in an upbeat song, think about whether you should come into it full blast or ease your way into it. Get comfortable enough with it that you and your team can make it your own. Move bits and pieces around and experiment with ways to help your congregation engage with God and celebrate, instead of reeling from the sudden onslaught of noise.

Be sensitive to your congregation and to the Holy Spirit’s leading, and if coming in at 100% seems to be the best fit, then go for it. But if you think it might serve them better to start off at 50% and slowly increase power, then I would encourage you to trust your instincts.

Some Services Feel Weirder Than Others

Don’t ask me why – or maybe if you know you can tell me why – but some weekends and some services just feel weirder than others.

There’s no way to predict it, and sometimes no way to avoid it. Due to factors outside your control, or just an unfortunate confluence of events, sometimes you leave a service scratching your head, thinking “what was that all about?”

This past weekend was one of those weekends for me.

First, I couldn’t decide what songs we should sing at our services. For some reason, I was hit with a severe case of indecisiveness and I couldn’t get over it. Up until (and through) rehearsal on Saturday, I wasn’t crazy about how it all felt. On their own, I liked the songs. But put together, it just didn’t seem like the right fit. I made changes after the Saturday service and before the Sunday service, but even after that, the songs still felt a little weird.

Secondly, after the opening song on Saturday night (“All Creatures of Our God and King”), our drummer accidentally counted off and started playing Matt Redman’s “The Glory of Our King” all by himself for about two measures before stopping. The problem was that we weren’t doing that song on Saturday. It was supposed to be on Sunday only. So we stopped and I made a quick joke about it before we moved on, but it was still a bit awkward. And weird.

Third, I think I emailed about seven or eight singers to see if they could sing this past weekend since the one who was scheduled couldn’t make it. None of them could for various good reasons. So I was the only singer. I like having some back-up when I’m leading with a band, and especially leading a service of 800-900 people. Without anyone singing with me, it felt weird.

Overall, in addition to these three things, the services felt a bit flat. I felt flat too.

Some services everything seems to fall together really well. Some services are just normal, good, and average (in a good way). And then some services make you wish you could just go back in time and start from scratch.

I honestly don’t know what I would do differently this past weekend (other than make sure the drummer knew we weren’t doing “The Glory of Our King” on Saturday). And that’s just fine. This coming weekend is a fresh opportunity to choose songs and lead people to magnify the greatness of God through song.

When you have great services, it’s important to stay humble and resist temptation to remember in your mind all the things you did really well. But when you have “weird” services, it’s important to keep a healthy perspective: it’s not the end of the world. There’s always next week. Also, just because I felt “weird” about a service, it doesn’t mean anyone else felt the same way.

Was I prayerful? Yes. Did I try to be faithful and humble? Yes. Were we well prepared? Yes. Where there things I could have done differently? Always.

While it’s impossible to know why some services really click and others really don’t, it is possible to let both kinds make you a better worship leader. They’re both reminders that it’s not about you, your worth as a person isn’t wrapped up in your abilities but instead in Jesus Christ, and any hope you have at lasting in ministry will require you to get used to the roller coaster that is not only normal, but can also be kind of fun.