Sunday night while meeting with a group of worship leaders we were talking about how it seems that some people are maybe moving away from some of the things that we tend to rely on or hold to in today’s worship culture. And it seems that some of the younger people are leading that charge. There seems to be a shift starting that is moving away from a lot of the production and moving to some more “organic”, “grassroots” type approaches.

Both of these conversations started me to thinking. Sometimes that can be a scary situation, but I don’t think it is THIS time. Anyway, here’s the question(s) of the day. Is there really a worship music shelf life? And what makes the timeless classics so timeless? And if every time we have some sort of revelation we go back to these classics, why do we keep leaving them in the first place?

It seems that people may be asking these questions without actually asking these questions. Or maybe they are asking these questions and I just haven’t heard anything about it yet. For me, it seems like worship music has a shelf life. They can be in a heavy rotation and eventually get to the point where they aren’t as effective because people get tired of hearing them. Or do they? I tend to think that sometimes it’s the musicians and the people playing the music that get to the saturation point of a song before a congregation will. So who’s creating this shelf life? Well, before I take that tangent, I believe I just figured out what question will fuel tomorrow’s post. Anyway… whenever there seems to be some sort of reawakening or shift from the norm, it always appears to be centered around the hymns from the past. Then we find some sort of way to reintroduce them to a new generation of listeners. It had happened before this, but in 2003 there seemed to be another big push when Passion came out with their Hymns Ancient and Modern CD. A lot of the hymn arrangements we sing today came from that CD. A lot of the hymn arrangements that have been made today have been birthed from that CD project. There was a return to the classics. It now seems that another turn is coming, but even in a more…primitive(?) way than before. Groups like Mumford & Sons and some others are making the banjo cool again to the point that people are using them in everything. There aren’t many acoustic/electric banjos out there (or maybe there are now), so they cause you to take more of an unplugged approach to worship. So it seems like we are wrapped in the forming of a new circle yet again.

So why is it that we keep running away from the classics, only to come back to them after we get tired of whatever is out at the time? Could it be that we aren’t satisfied with what we are putting out? Or is it more of going back for inspiration? In the never-ending search for truth, is it possible that we realize that our musical truths have been there all along? Are we using the truths in the words of those old songs to provide us with the energy and foundation to write new songs? I think it should. I hope it is. Whatever it is, it can’t be denied that it seems like we may be in the midst of another worship genre turn. I wonder what that’s going to look like? What will my worship sets look like in 3 years? Well, if I’m still writing in that time, I’ll be posting those set lists.

What do you think about these questions? Do you see this? Has it been this way for awhile and I’m just now seeing/saying something about it?

Bringing Cultures Together

I look at this part like solving Rubik’s Cube. You’re spinning around old and young, black and white and Asian and whomever else, traditional and contemporary, male and female and trying to make all those things come together somehow in 20 minutes worth of music. It. Is. Hard. It’s next to impossible to bring them all together, and most weeks you can’t. For one, there’s hardly ever enough time. But even more than that, unless you have an hour long show you are not going to make everyone happy. When you spend your time trying to make sure that everyone is happy, you’ll find that know one is. Including you. Your best bet (which is ALWAYS your best bet) is to listen to God’s voice and let him tell you what needs to be conveyed through the music and then you play that. Let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes that’s David Crowder. Sometimes that’s William McDowell. Sometimes it’s Isaac Watts. It’s a wild party in my head, but with every wild party there’s usually good music.

Blending Styles

There are some similarities between this one and the first one, but this applies more to the way a song is arranged. I personally love to mix up the arrangement of a song. That’s one of the easiest ways to make a song accessible to different types of people. Of course, this also one of the more dangerous moves on a weekly basis. Why? Well, I call this one The Sing Off effect. If I haven’t said it before, this is by far my favorite show on all of television. I wish I was on everyday so I could keep getting ideas and hearing what these amazing people can do with their voices. One of my favorite things about the show is the fact that these groups with different styles have to find a way to approach multiple genres of music, sometimes in the same night. I find myself having to do that on a weekly basis to give things some variety. It’s a fun and it allows me to branch out. But there’s a lot of care taken since an arrangement could either really shine or flop. It’s one of those risks you have to take.

Letting Christ Be The Star

You would think this wouldn’t be a big deal to keep in the forefront. However, sometimes as musicians we work really hard on a project or an arrangement and then we take things personally good or bad. If a song goes real well and people give compliments then it can be difficult to step out of that feeling of “yes, I put in a lot of hard work that you would never understand to make this be something that you would enjoy”. Whether you are in a multicultural church where people are looking for variety in almost every chord or straight Sunday morning gospel or the Chris Tomlin Pandora station, this NEEDS to be your major focus. Otherwise you’re a thief and you’re trying to rob the kingdom of the glory that should be headed that way.

