The day was full of “the lyrics need to be changed on that slide” and “let’s end that song 4 beats earlier in the outro” and “make sure you go to an F#m chord at the beginning of the bridge or we’ll all sound like we made a mistake.” In reality none of that is much different than any other Sunday.

I put on my happy face. Often when I’m leading worship the last place I want to be is on a stage. I feel I have nothing to offer. I’m fairly confident the people could careless about the whole singing in church thing. But something usually happens in the midst of the worship. I begin to have compassion for those I’m helping lead. I begin to sense God’s presence infiltrating my life in a way that I could barely describe here.

But this day was not one of those days. Despite my best preparations, my best motives, the best energy this introverted worship leader could bring–none of it seemed to be making a difference.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to people staring at the screens, yawning, sitting with arms crossed, talking loudly with everyone nearby…you name it I’ve seen it while leading churches in worship. Some people make it obvious they want no part, others are more subtle.

This Sunday I remember because by 830pm I was convinced it was time to think about some other church job than worship leader. Sure I can lead bands, I can sing songs, but maybe I’d worn out my welcome with these people I thought. God can use anyone, but on this day I wondered why he wasn’t using me. I was failing.

I walked off the stage to get some water. My throat was as dry as a hot afternoon on the high desert after singing the entire day. A student came up to me that had never spoken to me before in my life. He said:

I liked that new song tonight.

That was it. Nothing more. And it was as if God had tapped me on the shoulder and said:

I’m at work underneath the surface far more than you’ll ever know or understand. Be faithful.

Is it a stretch to take the words of that student and turn them into those words from God to me? Absolutely. Is it the truth? Absolutely.

This was a student who I have never, ever seen sing along with any of the songs during our time of corporate worship. He came to our high school group gathering inconsistently at best. And yet somehow in the midst of my awful day, God was working in him to engage on a level differently than what I could see on the surface.

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I think ministry in church is often the simplicity of 25% being faithful–25% showing up–25% a willingness to serve–and 25% trusting God to do things only He can do. I tend to make it quite a bit more complicated than this. My own heart and head often get in the way and I start to listen to negative voices in my head that say it’s time to do something different.

That night I learned one valuable lesson…The biggest truths often show themselves in the smallest and subtlest of ways.

God doesn’t have to show up with a lightning bolt or a thundering roar from above for Him to be felt in the depths of my being and on this night I heard Him loud and clear.

Has a big truth shown up in a small way in your life before?

Someone asked me recently what the current discussions were surrounding the “worship wars.” I told him that I honestly thought, despite there being pockets where this war was ongoing, the war (especially in the western US) is over. For those of you in the dark on this, the worship wars are essentially church disagreements over the musical style used in worship. Typically it is a fight between traditional hymns and contemporary choruses being used during church-wide gatherings.

Yes, I truly believe the worship wars are over.

But I don’t believe this is 100% a good thing.

Disconnecting

First of all, part of the reason these wars are over is that fewer and fewer churches are making a conscious effort to bring new and old together. Many of these younger worship leaders who fought hard for contemporary forms of music left their more traditional churches in order to serve at churches where no war was needed. In many new church plants contemporary worship is being played and it is already engrained in the culture. Hence no struggle between traditional and contemporary.

We’re disconnecting from those with different stylistic preferences rather than forcing ourselves into the messiness of working with those unlike us. I don’t see any circumstance in which this is a healthy, long-term solution.

I like what Russell Moore said along these same lines:

Thankfully, we don’t hear as much about “worship wars” these days, but I wonder if that’s because of growing maturity or if it’s simply because we’ve so segregated ourselves into services and congregations that reflect generational and ethnic and class-oriented musical commonalities. Maybe we need to reignite the wars, but in a Christian sort of way.

The Why

Secondly, now that the wars are over, I believe we’re thinking and meditating far less about “why” we worship. The worship wars forced the ongoing conversation to always look at why we worship so that the entirety of the war wasn’t about “how” we worship.

It seems now that any guy who can hold a tune and strum on a guitar can lead worship. Yes, I just totally ragged on myself. But I sure hope worship is more than playing through some music at church. When I’ve asked other worship leaders why they do their musical worship a certain way the answer I usually get is “it works well for us.” I sure hope we have deeper convictions connecting our “how” in worship to the “why” we worship.

The Good Lost in the Bad

For all the bad of the worship wars, they allowed us to always come back into focus on the key importance of gathering to worship as a church. Instead of telling the church member who disagrees with how we worship to go find another church, let’s spend more time engaging these conversations. I find that the people who take time to complain are those who care the most. Don’t let them walk away because they’ll likely have an insight previously unseen.

