Do you realize you may not be doing what is best for your congregation?
Do you know it’s possible that you’re wasting time on things that don’t matter?
There’s only one thing that your congregation cares about.
I suggest you invest your best energies into knowing it.
What does your congregation want?
They want to connect with God
They honestly don’t care about your arrangements and your guitar tone and your vocal abilities. They want Jesus.
Worship leaders, we need to realize this. We need to filter our planning through this question:
How will this serve our congregation’s encounter with God?
I remember the early days of leading worship. I figured it was enough to rehearse religiously, arrange creatively, and execute flawlessly.
That was a great strategy except for the fact that I was wrong.
Nobody worshiped.
Nobody cared about my great ideas.
Nobody cheered wildly at the song I wrote.
Or the sweet breakdown at the bridge.
Or my new skinny jeans and skinny tie, for that matter.
Lessons in missing the point, wouldn’t you say?
The Most Important Thing
Since then I’ve realized it’s more important to let your heart burn before God on stage than it is to be a great performer.
It’s more important to love Jesus with all your heart. Really. Honestly. Love. Jesus.
It’s more important to prepare my heart than it is to prepare my hands.
The truth is, a barren heart with all the talent in the world won’t help anyone worship.
So next time you talk with your band after service, change the focus of conversation.
Revamp what it means to have a successful worship service.
It’s important that we execute well, but save that for a later discussion. First things first.
3 Questions to Help You And Your Team
Gather your team after service on Sunday or at your next rehearsal and ask these questions:
1. Did we worship with complete abandon?
Rather than talking about how killer your music was, you should start judging your performance based on how abandoned you were in worship.
Was everyone on your team engaged? Were they singing? Leading? Obeying the songs?
2. Did we connect with the congregation?
It’s important that we don’t get so creatively confusing that we foster a room of spectators. Our goal should be to invite others – welcome them into the presence of God.
Was our music accessible to the people? Did we serve our congregation well? How can we do better?
3. Did God get the glory?
The most important question of all. Great worship teams draw attention to the greatness of God.
Their hearts are centered upon His glory.
I like to think of it as leaving people with a greater sense of God than their own personal gifting. I want people to leave thinking about God, praising God, and transformed by the presence of God.
You’ll be surprised what kind of conversations stem from these questions.
At first, your team will probably be quiet. We tend to have more to say when it comes to practical matters, but training your team to see with spiritual eyes is worth the investment.
Question: Describe a time you “missed the point” as a worship leader. What did you learn? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
“Or my new skinny jeans and skinny tie, for that matter.”
Funniest line I’ve read in a while…lol…
I like number 3…
Which is why about 70% of song set list or songs I write focus On God in his greatness…rather than my “feelings”…
Are you guilty of SJS? (skinny jean syndrome) 🙂
Not really…but I do have a pair of lime green skinny jeans to support my church’s ground zero ministry. (The color of it is lime green because we have a lime green truck…!)
Wow. Lime green skinny jeans. That’s the most amazing thing I’ve heard in a while 🙂
Well, it has happened several times in the past few weeks…no one really was into the worship. Now this is partly because of the group’s spiritual maturity, but it also has somewhat to do with the band.
So I finally figured it out because we filmed ourselves. Most of the band was not engaging with the audience at all! They were looking at the music stands the whole time! 🙂
This week is going to be different…I have decided to take away the sheet music and allow everyone to memorize the music. Especially the singers. When we finally did this at practice, they could not remember words to “Blessed Be Your Name”…the most classic song out there!
I simply mentioned that we had been relying on the sheet music too much, and we were not allowing God to direct us.
Good insight, Brandon. Teaching your team to memorize their music is a worth doing, but you may need to ease them into it. Some people are better at memorizing than others. For example, I’ve been playing worship music for most of my life. It’s easier for me to memorize. But as a leader, I need to realize the differing levels of maturity in my team and have proper expectations for them.
