What Worship Leaders Need Their Pastors to Know: A Call to Theological Leadership in WorshipThis is an article that I have published in the Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies. Introduction: Admitting a Need Worship leaders (of whatever title) might prefer this article to be titled, “What Worship Leaders Wish Their Pastors Knew.” That article gets to dance through all kinds of subjects from the perspective of a worship leader. It already exists, by the way, as a series of excellent and highly recommended blog posts by Bob Kauflin on his website, worshipmatters.com. This article approaches that general idea from the perspective of the needs of the local church. Churches need more from their pastors in worship than a decent working relationship with the so-named worship leaders. Churches need their pastors to understand the nature of their relationship with all the worship ministries—and the worship leaders need that as well. This relationship is vital to a healthy church but misunderstood by many and flatly abused by some. In their defense, many pastors have not been given a proper model for their role in worship, so they do what pastors always do in such situations—make it up as they go. Unfortunately, pastoral training often does not provide the tools necessary for pastors to evaluate their intuitive approach to their worship ministries. They develop an approach to their worship ministries from any number of sources, having a hard enough time deciding if it works to worry if it is right. Consider these analogies:
[Read the rest of this article at jbtsonline.org.]
What Worship Leaders Need Their Pastors to Know: A Call to Theological Leadership in Worship
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We have a predictable but unfortunate habit in Christian music of declaring more on the part of the singer than he or she can really back up. (I'm going to pick on a few songs in particular in this post, but please understand that I have nothing against these artists nor are these the only or even worst examples - they just happen to have been on the radio recently.) Artists, like preachers, have to make declarations. Just as any preacher worth his salt will acknowledge that he's preaching as much to himself as to the congregation, many great Christian songwriters are very intentional about having their lyrics reflect the actual Christian life. Sometimes, though, they make absolute and ideal statements, and the challenge with a song on the radio (as opposed to a sermon) is you don't have the chance to create context or provide explanations. Here's the song that sparked this thought. It had been a while since I heard it last, and it was on the radio twice yesterday. Kutless released the certified-gold Strong Tower album in 2005, led by its popular title track. It's a fine song, but take a close look at the chorus: You are my strong tower, The first seven lines are wonderful, and the key is that they are entirely about God. When we make (accurate) declarations about God in our music, we can never go wrong. But then they throw in the last line, "and Your face is all I seek." I don't understand why artists would do this, other than it sounds good or it fits a meter/rhyme scheme. It's simply not true. The fact of sin means that the face of God is not the only thing we seek, and even Jesus' powerful guidance to "seek first the kingdom of heaven" is more coherent than "seek only the face of God."
Look, if you think I'm just being too picky, I can give you a clear example of me being too picky. Colton Dixon has released a catchy new song "More of You." It's a fine song, but I fuss about the opening stanza: |
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