I believe we’re constantly in progress, constantly working out our sanctification as believers and as a corporate body. Even as our worship changes to adapt to culture, we must never end the conversation that examines why and how we worship. We must continue to connect our “how” to our “why,” bringing into the conversation various perspectives–allowing church to be messy, gracious, and connected.

Without the war, I wonder if we’re more prone to wander away from the Person behind our worship to instead focus on our own worship doctrine of preference.

Agree/Disagree?

Check out my follow up post regarding this idea of bringing back the worship wars.

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1. Bon Iver won a Grammy award a couple weeks ago and has been one of my favorite bands/artists recently. I love the texture of their music. The one knock I’ve always heard in relation to them is that their music is overproduced. I somewhat agreed until I watched this video of Bon Iver with no effects. It’s long but I’ve listened to the whole thing 3 or 4 times through now (minutes 3 through 8 are blissful). Incredible.

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2. This week Tim Schraeder put up a guest post I wrote on his blog titled “10 Other Things That Drive Someone Else Crazy About Working for a Church.” A couple years ago Tim wrote a post I’ve read several times since it was posted. I appreciated Tim’s angst and love for working at a church because I find myself often waffling between the two. I love working at a church but it is filled with things that drive me crazy.

Jonathan Edwards famously said, “The Church is a whore, but she is my mother.” It is both with angst and love that I come to and work for the church. The angst keeps me pushing to make the church a healthier, more Godly place, and the love keeps me continually embracing its brokenness.

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3. Jamie Barnes is a worship pastor at Sojourn Church in Kentucky and one of the great writers taking old hymns and making them new again. One of the things I struggle with as a more laid back, introverted worship leader is how to be authentic and still have a demeanor that allows others to enter into the presence of God. Jamie tackles this tough subject quite well.

If you’re naturally mellow, don’t force down ten Red Bulls on Sunday morning just to pep up your pout. You don’t have to abandon minor keys, nor do you have to play every piece of music at 180 bpm.

Remember, we are leading real people with real lives, and we serve a real God who meets us where we’re at.

The Psalmists sang, wept, cried out, and shouted for joy to give praise to our Lord. In doing so, they give us a pattern for worship that exercises a wide breadth of human emotion that we should emulate.

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Enjoy your weekend.

The post is a part of a larger series of posts all focused on the topic of the hour before church begins for a worship leader (check out some of the other posts too, there’s lots of good ones). Each post takes a different look and perspective into what goes on for them the hour before.

Being a worship leader carries far more responsibility than what meets the eye. It takes hours of preparation and study of both Scripture and music. It takes hours of practice with the band, vocal, and technical teams. It takes getting a large group of people all on the same page so the church gathering has some structure, flow, and purpose. It’s a lot more than singing 6 songs and going home.

Often in the last minutes leading up to starting I’m deciding whether fixing lyric issues, getting a drink of water, saying hi to people as they arrive, touching base with a band member to clarify a problem we had in practice, or talking with the various pastors involved to nail down some transitions, should be my top priority. I usually have no idea which one is most important, and there is just simply not enough time to balance it all on a normal Sunday.

With all of this going on, it’s difficult to get in the frame of mind to not only lead worship, but also just simply worship myself while balancing a number of details.

As I thought about my hour before, I thought of 4 things I absolutely have to do to be most prepared:

1. Spend time with the band and vocals- There’s a debate on whether the worship leader should spend time greeting people as they arrive or if time should be focused towards those the leader is serving with for the day. I tend to focus more of my time bonding with the people I’m serving with because I notice a difference in our ability to play together when we’ve related together.
2. Pray- After a difficult practice, I often try to convince myself that I need time to mentally go through the details rather than pray. But inevitably I take the time to pray myself and with the team and I realize afterwards why I’ve made that a priority before. As I’m walking on stage my prayer is always, “God use me as you would.” It’s a humbling prayer, putting me under Him instead of over Him.
3. Run Through Everything in My Head- This isn’t my top priority because I always like to run through the transitions between songs as well as any specific things I know I want to share. I usually don’t do this out loud, that would make me look weird, but I do take a few quiet moments to process all of the key parts I have during the church gathering.
4. Come with Expectation- Too often I approach a church gathering with no anticipation for the ways God is going to work and with no expectation for him to show up in a powerful way. Far too often I go through the motions as I prepare to take the stage. Because I’m leading worship so often I rarely find myself anticipating God to show up in a unique way. I think there’s a strong correlation to sensing a connection with God in worship and the expectation/anticipating we enter into worship with.

For those of you involved in church, what are some things you do the hour before to prepare well?

