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.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are always welcome!