Same old, same old...

One of the reasons I’m committed to leading worship in the local church context is because of a realization that happened almost a decade ago.

I realized that one of the relentless temptations in worship ministry is to employ gimmicks and novelty in our pursuit of having a “successful” ministry.

This takes many forms: the incessant introduction of new songs, motion graphics for lyric backgrounds, constantly changing stage backdrops, etc., but the ultimate form of this is actually the worship leader themselves.

This is the part that pulled me into the local church. I wanted to embrace the authenticity of leading the same people week after week into a humble and attentive awareness of God’s presence. As an added bonus they’re also the same people I live with and around, and who see me as I really am and not just as I appear on the platform. In other words, some good old-fashioned accountability.

Whenever you have a new worship leader there’s an inherent sense of novelty/excitement until the congregation becomes familiar with them. I’ve experienced this on a few occasions because I’ve served as Worship Pastor at several churches and can attest to the fact that there’s always a honeymoon phase. Always.

But at some point people get used to you. They become familiar with how you pray, how you transition between songs, the kind of things you say between songs, your go-to vocal runs, and so on. The people who are just there for the main dish (to worship God) don’t tend to care, but the ones who need the garnish (the novelty) will eventually lose interest and either find a different church or just bide their time through the worship set. (You can feel it from the platform: “what do you have for me this week??”)

Traveling worship leaders never hit this wall because there’s a new crowd every night (or weekend) making everything they do fresh and exciting simply because it’s new.

Over the long term I believe this is extremely damaging for both the worshippers and the worship leaders. For the worshippers it gives a false sense of how much they’re actually engaging in worship versus how much they’re just digging an exciting experience. For the worship leaders it gives a false sense of “success” because the horizontal energy in the room serves as an intense smoke screen making it difficult to tell if there’s really anything going on vertically or not.

The reason this matters is because our job as worship leaders is to help people connect with God Himself rather than just connect with songs written about Him, and if we can’t tell what’s working and what isn’t we won’t be able to adjust and grow. It’s a lot of fun connecting people with songs - and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it - but that’s called entertaining, not worship leading. (Side note: let’s re-normalize Christian musicians who entertain without feeling the obligation to call it worship leading!!)

Of course, one of the arguments I hear when I bring this up is that there’s nothing wrong with packaging worship in a shiny wrapper because “at least people are worshipping”. I don’t buy that line of reasoning for one minute because worship is an issue of the heart and if you’re engaging in something for the wrong reasons how can you possibly say it’s being done with a right heart?

Because worship is a heart issue, I don’t believe you can “trick” someone into worshipping God. It’s true that our words have power, but it’s also true that what God is really looking for are hearts that are devoted to Him.

How else can you explain these words of Isaiah quoted be Jesus? “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” (Matt 15:8-9) They worship…in vain?!

Worship isn’t like eating vegetables. You can trick your child into eating broccoli by covering it in cheese sauce and be happy that at least they ate the broccoli, but that’s not how worship works. You have to actually want to do it for the right reasons for it to matter.

I’m not saying worship shouldn’t be enjoyable, but I am saying that one of our goals should be to teach people to love what it is rather than what it’s propped up by, and that’s really difficult when it’s constantly propped up by shiny things and new faces.