Method to Music

Introduction

A little over twenty years ago I was invited on a journey that would forever change my life. A journey that would take me, a kid wrapped in jeans that were a dozen sizes too big, brand new in Christ, with the musical sensibilities of a ferret, and transport me into a life of better fitting clothes, a great love for Jesus and His Church, and a realization that as a worship pastor or leader, music isn’t everything.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that music leadership in the church today isn’t really anything if the music is all we have. Music itself is a sword that is often displayed in the church, glistening for all to see, waved about as a beacon for our communities and once its presence is made known we relocate it back to the shelf for display. I get this sense when I experience churches that seem to use their music programs as a draw to get people in the door rather than using their musical worship as a platform to respond to God in all of His goodness. It is easy to avoid getting covered in the filth and blood from the spiritual warfare around us. We miss running headlong into obeying God’s myriad of commands to sing to Him. Our people consume. Many seem to take their weekly trek to church to check a box, filtering in after the music starts because it’s not as important to them as the sermon. All the while, they’re fading and shrinking in their faith because they aren’t connecting their songs as a means of responding to who God is and what He’s done. Many sing only when it’s a song they like, never considering that their singing isn’t primarily about them, and in turn hindering the work of God’s Spirit through them to others, including how God might use them to grow those of us who lead worship. I know it’s not a new concept to suggest that music in the evangelical church has become little more than a bad performance. While the Seeker Sensitive movement is all but dead on paper it, through our music, seems to soldier on like a high school football star still spouting about the glory days 20 years after “the big game”. For some of us who lead, we are seldom asking the crucial questions of why we sing and what is important in our songs. Maybe we’re afraid of the answers to why our role as worship pastor or leader matters, why what we do is necessary or important, what the point is in singing and playing our glistening 6-strings under dimmed lights in the middle of the morning.

I write this book with the hope that I’m not alone, and the hope that one person reading this would be able to put words to what he’s been feeling and processing all these years. I want this to be a work that gives pastors a practical tool to deepen their ministries while broadening their reach through the utilization of saints who are gifted and not merely exploiting the gifts of the saints. I’ll unpack that bit later. I write this with the hope of empowering you to do the very hard work of shepherding your people, in your context, as a valuable and equipped member of your church leadership.

What follows is a chapter on why I believe this method is not only important but also crucial to the health of the American church. Then I’ll get to the practical method I’ve developed. I urge you though, if nothing else, to pursue the next chapter on why this method is needed instead of the method itself. I like things that are practical and I hope you would find this work very practical, but I’ll ask that we start with the harder questions of why we sing what we sing first before jumping into the method itself. In doing so, we might avoid following another worship trend without fully considering what this trend might develop for our church cultures down the road.

A quick note to the lead pastors here. You are not alone in the shepherding of your people. It can be risky to place an expectation on your worship leader or pastor to function as a co-shepherd of a flock but I believe it is vital for our churches that worship leaders and pastors are equipped for the task of shepherding. In most cases, they deeply care for leading the church. They want to serve well. That said, please consider what follows as a means to empower you to better delegate the role of shepherd to those whom you share the platform with every Sunday morning if you aren’t already doing so. Your worship leader or pastor likely spends as much time, if not more, on stage as you do. Let’s equip them spiritually for the task. I’m going to encourage an expectation on worship leaders and pastors to not settle for singing sermon points, what’s popular on the radio, or what will cater to a consumer culture. Instead, use these tools to build up men and women who don’t merely polish their swords but wield them like warriors, and tend them like blacksmiths. These tools are designed to give you a better foundation and metric of expectation when you ask the question, “How was worship this last Sunday?”