Recently I read a post put up by a fairly well-known and well-read blog titled “How to Tell If a Worship Leader is a Superstar Wanna-Be.” Oh joy, another post tearing a part worship leaders. It was everything I had hoped for. Here’s a couple of my “favorite” lines from the post about superstar worship leaders…

• You changed your Church 7 times in the last 3 years as your “God-given” ministry of becoming the hottest worship leader / songwriter did not find the best of support.
• You can’t understand why your Pastor is not willing to give a makeover for your Church to look and sound like Hillsong.
• You believe worship is not complete without young ‘worshipers’ in front of the stage with clenched fists up in the air, moshing and cheering.
• You don’t believe there’s any real difference between ‘worship’ and ‘music.’
• You spend more time sending demo recordings to recording labels than in personal prayer/Bible reading/worship team rehearsals/planning.

At first I read this and thought there must be some sort of sarcastic element to it. I thought that because I’ve never met any worship leader who is even moderately close to this sort of behavior and attitude. But no, it wasn’t sarcastic. I don’t know the author personally, but I’ve read some of what else he has written and he has a lot of great things to say.

A post like this does nothing but fuel the anti-worship leader mentality that so many in church have. This mentality is nothing more than a me-first attitude about getting what we want out of our times of worship as the body of Christ.

I’ve always thought that perception is reality. And while this post paints worship leaders in a completely unrealistic and unfair light, the more people post about worship leaders being like this, the more people will believe it actually to be true.

What we really need is more people who are willing to extend a hand and word of encouragement to their worship leader/pastor. By no means am I a perfect worship leader and often I am my harshest critic and I never take criticism lightly. There are many people who say thank you or good job after a worship set and I am grateful for those people. Instead of taking time to complain about what didn’t go right, take some time to give specific encouragement, I promise it will mean so much to the worship leader.

Here’s what I know to be true of most worship leaders I’ve met and know well:

• They would shudder at the idea of someone thinking of them as a superstar before being a leader of worshipers.
• They are constantly trying to be creative with how their church can worship together beyond just singing.
• They spend hours in thought and prayer for how to be lead their people on a weekly basis.
• They understand the importance of them being servants to their church and worship team in order to lead well.

Anyone can make fun of the worship leader.

Doesn’t mean you should.

“Churches who have senior pastors who sing out during worship, generally are churches who sing well. Churches who have senior pastors who don’t sing out during worship, generally are churches who don’t sing well.”

The context for the quote comes from his extensive traveling to churches all over the world and this is one way he’s distinguished between churches who sing or don’t sing well.

There’s two sides to the argument that comes following a quote like that. One side would say people should keep their worship focused on God not on their pastor. The other side would say a pastor who can’t worship in public probably has a private worship problem. Steven Furtick touched on this in a post he wrote on similar topic.

A couple quick thoughts of my own:

• The men and women who have been called to lead local church bodies have a duty to provide a helpful example.
• I lead worship for student ministry programs multiple times a week and I’m always trying to balance what it means for me to truly worship while also being an example to the students of what a posture of worship in a corporate setting can and should look like. To say the students shouldn’t be watching me is somewhat naive, because they are, it’s a reality.

What’s your response to this?

I’ve been to a few Lutheran churches before that used some liturgy during their gatherings (my grandparents belong to a Lutheran church) and all I remember is being fairly bored the entire time (I’m sure some of this had to do with me being young and always being expected to go to church).

This weekend I’m leading our Palm Sunday gatherings and made a decision to use some liturgical type readings within the worship time. It isn’t something I would describe as normal or abnormal for my church, though it is abnormal for me.

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on liturgy as you’ve experienced it at your churches.

Have you experienced liturgy to be a good and worshipful thing? Or lifeless and boring?

How have you seen it done it most effectively?

So I thought I’d throw together a list of resources. Some I use everyday, others I use once a month, but they all get used consistently by me.

