There’s a tension we worship leaders face each and every week.
Sometimes it’s paralyzing. Stressful.
We want to worship God, but we also want to sound awesome.
We want to the church to sing, but we also want to do our favorite songs.
We want the glory of God, but we also want to progress in our creativity.
So often, its either one or the other.
It seems that our identities are easily wrapped up in our performance. At the end of a worship service I’m content with a good performance.
Sang well? Check.
Stayed on the click track? Check.
Band was tight? Check.
All important.
The technical and the spiritual. We already know this should be a balance. You can’t have one without the other.
But how does balance happen? How can you be spiritually in tune and also technically excellent?
4 Balancing Tips
Here are a few tips:
1. Emphasize What You Tend to Neglect – Some of you are gear heads. You love talking about the latest guitar pedal, drum shell, compressor, and can talk for hours about the circuitry of a bass amp. Or, at the end of a worship service you can deconstruct your performance and articulate to a “t” what you could have done better.
But if I asked you the question, “What did you see God doing?” or “Did we serve our congregation well?”, you fall silent. Begin to emphasize the spiritual. Or maybe you have spiritual passion but lack understanding when it comes to your instrument. Start to emphasize the technical.
2. Teach the Spiritual in the Midst of the Technical – If all you do is bark technical orders and your “spiritual” time consists of a quick 30 second prayer before stepping on stage, something is wrong. Spiritual truth should permeate your practical rehearsal.
Don’t compartmentalize. Teach truth when you rehearse. Create a culture where your team pursues God during practice.
3. Rehearse the Spiritual – I know you need to have the songs ready for Sunday. I know you want to avoid a musical train wreck where the whole church is laughing, rolling, and pointing the finger at you. But have you ever thought to rehearse the spiritual aspects of what you do?
Rehearse worshiping. As a team, get comfortable seeking God together. Rehearse declaring truth. Rehearse your stage presence. Musical excellence is only half the battle.
4. Get Outside the Box – Something that’s healthy for worship teams is to do something outside the box. Organize activities where you can step away from the stage, from rehearsal, from the routine. Go on a missions trip together. Visit a nursing home. Worship in a team member’s house.
Activities like this help your team catch a vision for God’s kingdom on the earth. It goes beyond music and roots people in the church and what God is doing.
What would you add to this list? How can we do a better job balancing the technical and spiritual?
This blog is all about conversation and I want to hear from you!
Let’s get some discussion going.
You can leave a comment by clicking here.
[ois skin=”Beyond Sunday 2″]
I see all these aspects in harmony. Technical and spiritual are not opposing ideas that need to be balanced and when we finally get our insecurities out of the way we will see that.
Practicing the presence of God is an all day, every day, rehearsal that we don’t set aside once we pick up an instrument. Being technically good is as much a part of worshiping God as raising our hands and singing.
Well said, Donald. Although it seems easy to really emphasize one to the exclusion of the other. Any tips on how to keep them in harmony?
Just realize that being technically good is as much worship as any other aspect. One day you may focus more on one aspect, the next day maybe another.
Rehearse worship sounds all wrong, but it hits home in that we should be as natural and comfortable in worship at church as at home. When we are teaching or modeling then it is hard to get past the fact we are being watched. Our teens prefer to pray and study with their peers and youth leader, and we do read and sing and pray at home, but it is awkward for them to be transparent depending on the setting and size of group. So, learning to worship the One in various settings and keeping in mind the audience (of One and others) is something to be mindful of.
Thinking out loud here, and I tend to not like the rehearsed response as much as the genuine one. But then there is the practice and experience that does make more perfect and sure the sound and way and knowing of things, so as to not stumble over things that would inhibit us from unified and free expression. I think that true and pure Excellence is His and we are His children who are able to imitate His as we learn and grow, our best voice found and heard by virtue of persisting in the prudence/humility He gives daily, as we walk in His just merciful way.
I loved your comment about “did we serve our congregation well?”.
Yea, it’s a great question to ask your team. Helps musicians think a little bit deeper about what they’re doing.
We’ve been running into this issue with our Student Ministries worship team. As the lead, I see students who are pouring their hearts out in worship, but the specs of the room (a garage, in essence) have lead to a clash with the drums and overall volume, which I feel tends to disconnect the audience from the opportunity to connect in worship. With a tight budget, we’ve been creative in trying to make that connection, as that is where our hearts are – improving the technical aspects while balancing the spiritual aspect. Thanks for the post – been reading for a while.
Thanks, John. I know volume issues can be a major issue, especially in a room like you’re describing. Something I’ve found that helps is teaching drummers that they don’t have to beat the drums in order to have a solid feel. They can learn to control their volume and still enjoy it. It just comes down to intentionality.
I think its so important to be thinking about what you want the people to be declaring. Each body is somewhat different but, life is life really. And God is God! Like what you said in this. Sounds like rehearsal in the heart with scriptures and remembrances of Gods character starts at home before you all get together for rehearsals. It might be good to study why someone even wrote “that song”. (whichever one)
That’s a great idea, Vicki. Stories behind songs always prove deeper meaning to what you’re singing.