Month: April 2012

No Offense But I Don’t Relate

On By adamdolhanykIn admin, blogs, visions, worshipLeave a comment

The Reason I started this blog is that I was looking for blogs and podcasts about leading worship so that I could get better in areas I’m weak in. For me this would be admin, mostly, but I’d like to get better at team development, running practices, etc.

I found that the blogs and podcasts were not dealing with these issues or they were done by guys at a big church. There is NOTHING wrong with big churches, I grew up in a church that was around 2,000 people strong. But the reality is that leading at church of 700 or so and then planting a church that averages below 100 people, the dynamics are a lot different.

Also, a lot of the musical style and expression they were discussing was foreign to me. The expressions I found either leaned towards performance or towards a form of simplicity that was often a cover for laziness and lack of vision. In short I just didn’t relate.

I’m not trying to rag on every worship blog out there… one of the blogs that seemed to me to be from a very performance driven church taught me a lot about admin. One of the podcasts that leaned towards that rigid simplicity reminded me that I wasn’t a rock star. Both sides were used by God to bless, challenge and teach me.

I just felt that I had a perspective I could share here, and  that there might be other worship leaders like me out there who want to grow in their gifts and callings but don’t connect with the currently out there or are looking for a different perspective. I hope as I write more posts that it will be helpful to someone in some way.

Why These Songs?

On By adamdolhanykIn worshipLeave a comment

Some thoughts I’d had recently on why I pick the songs I pick when I lead worship.

NEW SONGS:

The bible speaks in many places about Singing a New Song to the Lord.

I admit that I don’t like doing new songs. It just easier to go with the songs everyone knows or the songs other band leaders have introduced. But last year I was convicted of my laziness and our need to be constantly reloading our song lists and expressions of worship. So new songs have to happen.

OLD SONGS:

Music has a way of calling people to the Lord or back to the Lord as the case may be. If someone is sneaking into the back row for the 1st time in years than these will be the songs they know. These will be the songs they connected with their relationship to God. So i’m very intentional about having some other tunes in a set list.

REALLY OLD SONGS:

Hymns. Some people love them. Some people hate them. I don’t make a distinction between hymns and choruses other than one has more words than the other. Some Hymns are really good and I pick those and some aren’t and I leave those alone.

Hymns do come in really handy for a few reasons. Older saints tend to connect well with them. They also tend to be a little more open to new styles and expressions of music in worship when it’s done with songs they grew up with because at least the words or tune is familiar. Younger Christians are gravitating to the hymns because they often express the reality of our lives in Christ better than the songs on Christian radio do and the seem to lend themselves well to modern expressions of music.

So I go with what works.

“CONTEMPORARY” SONGS:

Like many in my generation I find little connection with “Christian music”. The music seems to have little connection with my faith, Christian life or preference in music. That’s fine, it’s not geared towards me anyway. But there are people in the church who love that music, they connect to it in a way that I don’t. I want to serve them so sometimes I do songs I don’t care for because it’ll serve the larger community and that is a good thing.

INTENTIONAL VARIETY

In a church with as large as demographic cross section as the one I serve at variety is the key.

I try to be intentional about the songs I pick. I try to be intentional about our “sound” (folk, pop, rock, country, etc) so that a broad range of tastes are covered.

No one type of sound, style or song should have a monopoly.

Jesus should have the only monopoly when it comes to music in the church.