This has been posted previously but I wanted to re-post it here briefly and focus a little bit on what is truly important in leading the corporate singing time and interacting with musicians in a gathering and band practice setting. I’m just touching on a small snippet of this topic, and there is a bunch more I could talk about it, but the main ideas are all here.

Point Number 1: Content takes precedence over the music. Unlike a band that a musician could be a part of outside of the corporate gathering, a worship team, no matter its’ size, should be focused on the lyrical content of the songs rather than the instrumentation. Now I’m not saying that the music doesn’t play a part in this band, but the content of the words should take precedence. Regardless of time period it was written in or what song style it is, the lyrics and their biblical-soundness should be considered. Is it just cliche phrases or a random glob of verses on a bunch of undefined topics? If it is saying God is mighty or God is good does it actually describe why? Does it teach theology so that, if it were standing alone on its’ own, someone could read it and understand more about who God is and why and what He has done? Who wrote the song? What are their definitions of the words that are being used in the lyrics and are those definitions sound?

Being part of the band doesn’t just mean that you show up and get an emotional high from playing an instrument for your own fame and glory. Being part of the band means that you understand why you are singing in the first place. It’s not for your glory. He doesn’t need you to play your instrument for Him to receive glory. You are playing an instrument in awe of who He is. You play realizing what it is that He has done and who He is and that, though you see how small you are in relation to Him, the band is going to aid in the group being able to sing these songs to Him and that is a wonder in itself to your heart. We don’t join a worship team because God needs us to serve Him or He needs our musicianship. It’s not joining to get the experience of being like “wow, we really did something there” or “That attention on us is like the high of a drug” or “I just can’t hear from God otherwise.” All of those reasonings are rooted in the individual getting the glory. He doesn’t need us to do anything. And having to have the experiences lies in the same motivation that a person has to do something, that it has to be about them for them to get anything from God. In the same way as people need to have every passage be about what they can do, what’s their checklist, after reading it. But the Bible is about God and not us. It is about how we see God working and moving. It is about us beholding Him. And it gets turned on its’ head to be about people. And that is moralism. No wonder everyone’s so anxious. It’s about feeble, fickle people instead of a mighty, sovereign God. Only in beholding Him, instead of man, will there be real peace.

Instead, we have to look at the worship team as a “woah, I’m just one part of this group of believers meeting up but I get to play my instrument or sing as the group brings these exhortations to God.” And once that happens, the understanding of what we are doing as a band changes. We are looking at singing the words of the songs as a reminder as a group about who He is and what He has done. We want Him alone to be looked at, Him alone to have all the glory. And this is why Bible study is so important for a worship team. It gets our eyes off of us. It continues the discussion about what we have already been studying in our everyday, individual studies and conversations with other believers about Him. It gives weight to the words. It fuels the awe that removes it from being about us.

So this goes into point number two: As a worship team, we are trying not to be seen. And these bands don’t have to have a lot of people on them. I think that’s a misunderstanding as well. You can have two people, three people, five people. No matter the size, the focus should remain the same. How do we work together on the team to disappear? How do we share the space on that band so that we just join in as one group, which is how it should be. There shouldn’t be this separation between stage and seats where the people are watching us put on a show. We are part of that group gathering. We are joining together to sing these words as reminders, as proclamations. We don’t need to be seen as a separate entity in that space. So let’s work together as a band to remove those things that would hinder that - showboating, a band member not knowing what is going on or where we are in a song, and so on.

As a side note to this, so many worship leaders will talk about spontaneity, but I don’t think that they understand what that actually means. Do you know how many hours of practice and preparation each member of a jazz band has had before they are able to “improv”? Do you know how much theory they have processed and studied and devoured in order to be at a place where they can hear the notes in their head? For a person to be able to speak on a topic “spontaneously”, there has to be a bunch of time spent reflecting and mulling over and chewing on a topic. The Spirit guides believers into truth every day, but for the emphasis of this point I will speak just about the band leader here: the Spirit is guiding the leader in studying their Bibles, in selecting the songs, in speaking with the team - throughout the whole process! All of it is Spirit-led. I think sometimes the spontaneity discussion can be a disguise for the worship leader just wanting the band to follow them, without the effort of preparation, but making it sound more spiritual. Because the real question we should be asking is: why do we want to be “spontaneous” in the way that is being discussed, when we are supposed to be joining in song together as a group? Why do we want to pull the group out of singing the songs together and into watching? We are not watching the worship leader have their own private time of singing. We are a group of believers meeting (with some of us playing instruments) to sing these songs together in awe and reflection on who God is.