Maybe put them on a memorization schedule :
Week 1: memorize 1 song
Week 2: memorize 2 songs
Week 3: memorize 3 songs
etc…
Yeah, that is what I am doing right now…We are only memorizing 2 songs for this Wednesday’s set. They are songs we have done quite a bit. The other is a brand new song so I’m giving the sheet music for that one.
We will see how it goes! 🙂
Let me know!
Loved your observation about not engaging with the audience. It’s so easy to let the audience lead us instead of the other way around. It takes guts to engage an audience that looks like they are on life support. It’s easier to just look at the music stand.
Haha! Life support – that is golden 🙂 just don’t mention that from the stage.
Haha! I agree!
I did talk about it in staff meeting this week however.
Were they convicted?
Ha! Actually it’s our Saturday night service. Not sure what the reason is. Maybe they need to eat before they come. Is low blood sugar an excuse?
Just pass out candy bars to them as they come in. OK, we’re going to get in trouble now 🙂
I’m working on this right now. We memorize our music also but I don’t like to look at the people the whole time. I try to focus on the people who get it. Who freely release their worship. Only problem is I just close my eyes and get in that worship zone and I forget about everybody. Now I see though that I was kinda leaving the people behind. I have to remember that I am not just their to worship, but to lead the people in worship. So I can’t just leave them.
This is really great insight, Brandon, and I agree with you. We can’t engage with anyone if our attention is glued to our music. Memorization will definitely take some time and effort, but in the end it will free you up to engage better with God, each other, and the congregation.
Good plan, Brandon. David is correct that some people have a harder time memorizing than others, but it is liberating to not have to look at the music all the time, especially on a song you’ve played five dozen times. I quit looking at the music during worship because my eyes have gotten too bad; I’d have to lean way over in order to read while I played, and it just got ridiculous. Learning the music well, and THEN putting it aside, is the key, so don’t rush the team into it.
I also have to say that, while it’s important to not get too wound up in the mechanics and presentation of worship, it’s equally important for the musicians to actually know and care about what they’re doing. Hearing a bunch of dropped beats, flubbed lyrics and dissonance is very distracting and will pull people out of worship mode in a heartbeat. I’ve been in situations where the guitar player didn’t know half the chords in a song and never bothered to learn them properly because, after all, it’s about worship and not accuracy. Which was fine until everyone in the congregation quit worshiping because the freeway wreckage in the music was too disruptive. If you’re going to be a worship musician, give God your best efforts; don’t just go along for the ride and pretend that doing a bad job is good enough. That’s disrespectful to both God and the congregation.
Todd, this is great advice. I’d love your thoughts on this post: https://www.davidsantistevan.com/2011/12/preparation/ I outline some tips for preparation. Would you add anything?
Good stuff bro! Great insight!!
Thanks Nathan. Have you been a situation like this before?
I’ve found that something similar can happen on the technical side as well. I can get caught up in making sure everything is technically perfect but then forget to or am unable to worship in the midst of all that’s going on around me. It can be even harder on the days that I’m not “in the booth” and yet hear things that could/should be corrected with the FOH mix. If I dwell on that then I totally miss the point of being there in the first place.
Thanks for the sound tech perspective, Richard. I remember talking with one of our most gifted sound engineers who saw the sound board as his instrument. He worshiped passionately with it. There’s no difference whether you’re in the tech booth or on stage with a guitar. The same distractions apply. Actually, I think it may be more challenging for you because no one is watching you. It would be easier to just “check out” and do your job. You know?
Agreed. Whether at the piano or at the sound board, there is an instrument in front of me with many sonic possibilities. How I’m led to and choose to “play” that instrument will prayerfully serve as a vehicle for others to experience and interact with the presence of God.
Quotable material here. Well said, Richard.
I often see very talented and even anointed worship leaders that struggle with being effective because they aren’t choosing songs that are accessible to the congregation. If our vocalists can’t easily pick up on parts and lyrics, how do we expect our congregation to? If your most talented people are struggling to keep up with a song, it’s not accessible to your congregation. Also, as a worship leader you will have to make choices that will not display you as the best singer or musician. Decide which one you wanna be. If you wanna be a worship leader, you have to get over YOU. Make the choices that connect the group to God, not the ones that best serve you. LOVE this post!
