The Convergent: a blog from John Hicks

This post is predominately geared more to the up-and-coming/active worship leaders out there.  As with anything on this blog, these are just thoughts as if we were having a conversation at Town Grounds, so none of this will necessarily be any kind of Scriptural exegesis.  A better description would probably be outpourings of my current journey of faith and experiences—as Christian and as a current worship leader.

 

One of my biggest problems with many worship leaders is that they really don’t understand the importance of what they do.  Let’s get some context going here…  The standards for the teaching pastor are incredibly high: lots of prayer, constant study of Scripture, good and relevant communication skills, appropriate appearance and attire, and the ability to relate to each member in the congregation in at least some way.  That’s hard.  But I think that most of us would agree with most if not all of those standards because that’s how important the message time in the service is.  People learn and apply what happens during that certain portion of the service and build their own theological frameworks from such teachings and experiences.  The church progresses on the path that is laid out by this kind of spiritual maturation.  So, the conclusion is that the standards should be high—with great power comes great responsibility.

 

And then there’s the worship pastor.  What is his role in the service?  To the casual observer, he/she leads the singing, puts together the service elements in a certain fashion, and “prepares” everyone for the “important” time: the message.  In other words, the worship leader is nothing more than a hype man for the main act.  I think that we can establish that such a description is way off and that there is something more substantial to the worship leader’s role and responsibility; but unfortunately there are many worship pastors who start believing this very lie and act accordingly.  Let me explain.

 

Anything can be made easy if you know the drill.  For instance, I could easily throw together a service within 30 minutes—piece of cake!  All that I have to do is pick out a few songs in the same key that will rise and fall dramatically to invoke a formulaic emotional response of the people, tie in a few prayers, and coordinate some Scripture readings by typing in a few keywords from the set list at Biblegateway.  When Sunday comes, the transitions flow well, the emotions are flying, and the congregation is clueless.  Yeah…it’s that easy.  Oh—and don’t forget a sappy video to make people even more emotionally vulnerable. 
 

What many worship pastors don’t realize is that they may be communicating and teaching more during the “praise/worship” time than the teaching pastor does during the message.  Now before I get accused of being biased here because I’m a worship pastor, let me defend my case.  When a child learns a language, they do so by association.  In other words, the learning is very, very subtle and indirect because it happens through observance and participation.  Think of when you learned that a chair was actually called a “chair.”  More than likely your mom didn’t sit down with you, grab a chair, and explain the phonetics of that object.  You simply learned that the thing that people sat on was a chair.  Now, of course, the child still eventually goes to school and learns more about language—how to articulate well, think critically, interact appropriately, and so forth: like a chair can also be called a stool, a Lazyboy, etc.   So what ends up happening is an interaction between the indirect and direct learning time.  And as much as formal education has helped us, most of our knowledge has been attained through the indirect—so much so that our indirect learning has a profound effect on our direct learning. 
 

It’s the same principle with the interaction between the worship pastor and the teaching pastor.  While the congregation knows that it is learning during the message part of the service and makes an effort to listen, learn, and apply, they are in a sense learning the language of faith during the praise/worship section so that when the teaching comes, their formal education is broadened.  The “praise/worship” time is understood not as a primer, but as the other side of the same coin because this time involves observation, participation, listening, interaction, and so forth.  You, as the worship leader, are communicating with what happens.  Your appearance, your words, your choice of songs and content, and the way you order everything.  And because there is so much interaction, there is a greater percentage of people remembering what happened during the praise/worship section than what they listened to and understood during the teaching time.  THAT’S A LOT OF RESPONSIBILITY!!  You have the role of leading with subtleties.  Think of it this way: how did you learn about love?  Was it from a textbook?  A teacher?  For all of us, it was observing, interacting, and participating, such as watching your parents kiss each other, enjoying the warmth of a hug, feeling joy from a gift, participating in conversation, etc.  You understood love, and when the formal teaching came, you had the context in which to learn. 

The standard for worship leaders should be just as high for the teaching pastor when it comes to their spiritual preparation.  Everything you do communicates something—so be very purposeful in the details.  People are making themselves very vulnerable during the praise/worship session, and you are engaging in a very real way with them.  They are learning about their faith, and you have the chance to help grow them in it.  Is there a formula?  Nope.  And that’s when it becomes hard.  In fact—that’s when it becomes ministry.

I’m still pretty proud of this logo.  Sammy’s reaction to it was worth the design time!

An original wallpaper I designed of the Christ Pantocrator .  Very ancient-future-ish…