Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be working on a series of posts that I’m going to call Worship Basics… And through these posts, I’m going to make some “course corrections” in the direction and purpose of the site…
Just thought I’d warn you.
The primary change is the scope of “art” that I intend to address… About a year ago, I made the decision to omit any writing and opinion about musical arts and worship in church. Since the scope of my ministry at the LVC excluded musical worship, it just seemed a good choice at the time…
But as I move forward with my book and with the scope of WOP, it seems foolish to ignore a major art form in the church just to be politic.
Tom Jackson is one of my favorite artists to follow… His tips for performing musicians and worship teams are fully awesome… Today, he talks about creating moments for your audience… it’s worth a read:
“It’s important not to get hung up in “how many songs” you play. It IS important to get a vision for your show and for you to think about what MOMENTS you want the audience to experience!
“Check this blog (Tom Jackson) wrote a while ago – it has some concepts that are important when you’re planning your live show. And when you’re done reading, leave your comments and questions…read more
Ok, 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…
Next time: God-Centered worship songs connect too…
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…
We had a guest band at our church last Sunday… I’ll talk more about them later… It gave me an opportunity to watch people worship, to observe how they connect and don’t connect, and I made a startling discovery:
Most people in our church don’t connect in worship.
And we’re a Vineyard church, for cryin’ out loud… We’re a part of the denomination most widely known for it’s worship music…
And I’m not talking about first-time visitors… Many of the Disconnects are leaders of ministries.
My observation is that Disconnects fall into three categories:
The Bored…
A.W. Tozer says, “The church that can’t worship must be entertained and men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.” Our generation (and by that I mean everyone I know under 50) is overstimulated. We are bombarded with information in the form of TV, advertising, social media and numerous forms of messaging… I carry a device that is half the size of my first mobile phone and connects me to my phone, email, text messaging, as well as instant access to my accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. If church isn’t engaging all of my senses the way my life engages them, I will be bored, check out and start people-watching… And I’m not the only one.
Bored Disconnects need to be drawn into worship personally. There are ways to connect from the platform that will help them stay engaged… I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.
The Confused…
Some people just don’t have a frame of reference for what’s going on. We have a guy in our church that came from a Catholic tradition… Expressive worship, with the raised hands and the getting loud, is foreign to him. Sometimes, the expression on his face is laughable. He wants to connect, but lacks the practice with the methodology.
The seeker-movement of the 80′s and 90′s focused the most attention on the Confused Disconnects… Many of these churches had regular meetings to assess the friendliness of their methods and language to unchurched individuals… The danger here is the potential for removing any real content from songs and messages…
The Confused Disconnect doesn’t need the Christian message dumbed-down, he needs the methodology explained… regularly. Worship leaders that teach about worship in the midst of worship will have a lot of success in connecting with these people.
The Broken…
People come into church from some devastating backgrounds. When these past issues aren’t handled lovingly by the church, the people end up being Disconnects. I watched a young man who has the background to understand the methodology, has the focus to keep his attention on what’s happening, but doesn’t have the heart to connect…
Broken Disconnects need the attention of teachers and leaders apart from what the worship leaders do on Sunday; and real relationships in the church that don’t make things worse. But don’t underestimate the power of worship to bring healing to brokenness. We’ll talk about that later too.
Ultimately, it’s up to the leaders to identify and deal with Disconnects in the most loving and effective ways possible, always remembering that we have to build the bridge from God’s heart to theirs.
Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be working on a series of posts that I’m going to call Worship Basics… And through these posts, I’m going to make some “course corrections” in the direction and purpose of the site…
