Archive for December, 2009
Worship That Connects, Part 5: Like a Sloppy, Wet Kiss…
Posted by: | CommentsOk, if you don’t get the song reference from the title, you can watch the video…
I have mixed feelings about this song…
On the one hand, the verses are virtually impossible to sing the first several times that you hear it. It’s lyrically poetic, maybe too poetic for the average midwestern Joe that we meet in our church, but rhythmically awkward. The first three or four times that different worship leaders pitched this on to our church, it struck out. No one sang along…
On the other hand, the chorus is so strong and connects with people’s hearts so poignantly that it gets very emotional responses, particularly as it builds in intensity towards the end.
In fact, the emotive aspect of the song is SO powerful that it completely hijacks the visually bland performance on the video… If you can stand to watch it long enough to get to the chorus, without getting bored watching the Kim sway and stagger around with her eyes closed, you’ll see what I mean…
The truth is that a LOT of the modern worship songs that connect are ME-focused… Like this one: it’s kinda about God and the intimate aspect of his nature, but it’s mostly about how much we are loved by God.
Introduce that idea in an emotive way to a group of people who haven’t been still since they sat in the same spot at church last Sunday… It’s bound to connect at a very visceral level with a few of them.
But is it really worship? Or is it just a sloppy, wet sentiment?
A pastor-friend of mine derides this kind of music as “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs…
And then there’s the en vogue idea, out there in worship-leader-land, that emotive songs don’t connect with the manly blokes…
I don’t mean to endorse either of these ideas… They just represent the other extreme on the continuum…
There certainly is a place in the life of the church for sloppy, wet worship… because it does CONNECT with people who live in a world where intimate relationships are ended via text-message. The message that God loves them intimately is life-giving and true.
But, I fear, if that’s all we have, we end up with men and women in church that connect with a sugary, milk-toast god (small “g”) that falls pathetically short of being the real and powerful One that they desperately need…
So… mix it up…
Psst... Pass it on...Next time: God-Centered worship songs connect too…
PhotoFriday: Whose Woods These Are…
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'...and miles to go before I sleep...'
It’s been snowing here in the foothills… my favorite time of year.
PhotoFriday is a feature of my own photographic art. Join our group on Flickr.com to submit photos for post illustrations and FlickrFriday slideshows (resuming in January).
Psst... Pass it on...PhotoFriday: Snow Play Boundary…
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Our favorite sledding hill in the Hidden Valley at Rocky Mountain National Park…
PhotoFriday is a feature of my own photographic art. Join our group on Flickr.com to submit photos for post illustrations and FlickrFriday slideshows (resuming in January).
Psst... Pass it on...Worship That Connects, Part 4: Communitcating From The Platform
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Is this thing on?
I wanted to come back and talk more about the benefit of using performance tools to connect with audiences in worship… I think this is important, and it’s not just because I’m comfortable on stage with a microphone in my hand…
It’s important because it is one of the primary tools in bridge building…
Leaders (read: the entire worship team) have the responsibility to bridge the gap between God’s presence and the people in the audience. It’s not enough to just play songs or even play them well…
The Audience is Ignorant…
If you read my blog much at all, you’ll be aware that I’m a big fan of Tom Jackson, a live-music producer. He does the circuit of artist development conferences and I try to catch him whenever I can.
Tom teaches that audiences are ignorant… They don’t understand music or audio or that yellow box on the floor that your guitar player keeps stomping on.
Here’s an example: As I have been increasing my leadership role in worship at my church, I’ve received a lot of (mostly unsolicited) input from people in the church. The musicians among them like to give me tips on audio equipment that will revolutionize our sound by adding nuances and tone.
The non-musicians have a different perspective. They tell me that no matter who is leading, everything sounds the same to them…
Being an insider, I know that the previous leader spent a huge amount of time, energy and money on equipment to nuance the tone. He is very good at that and very committed to it. Every guitar effect was carefully crafted, meticulously dialed-in, for the expressed purpose of adding variety to the sound. The past and current leaders (myself included) spend a lot of time in rehearsal working on dynamics within songs and throughout sets… There is absolutely no way that any 2 songs sound the same on a given Sunday…
So, why is that the perception of the non-musicians?
What the Audience Knows…
Tom says that if all the songs look the same, the audience will perceive that they all sound the same…
A guitar player understands his nuanced tonal differences, the musician understands subtle dynamics and the audiophile understands a good EQ… a soccer-mom just sees a band that never moves while playing songs that all look the same… She’s becomes easily distracted and starts wondering where she can buy Gatorade on sale this week…
It doesn’t help in our church at all that the platform is small and the center area is devoted to the pastor’s MacBook.
The other thing that the aforementioned soccer-mom understands is human behavior…
If the worship leader and all of the musicians are focused on their printed music, or their equipment, or even their own experience of worship, it sends a non-verbal message to her that they’re not interested in connecting with her. It may just mean be that they’re nervous or afraid of making a mistake or that the suffer from the misguided ideas that we talked about in Part 1 or Part 2… And so she doesn’t connect with them…
An effective leader can alter the dynamic in a number of ways, but the simplest way is to unchain himself from the instrument… Even if it’s just for one song in a set. He can make eye contact, encourage people to clap, raise hands, smile… just by doing those things himself… The other members of the team can do the same thing… It brings freedom to the audience when the leaders are free.
Toll Bridge or Troll Bridge…
Worship leaders (and again: every member of the team is a worship leader) bridge the gap between God’s presence and the people in the pews… but building bridges is an expensive undertaking. And leaders pay the price of transit for the church they lead.
Purposeful connection (which is the goal of good leadership and performance) by the leaders is required to get people over the bridge. When we refuse or neglect to be purposeful, we end up being road blocks… Metaphorically, we stand in the middle of the bridge and declare, “None shall pass.”
Reach out to the church you lead, with your eyes, with your hands, with a smile, or by taking a step toward them… you can call it “ministry” instead of “performance” if it makes you feel better, but it’s really both and that’s the balance that makes all the difference…
Psst... Pass it on...
Change is Usually Good…
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I brought the site back from hiatus in October, I made some changes in the way decisions are made and took on full ownership of the content and direction of the site… In effect, WOP became my personal blog and website…
But I didn’t do a big change in the site itself because I was working on three or four other projects that were really a drain on my time.
So, there are still all of these “under construction” pages and other remnants of the old way of doing things that I’m going to be addressing in the coming weeks… The goal is to have the new site working by January…
Things that won’t change…
I’ll still be doing features like FieldNotes, LeadershipIssues and SacredCows…
I’ll still be writing most of the content and posting links to blogs, videos and other resources that I find out there…
Things that are changing…
The new site will be black… I’ve never really been happy with the white as a background for images… And the straight-up logo is getting a minor makeover…
I’ll be bringing back some features that got dropped: FeaturedArtist and FlickrFriday… In fact, I’m going to rerun all of the FeaturedArtists from 2009 to get everybody used to seeing that again…
I’ll be including my Tweets in the sidebar area and adding a similar feed from the WOP group at Swarmforce.com…
I’ll be writing more about leadership in church (since it looks like I will be continuing to do more of that)…
So, here’s a peek at the shape of things to come…
See you there…
Psst... Pass it on...