Well said, Angie! To put it bluntly, worship leader get over yourself! We’re called to connect people to God, not to make them fall in love our talent. So good.
I get so mad when the congregation doesn’t appreciate the killer instrumental bridge I just arranged! 😀 Haha, on a serious note, great reminder David!
On another note (so many use of the word ‘note’ people may think I’m a musician or something), hope every one had great services yesterday leading your congregation into God’s presence! 🙂
We had a great worship time, Josh. People just lingering in God’s presence. How was yours?
I’m not a worship leader. Am I still allowed to comment? 🙂
Its funny cause if you replaced ‘worship leader’ with ‘teacher’, so much of the same principle applies. Its so embarrassing for me to read my old journals from when I first started preaching cause I was so arrogant. All my prayers were about me being the best preacher anyone has ever heard.
Its literally so embarrassing.
One of the things that has really helped me in not missing the point is the nervousness I feel every time I preach. I’ve preached in many awesome places but even when I’m home speaking to students I’ve been teaching for 4 years, I get nervous. So every time I sneak to the bathroom and go on my knees. I lower myself and ask for help. I embrace my weakness. Of course I still get carried away sometimes but God is dealing with me and I’m glad I haven’t overcome the stage fright.
I think one of my biggest struggles is balancing giving God all the glory and having holy ambition. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be a great communicator. But i also know I want to glorify God more than anything else. Those two things don’t have to contradict themselves… but its so easy for me to blur the lines and make it about me being great. Does that make sense? Sorry I wrote a book on here. You just got me thinking. How do you handle this?
Sammy, I’ll welcome a book from you anyday. When you go on your knees in the bathroom, is it to throw up? Sorry, had to go there 🙂
What keeps my ambition in check is to make sure I’m bringing others along with me – helping them succeed – helping them be great. Otherwise I’m a self absorbed jerk. I sort of outlined that idea in this post on pride: https://www.davidsantistevan.com/2011/05/pride/
That’s definitely a concept to explore further – wanting to be great and wanting God to be great. Are they in competition? Man, now you got me thinking!
That was a great read man. Thanks. I just marked it with ‘ever-note’ so I can re-visit it later.
I don’t think they are in competition if wanting to be a great ____ is motivated by wanting to display Gods glory but I obviously am not a pro at that. I tend to swing to the extreme of pretending I’m not good at anything.
Glad I got you thinking. Any chance you can put those thoughts into words and do a post on this? I’d be really interested in that.
2 Samuel 7 is a great passage for this. Its so awesome cause its God practically saying ‘hey David, I’m gonna make you super great’. In fact, I’m pretty sure he uses the word great. Let me check. Here it is;
“Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth”
And Davids first response is like who am I?
Then later David says..
“Do as you have promised so that your name will be great forever”
Haha. I love it. So convicting. Check it out. Then write a blog on it 🙂
I’ve already started a draft 🙂 That’s a crazy passage, man. I think I need to do some serious Bible study on this.
I really like this, Sammy. I think we all struggle finding balance in wanting to have success at what God has called us to do while making sure he still gets all the credit. And that verse in 2 Samuel is awesome, but it’s David’s response that drives the point home — “so that Your name will be great forever.” Love it.
Great thoughts Sammy! I know what you’re talking about because this is one of lessons I believe God has been patiently teaching me about (“patiently” is an understatement :D).
For me, it comes as a understanding of what true humility is. I believe true humility comes as understanding that when we get to a place of knowing EVERYTHING we have comes from God and EVERYTHING we do is for His glory, we have the confidence/”swag” on doing what God has gifted us in doing, and doing it great. Kinda like how Moses called himself “the most humble man on earth”, or when David called God to listen to his “just cries” and “lips free of deceit”. Usually we look at this exclamations as arrogant, self-righteous, and prideful, but Moses and David knew their hearts and desires are so connected with God that they are not afraid to say/be who they are and go after it.
As for the process and journey of getting to that place in my heart, well, let’s say thank goodness we serve a God who can do all things!
