Missing the Point
I read an interesting post earlier this week by Tim Stevens about the way one church in Mississippi is organizing their weekend worship and music. Essentially they hire a different worship leader each weekend instead of paying one or two people to be the worship pastor (s). Here is how Tim explains their strategy:
A little over a year ago their church had an open position for a worship leader and couldn’t find the right person to fill the role. So they began to hire worship leaders to come in, a weekend at a time, to lead their band and congregation in worship. It worked so well that they decided to continue doing this–not as a stop-gap measure–but as their intentional strategy. At this time, they have no plans of ever hiring a worship leader. They will continue to outsource.
I’ll be quite honest, I think this church has missed the point of church.
Even if they only hire the same 4 or 5 people (like they say they do) it still makes the worship leader out to be a once a week position.
To me there are 3 key problems with this philosophy:
- Church isn’t just about Sunday. Placing this much focus on Sunday morning and hiring someone to help pull off Sunday every week is unhealthy. It subtly says to the congregation that Sunday morning is more important in their relationship to God than Friday night.
- Music isn’t worship. If you are hiring someone to be the worship leader on a Sunday morning you are hiring a qualified musician who is able to lead people. If you are hiring a worship pastor you are looking for something far beyond just music.
- It places a value on production instead of relationship. The person is hired for Sunday morning to be a home run, not to be with the people of the church throughout the week. It isn’t about shepherding the flock, it is about quality music. Last time I checked the Bible only speaks about leaders of music as also being leaders of a group of people on a day to day basis.
What are you thoughts on this?
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Tyler Braun.
If you go to that post and view comments, you’ll see I expressed the same exact concerns ….
Just read your comment Fred, good thoughts there. I absolutely agree with you, hence why we had similar thoughts.
As I read that post I have to agree with you Tyler. There seems to be several things that are being left out and the most important is relationships. I would find it difficult to play with and connect with a different worship leader every Sunday.
Hey bud, in this case I have to agree. Even more so, doesn’t the church risk making the worship leader that much more in the spotlight because it is someone different every week. The congregation sees them first, is processing how their doing second, what they are doing third and then evaluating after. In my opinion, it detracts from the core part of worship, which is to come and focus on God.
Churches focus on the wrong things and it eventually takes its toll in the lack of depth a congregation has. God exposes the true heart eventually and it is never pretty when He does it.
yes, yes and yes. You cannot pastor a group of people you are not a part of. My question is this – would they EVER do this for the senior pastor position? Of course not. They understand that the senior pastor must spend time with people, must build into the leaders, etc. They could not do that if they came in, preached, and left. Why is a worship pastor treated any differently?
this post may as well have come right out of my mouth….but it didn’t, so I say this: I agree 1 million percent. I’ve dealt with this personally with my previous church, and it still bothers me to this day.
Excellent post Tyler. And I agree 100%. It just seems more, cold I guess, outsourcing their music leaders. Our church is about 100 people, some of whom are very talented, and yeah, they may get tired of doing it all the time, but you’d never know it. We are continually blessed by them and their gifts they share with us week after week.
True! I’ve got to view my role as a “worship pastor” and not a “worship leader.” As far as I can tell, the Bible doesn’t prescribe any church leadership positions as “rock stars.”
i disagree with you Tyler. why? just to be a punk.
no but seriously, i can see this working.
is it ideal? IMO, no.
but if the scope of the position is extremely limited and hyper-focused, and you’re not trying to accomplish any of the things you mentioned above THROUGH THIS POSITION, then i don’t see it being a problem.
but absolutely, without a doubt, “worship != music” would need to be taught and emphasized, and your relational leadership would have to be strong from other visible leaders.
also, sadly, there are a lot of churches that have worship leaders that only focus on music and do a poor job of relational leadership anyways, so perhaps this church is saying let’s eliminate that job description (and potential for failure in that arena) and make up for it with other positions.
and here’s a question for you: (although i know it’s not really apples to apples)
if i go to conferences on a regular basis and sing communally with a bunch of strangers that i’ll never see again, and the “worship leader” is a “star” like Steve Fee or some other random dude that wears too much hair gel… is that aspect of “worship” any less valid?
ok, flame on.
I would say I could answer this with a simple answer (that is easier than writing a novel anyway)….conferences and the local church provide 2 very different things. A conference isn’t called to operate like a local church body. My frustration with this concept all comes out of that. If they were trying to be something other than a church….I have no problems. But they are a church and a church functions in some specific areas that they are missing I feel.
After reading some of the responses to the article from the congregants of the church being discussed, I would say that I agree with Tyler’s assessment. It does seem that the reasoning and emphasis for this set-up misses the point of what worship really is.
However, I think that it is impossible to judge motives/hearts for ourselves with certainty from just a couple short blurbs about the situation.
On a different tack, I think what the article is highlighting is a different model for the management/staffing of our churches. I find this to be a good thing. I could see a rotating “worship leader” position being very positive – if we’re talking about utilizing the gifts and callings of a greater portion of our community. It feels like what this church is doing is “bringing in a specialist” which, as you so aptly put it, misses the point! But, if a church were building up leaders from it’s own community, and was thus giving a greater number of it’s membership an opportunity serve and lead I would see this as a positive shift from a model where only one person is in this role.
This is obviously a very different interpretation of this “model” than what is actually going on at this church (at least from what I get from the congregant’s own comments), and in keeping with this blog posting’s conversation I would return attention to the points Tyler brings up. And, as Jan said, “yes, yes and yes.”
Great points, Tyler!
Totally agree with you. Rotating worship leaders is not a bad thing at all.
Hey whaddayaknow…they said that music ministry director is in the top 10 of most stressful/underpaid job
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/108148/stressful-jobs-that-pay-badly?mod=career-salary_negotiation
No wonder they couldn’t find anyone to hire.