As another side note to this discussion of distractions, sometimes we have heard it mentioned in the past, after local church staff had attended conferences and so on, how beautiful and cool the people were up on stage, their images and personas, how they wowed the crowd. But the question we had in our mind after listening to this was: why were they staring at these people and commenting on their external appearance? Why was that the focus of that time, the main thing remembered? And it struck me how prevalent the performance is, and has been, in worship ministry, that the local churches are more concerned with the production values and external appearance of the whole thing then who is leading and what’s at the heart of that space. This is supposed to be a time where there are a group of believers meeting together to sing to God, to look to God, to open their Bibles and talk about God, not a concert where we watch the band and marvel at the performance and are taken aback by the coolness, the charisma and woo-ability of the people on the stage. Now I will say that, as band members (in the same way as non-band members), we should want to consider the modesty of what we wear, not just on that meeting day, but everyday, but, in light of our discussion here about distractions - the team should want to remove the distractions, they should want to meld in with the whole group singing the songs, they should want to provide the score to the film (it’s there and it adds to the movie but it doesn’t take away from it - it becomes a part of it). I don’t care if the person leading that time of singing is a “nerd” in the eyes of the world if they understand why they are leading and their awe shines through their selves - this makes them truly beautiful.

Ok, back to the main topic of point number 2: The best musicians are those who are able to see themselves as part of a team, who take the time to blend and share the space with the other band members, who add so much to a song and yet don’t stand out. I don’t think these musicians get the recognition that they deserve because they don’t talk themselves up, they don’t have to highlight their skills, but their team members know. Their team member know that this can actually take more skill, to not just play the same old musical phrase or set of notes but to stretch themselves and work with the team and figure out what would work best to let the song shine and the team play the most effectively…and the most invisibly. This is the difference - this gathering isn’t about humans, it’s not about highlighting people, it’s not about us, and a musician on a worship team who understands this truly will see their role with delight - they are one member of the team who gets to play the music behind Christian believers meeting to sing songs together about God, their greatest Delight.

This goes into point number 3: The heart of the musician is greater than their musical performancism. If a team member wants to come to the team and listen about how the songs speak of God through the Bible study, if they are open to sharing the space with the other team members to limit distractions and will prepare and practice to work on this, I would take a person with this heart over one who wants to showboat and cares only about the music. It’s like an individual who cares more about the physical appearance of a mate than getting to know the person, finding out who they are, taking the time to be involved in their life. It’s not really rooted in anything of substance. And I’m not saying that the person with this heart for the team is completely lacking any musical knowledge - I’m just saying that I would prefer a musician who had this heart, whether they had played their instrument for a year or twenty years, over someone who cared only about the music. People will say to me, “oh, you’ll make all the novices love you by saying that” or “having it not be about the music means the music will suffer.” But you know what? It’s not so much about musicianship as whether the musician is secure in their abilities and team-minded in their motivations. Saying I would prefer a musician with this heart over one that cares only about the music doesn’t mean that the musicians that would join would be bad ones. That’s a very wrong perspective from the performance-seeking point of view. Because oftentimes very amazing musicians, ones who aren’t insecure about their talents, will be the ones who understand this concept and use their immense skill to work with a team in this way. Some of the best musicians I have ever played with on a team were the most skilled musicians I have ever known. They understood the theory, they had musicality unlike any other and their skill in selecting what to play and figuring out how to best share that space was a wonder to watch. And the biggest takeaway was that they were secure in their talents that they didn’t hype themselves up, even though they could have (and they weren’t picked first on performance-focused teams for certain things because they didn’t hype themselves up), but the band and the leader knew. They knew their immense importance in keeping the tempo, in selecting the most beautiful harmonies that added to the song without overshadowing everyone else, in readily adjusting their finger placement on their instrument to not clash with another musician. I would take a bass player who, while they knew a bunch, kept the time and played the backbone rhythms than one who did the solos and knew how to slap and could riff-out like some popular secular artists. The tempo keeping and musical thoughtfulness of the one bassist would be more highly prized in this sharing of space than the showmanship of the other.

Point number 4: Development is key for a leader of a band. Going back to point number 3, there could be someone who is on the team who has been playing the guitar for two years and someone who has been playing the piano for ten years, and, as the leader, you are working with each musician to consider how to share the space and call out the strengths in each musicians and how to grow them in areas that they might be a bit weaker in - try to stretch them a bit. This is development. This is investing in the team members in order to become invisible in the group singing time. It’s not “everyone just follow me while I just play like if I was in my bedroom because I don’t want to have to grow and learn (or maybe even look silly in people’s eyes?).” That’s not leading a band. That’s being an individual with other people watching you. And they are probably confused and slightly anxious and completely taken out of singing and held back by you wanting to shine. That’s someone who has missed the motivation for being on a team and has switched around the vantage point. And, again, that’s why Bible study is so important in these band prep spaces because it shifts the view back to what it should be. It’s not about us, it’s about God. And in thinking about the songs, it’s about the lyrics first. And in preparing for that space it’s the leader prepping by internalizing the message and journalling their reflections and speaking about those times of individual ingestion of God’s word with the team to get it onto the right vantage point. And saying we are together in being amazed that we can sing these songs together, joining with the church universal, to remind ourselves of all that we have been learning on a daily basis with our spouses and our children and fellow believers and this worship team about this passage of Scripture and how it teaches us about God alone. And we play as an instrumentalist in awe of Him, not one who God owes something to.