Hope my ramblings provide a little help 😀
Joshy Josh. Great thoughts man. Thanks. Seriously. I needed to hear some of that. To be honest I struggle with this. Just saying I’m good at _____ is so painful for me sometimes but i think its because I don’t understand what true humility means.
But in some ways, I’d rather swing on the extreme of ignoring what I have and acting like God hasn’t given me anything than over-emphasizing it and acting like what I have is mine [pride]. Wait.. both of those sound so wrong. Am I really better off Josh? What do you think?
Here I’m reminded of Psalm 131:
“Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great
or too awesome for me to grasp.”
I like what JoshyJosh says about how God gives us everything we need to bring him glory. We all have our gifts and abilities, and we’re supposed to use them to bring people closer to Jesus. It’s not prideful to do those things well, because we’re instructed to do what we do excellently, but being concerned with the outcome is a matter that is “too great or too awesome for me to grasp.”
I guess we’re just supposed to use what he’s given us to do what we’re called to do and leave the rest of the story up to him.
Thoughts?
But is just doing what he called us to do enough? Is just using our talents enough? There’s a lot of people with God-given ability who do horrible things with it – God belittling things.
Just thought I’d stir the pot a bit more 🙂
You just thought… 🙂 I guess I’d have to bring it back to what Sammy wrote earlier regarding 2 Samuel – “So that Your name will be great forever.” If what you’re doing is for God and not yourself, and you’re doing it with excellence, then I’d say yes, that is enough. Anything more would be over-achieving 🙂
Dude, I’m feeling a song idea in there – “Your Name Be Great Forever” You feel it?
I definitely feel it. I’m also feeling a co-write. Ya dig?
Let’s do it. Listen through the new Matt Redman for inspiration and then let’s write 🙂
oooooooooooh! Song writing on the blog! haha! This could get awesomesauce!
“It’s more important to prepare my heart than it is to prepare my hands.” Love this line.
To answer your question, I can think of way too many times where the music was great but the Spirit was lacking. I would think things like “That break before the last chorus was right on, and remember how the guitar’s delay just sailed over it before we all crashed in…. man, worship was amazing!” When in reality our obsession with sounding good and having fantastic production actually hindered our opportunity to minister. After any service, it’s easy to assume worship was good because the music was good.
Part of the problem may be that people associate worship as music when music is only an avenue of worship. But it’s up to us as leaders to demonstrate otherwise. And we can’t neglect sharing the importance of loving and meeting with Jesus regularly and not just in the first 20 minutes of our Sunday services.
And I guess while I’m on my very short pedestal, I’d also like to mention my frustration with people that require an “experience” with Jesus in order to determine if a worship service was good or not. Is it no longer satisfying to simply be with Him?
What if we were facilitators of our own experience with God? That no matter what setting we stepped into, our heart were already prepared. What if we lived in a state of readiness to worship?
That the key, imo
Great post and comments. I love this confession: “I figured it was enough to rehearse religiously, arrange creatively, and execute flawlessly.”
I offer two thoughts:
1) For worship planners – Did we make it easy for the average person to worship? Angie mentioned this regarding difficulty of material.
2) For the team – Were we good role models? As Brandon commented, if the team looks un-engaged, expect the congregation to mimic that behavior.
My confession (to answer your question). There was a time I led when everything went “perfect” (rare, but true), and yet I felt like we had missed something … So here’s another question I would add to your 3 – Where was the anointing? (or something to that effect)
This is probably one of the best discussions (comment replies) on any post you have written. What a great community here!
as a worship leader its not my job to “usher in the Holy Spirit” AS SOME SAY.PEOPLE THAT DON’T worship during the week and don’t spend time in the “secret place” probably wont worship sundays .as for the” audience” that looks like its on life support,don’t look at them.worship the way you do at home alone.only you and Him.things will work out for sure when the Holy Spirit shows up.The river that flows from His throne is always flowing,we cant force someone to drink from it.WE can’t coerce or whip up something that will make non-worshiping people worship.so stop feeling guilty or burnout and worship with all your heart.blessings.