Are there any other worship pastors that are leading in my type of situation? What are your thoughts? How much do these thoughts translate to leading in general? What about those of you that aren’t on the stage weekly? How do you gauge what you hear when you go to church?

I believe that sometimes us worship leaders we can get confused as to what the focus is when we are on stage. There should be an element of excellence when we step on the stage each Sunday morning. But sometimes we step over the line and it becomes a performance and it becomes more about us and how we sound and what we can do. If I’ve learned NOTHING from being a musician and worship leader is that people can tell when we have switched from worship leader to self promoter. It is at that point when worship stops. That’s when I’m no longer doing my job. That’s when we are no longer doing our jobs.

At the end of the day, I’m talking about ways to help us become more effective worshipers. True worship is contagious. Let’s continue to search for ways to create a worship that others, Christians and non-Christians alike, see and take notice. THAT worship doesn’t just happen inside the walls of the church. Maybe it’s time to write about contagious worship…

So I was thinking the other day about this concept. I’d like for people to weigh in on this if possible. I was putting together worship sets for church (because that’s what I do), when I was going through a couple different arrangements for a popular song. And without a second thought I said “let’s think outside the box with this one”. Then I immediately thought, “Why do we say that all the time”? I mean, obviously I know why we say that, but I wondered just what the box was. I mean, does the box change? Does the box look different in 2011 than it did in 1998? In 2010? What does thinking outside the box mean in today’s world? Is the box SO bad? Is thinking outside the box an actual box itself? Am I over thinking this? What was I doing again?

As an artist, we are always trying to find fresh new ways to present what we do. That’s what keeps us moving forward. Sometimes I wonder if, in our search for a life of less boundary do we end up outside of where God wants us to be. I wonder if, in our search and desire to be relevant (which is a ever moving beast of a target), do we end up diluting what should be strong an highly concentrated. I personally like changing things up periodically because that’s part of who I am as a person and musician. Can a story be told in a different way and still get the point across? I ask that question every day. But I also have to make sure that I’m not changing the main point of the story. So does thinking outside the box change the story? Or does it just change the manner in which the story is told?

What do you think about this box? Is there even a box anymore? Lend me your thoughts…

It seems like an oxymoron to think that we wouldn’t take the time to share what we know or what we’ve learned as musicians and students of the Word. And I’m not saying that worship leaders shouldn’t share things from the stage. But we only get a limited window of time to share and we are given the chance to share through music. The song portion of the service is not the worship leader sermon time. I’ve been in places where we got a worship leader sermon and the pastor’s sermon as well. It felt like a lecture series with music playing in the background. I think what I’m trying to say is that as a worship leader we are in a unique place that, if handled correctly, can really enhance a Sunday morning worship experience. If handled poorly, the flow of a service can be completely manhandled and subsequently deflated.

I was once told by a pretty awesome worship leader and friend that not the job of the worship leader to preach the music. If you want to share your thoughts on worship, teach a class or write a blog. Our job is to lead the people in singing. That was some great advice to me and it has stuck. I believe that people really want to know what you think or feel, they will ask you. I know that from experience. So friends, feel free to share you heart from the stage, just try to do it in 2 minutes or less.

I feel like sometimes worship gets looked at the same way. Everyone has their opinions about how worship music is supposed to look or sound or feel. You either have to move forward and be progressive as the music is progressing. Or you can only be musically pure in the church if you stick with the standards and the traditional. That’s when music was at it’s best. I’m not saying that I’ve heard ANY of these things said before (hehehe), well maybe I am… but the truth of that matter is, people are rarely going for the mix. The question is why?

The mix is hard. The mix walks a fine, fine line that I believe worship/song leaders of the day don’t really want to walk. By the way, I am writing this as more of a discussion starter because I constantly deal with this myself. The whole concept of blended worship is one that continues to change, making it hard to get a grasp on. By everyday terms in the church, blended worship basically says “We don’t want to make anyone mad, and we want to keep everyone here happy so let’s do our best to make each week and safe, even mixture of music for everyone. We know we can’t continue to do hymns forever because we are losing our kids by the second. But we don’t want to make the elder people mad because they have helped build and sustain this church. And their name is on that pew…” So at best, we’re asking our worship leaders to be diplomats on a weekly basis. It’s not easy to feel led by the Spirit and be a diplomat. Let me tell you that from experience. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing the idea of a blended worship gathering. But a lot of times, my present situation included, a blended service is only a means to and end. Over a short period of time, people eventually move toward multiple services where those who want traditional hymns and things of that nature get to wake up earlier and come here the sleepy sounding, not as cool, energy-less “old people music. Then the later service is the hip, ultra cool, contemporary, “the only way the music could be this cool is if you wake up later and can drink coffee in the sanctuary” music. There is NO division in those two families of thought, right?

