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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I spend a lot of my time trying to explain what it means to be in a Free Church tradition. There is so much church hopping and so little explanation about ecclesiological principles that many people really have no clue what the difference is between, say, a Baptist and a Methodist. And then we do things like this that make things that much harder . . . For a long, long, long, long time, certain churches have required their leaders to wear special clothing that sets them apart from the regular church members and visitors. "That's not a big deal, is it?" you say. After all, most companies out there require employees to wear some kind of uniform. And is there not great value in that? When you walk into a store, you know exactly who to ask for help. When you walk through a public event, you know exactly who is on security. That's good. So, if you were walking through life and had a spiritual question, wouldn't it be helpful if you could quickly identify an "expert"? Clericals and VestmentsObviously, some people think the answer to that question should be yes. To make that identification, there has evolved a style of dress unique to clergy: clericals (which clergy wear out and about) and vestments (which clergy wear in church services). This goes way back before Judaism, where Egyptian priests wore special robes. This should only make sense in every culture where priests are expected to perform sacred, ritual duties that would have a lot of rules attached to them as to how to perform those duties correctly so as not to offend the associated god. Jews, who served the One True God, were also given rules about priestly attire and purification for the time that they would spend either in the presence of God (with the various offerings) or in the service of God (with the various sacrifices). But with the first exile and destruction of the temple and subsequent rise of the synagogue, a new class of priests arose, regularly populated by Pharisees. Modern Christians tend to cast Pharisees as a caricature, but in this area the truth seems to be that they indeed had a very elaborate system of dress. Everything from the tie of their sandals to the cut and color of their robes was designed to distinguish them. They had a particular beard trim, special rings and bracelets, and the infamous fringes and tassels. They had multiple layers of clothing all very carefully put together. Pharisees also wore phylacteries all the time. Everything about their attire screamed "Rabbi!" and they received due homage for their vocation. |
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