• The Open Source Book- A great resource of readings, liturgical writings, and other Scriptures that fit well within a worship set. It is basically just a blog, but it hasn’t been updated in a while either. However there is a lot of great stuff already posted.
• Planning Center- My lifesaver. I couldn’t imagine doing my job without this anymore. Whether it be putting a worship set together, planning the band/vocals/tech, or getting music out to those who need it, I use Planning Center for hours almost everyday. And when I’m on stage I use their Music Stand app to view pdf files, which saves me around $200 a year in paper printing costs.
• IWillWorship.com- I’ve used this site a lot more often in the past, and even though it doesn’t have the best interface I find it to be a great way to find guitar charts for most any worship song.
• Transposr.com- Like most worship leaders I can sing with Tomlin but it doesn’t mean I always want to. Most songs written today need to be adjusted so the congregation and main worship leader can sing them well. This website lets you adjust the key of an mp3 with ease. I use it once a week.
• WorshipTogether.com- Looking for new music, or free sheet music, or videos explaining why a song was written? This is your spot.
• CCLI and Song Select- CCLI has done a great job of being more than just a licensing company. I use their Song Select site through the licensing we pay for as a church to find quality charts. Many songs have lyric sheets, guitar charts, piano charts, and even hymn styled charts.
• PraiseCharts- From what I’ve seen and used, it is the best site for finding any kind of chart for almost any well-known song.
• Church Online- I primarily watch LifeChurch.tv to see what songs they’re doing, but there are hundreds of churches that allow you to join them live. Here’s a great list of churches who stream their services online.

Honorable Mention- LifeWay has put together a great resource website that I don’t use but have heard many great things about. Here’s a great worship blog with a great community to bounce off thoughts and ideas with in the forums. I would also recommend Twitter as a great way to converse with other worship leaders about what songs are working at their church. Many of the songs I sing with the youth and on Sunday mornings have come through the help of social networks.

I hope this is helpful for you.

What did I miss?

As I spent some time thinking through what to share, I thought of things I wish an older worship leader would have taught me when I was a younger worship leader. Certainly I haven’t figured it all out, but I think I’ve learned a few things over the last 10 years of consistently leading worship for youth and adults. Here’s 3 things I’ve learned that I wish an older worship leader would have taught me long ago:

1. Create a culture of worship through authentic sharing, exhortation, and example. I hear all the time how this church and that church has an amazing “culture of worship.” It’s definitely an overused phrase. And even though I don’t like this idea of a culture of worship, I do think a worship leader has great effect on how their congregation worships when they gather. Authentic sharing helps make that person on stage become a real person. Leading by example means showing what worshiping during a church gathering looks like and what being a worshiper of Christ looks like outside of church.
2. Plan ahead. I’ve found that I lead most effectively usually when I have planned ahead more than normal. Any worship leader can put together a great music set and get music to the band/vocals, but very few worship leaders think through how they want to transition between songs and how they want to intro the gathering. It’s those things that allow you to lead well in the moment instead of stumbling over your thoughts.
3. Be intentional. My biggest pet peeve is pointless dead space in between songs at church. The worship leader stares at the band as they fumble over their music trying to start the next song and the congregation usually stands wondering what is going on. I do my very best to avoid those moments because they lack intentionality. As a younger worship leader I rarely thought through the flow of a music set and rarely was intentional with the moments outside of a song that I had control over.

There’s a lot of worship leaders who read this blog. I’d love to hear what advice you would give a younger worship leader.

A few weeks ago I led the morning worship gatherings at Sunset and shared some of what I’ll say in this post. Over the summer I had the stark realization that I had become a full-time worship leader and a part-time follower of Christ. I lead worship a lot. Most weeks I am on stage over 20 hours a week, for 4 different weekly gatherings. It kind of feels like being on tour, except it isn’t a month long.

I had become more focused on what I did than who I was.

I think this is easy to do: to become lost in how we work out our salvation before focusing on who our salvation comes from. Coming to this realization was extremely hard, because it showed me how far away from Christ-centered I had gotten.

I know I’m not alone in this. Many of us have at some point gotten good at faking things by becoming “excellent” at what we do without even thinking about why we do it. Or we’re good at looking like we have our spiritual life all in order, when the reality is quite the opposite.

As this became clear over a vacation I took in August I made a very focused effort to do this school year different.

It meant watching less sports, reading fewer blogs, using Twitter/Facebook less, it meant sacrificing some time with friends and my wife (yes, my wife too), but it also meant that the main thing would be the main thing in my life. I’m taking extra time to do reading outside of my required reading for school. I’m waking up earlier to read the Bible and spend time in prayer before I start my day. To do more of that has meant sacrificing other things. I simply cannot be a truly successful worship leader if I’m not leading from a heart of worship.

I heard Craig Groeschel say, “The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be is the pain you are unwilling to endure.”

Those words pierced me when I heard them. For me it meant sacrificing the time outside of work that I hoard to myself instead of giving it to God. My job has such a high level of responsibility week in and week out that I tend to come home and spend a few hours wasting away. I had gotten really good about being intentional with my time at work but not at home.

In the end, our lives are not our own, they were bought for a high price.

And we should be living lives that are first focused on Him, after that we then figure out how life continues in a way that honors Him.

I’d welcome your reaction to this.