How do we treat the concept of a blended (or later named converged) worship experience from becoming ‘mutt worship’? I know from experience that doing this on a weekly basis can be terribly hard to maintain. I’m not saying that it is really easy to do either of the extremes. However, it seems to take an extra bit of planning because you have to keep everyone’s musical taste in your thoughts each week. You have to remember that Ms. Whatsherface thinks that new fancy song you played last week had too much of a beat and she felt like she was at a club. You also have to remember the group of young college kids that told you how lame that second song was and that if they have to hear that one one more time they may just lose it (with a couple OMG’s thrown in cause they sent this to you via text message). Then you think, “shouldn’t worship be about the one we’re worshiping anyway?” Hmmmm…

To all of you who have had to do this before, how long does it normally take you to choose music for your church services? Or for a retreat weekend? Do you go about it the exact same way you did when you first started out? What has changed for you? What has stayed the same? For the record, it generally takes me between 45 minutes and 2 hours to select and craft my song services.

Last night Eva and I went to a concert at the 9th Street Abbey in Soulard last night to hear The Fundamental Elements and JR. Let me tell you, this was some downright good stuff. This building is cool and very much Soulard. The high ceilings and the stained glass windows were very cool. The room pretty much asked for some good music. However, it was a tricky room to do sound in as we soon found out with JR hit the stage. JR has quite the rock feel. His performance was very much Andre 3000 with the sound of John Legend in his voice. For those of you who don’t know either of those people, click on the name…

Anyway, a couple friends of mine were playing in his band, so you always want to see your friends succeed. Let me tell you, they succeeded. The beat was thumping and the sound was electric. Unfortunately, there was so much reverb in this room that the words got REALLY muffled and eaten up by the rest of the sound. I believe that what he was saying was good, but you could only catch a couple words. That was a bummer because you could tell he was really working to share his gifts with everyone. It wasn’t lost on me, JR…you did your thing.

After their 7 song set that ended with a Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ outro (which was hot), we waited a couple minutes for the second group. Surprisingly, they didn’t take a long time to set up and get ready to go. They got in and got it started with a little ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ by MJ. I have been loving all the MJ tributes at concerts and stuff lately. They did a great job. Then they went into their set of music. I was instantly hooked. The beats were infectious and the lead singer’s voice is just smooth. Again, it was a little tough to hear all the words, but you don’t have to hear words to hear a good voice. Song after delicious song brought me in more. I’ve never heard 5 white guys bring straight soul to the stage like this. I had been exposed to them by their song ‘That Girl’ that I had recently heard on the radio, so I was waiting to hear that one. Good stuff.

One of the highlights of the night had to be when the bassist and the drummer, brothers, went off on a planned jam session. I think I died for a couple minutes. There’s nothing in this world like family connection when it comes to music. They just fit together and it was amazing. They went back and forth between drum and bass solos. I could still be sitting there listening it was THAT good.

I want to wrap this review up by saying that there is some amazing musical talent in the St. Louis area. If you don’t believe me, grab a newspaper, find out where the live music is going to be and find yourself there. You will be totally surprised. In the mean time, I’m going to sit at home and wait for this group to say that the keyboard player got mad and decided to leave. Then I’m gonna drop whatever I’m doing and play for them. Until then, I’m just their newest groupie. And I’m not afraid to admit that man crush.

So my answer to this question will be the same as the answer to the previous blog’s question…NO! I will step out on a limb and say that everything about contemporary worship is not good. We have gotten some great songs over the years from some great musicians and writers. We have also seen this music be something that has brought up some new musicians. We think about songs like “How Great is Our God” and “Your Grace is Enough” and you wonder how anything about contemporary music can be bad. But here is what I feel has been the BIGGEST issue with the world of contemporary music. Surprisingly enough, it won’t have anything to do with Chris Tomlin or Steve Fee. It has to do with the people in our churches…

People who have contemporary worship services tend to be alienating of other worship styles. Most of my experiences with people who sing contemporary music has been where the singers have negative thoughts about hymns of the past.  Now I know that to some degree this is an overgeneralization, but I’m just speaking for arguement sake.  I feel that sometimes we can get so excited about something new that we just blast whatever was old. That is something that hurts harmony within the body. Then we start seeing seperate services for traditional and contemporary in the same morning. Although I’m not a huge fan of separate services because of differences in style, I’ll take it over the other thing that tends to happen.

Some churches will attempt to update music and do things in a new way, but with people who don’t understand the music. When musicians try to do things they aren’t familiar with without the help of someone who IS familiar with it, that is really frustrating to me. I will try my best not to run off on a tangent, because I’m sure that’s not helpful to anyone. I think at this point I’m going to stop and leave this up for discussion…

In other news…the job search continues. The search has been expanded to the rest of the country now (which is sort of sad…), but we are finding some prospects. Keep praying that God will show us where he wants us to be. I’ll keep you posted on that, too.  Check in starting tomorrow for the first worship breakdown.