Yesterday I interviewed a dear friend of mine, Earl Bennett. Earl is a Christian musician who has been part of worship teams in various churches for the last 30 years. His experience provides surprising insights into the underbelly of the world of contemporary Christian worship.
Click here to hear the 30-minute interview
My Interview with Alan Knox: Missional Organic Church
I just want to say thank you to all who have listened to this interview and made comments about its contents. Your words and thoughts need to be heard in the Church today. This is because everyone has a part of functioning in the Church. Functioning is not just for the few that end up being on the platform. We are all called to be ministers of the Gospel, we are all part of a royal priesthood and we are all annointed because we have Christ in us the hope of glory.
Earl
Very interesting interview.
Don’t all of us who love our Lord just want to be able to touch His heart and experience His touching us?
A person with the gift to lead us into worship facilatates this encounter. ( don’t get me started on paying for gifts which are to be used for the benefit of the Body…)
The best worship that I experience is when I am desparate to touch my Messiah and sometimes that has been alone, with one or two, 100 or 5,000+. One time it was during the worst worship session ever!
Please correct me if I’m wrong but It seems to me that the Holy Spirit is very attracted to desparate ( for Him) hearts . So part of the encounter is what we bring to the feet of our Savior. The other part is that gift that others have which helps me to express my desparate heart.
Thank you to all who share their gift.
Lynne
Danceswithklingons…. whoa, what a name. That’s awesome LOL
I’ve been singing “contemporary worship music” since the mid-’70s, and I think it has gone downhill. Back then, churches were happy if they had a couple of guitar players who would take turns leading the singing. When companies began putting out tapes and CDs on a schedule, a lot of lower-quality songs were used to fill up the space–and a lot of local songwriting ceased. Then they had to have a full band, and it had to sound like the CD. I’ve read that John Wimber believed worship music should be simple enough for any average guitar player to play in a small group–a lot of the current product needs a band and backup singers to pull off. (And Wimber was an accomplished musician himself–played 20 instruments, managed a national act before he became a Christian.)
As far as paying musicians, there have always been some churches doing that; my high school’s choir director was music director for a mainline church back in the late ’60s–probably the only reason he went to church.
I was being paid $150 a month for “music devleopment” of a church, help to make a new, different worship community, and there was never support from the “older” memebers of the church that I was once a part of. I’ve been out of the IC for 50 days now, and I do miss the “show” because I like to play and write music.
But when the perfomers are just about “perfection” and not understanding or communicating who God is, it gets to be boring.
I am not surprised at what has happened. I do like ALL music, but the IC has been off track for a long time.
Listening to this intrevew helped me today to overcome some saddness over leaving the “show”. Thanks.
I suppose I will be in the minority here – but – I don’t see the problem with having nonbelievers play on a worship team. If you are looking at your worship team as an elite group of priests ministering to the Lord, well, then a nonbeliever doesn’t fit. But if you are looking at the musicians as simply servants who offer their musical abilities for the benefit of the church, then, I think including nonbelievers is a great way to reach out to them and give them a context to experience being involved with a group of believers. “The Tangible Kingdom” is a book that just came out that talks about this very thing.
I think a lot of good points have been made and shared by others above on other issues…worship should not be about a “show.” Learning how to make worship a corporately led event is incredibly valuable to the edification of all. However, in very large gatherings, it is good to know who is capable of leading a group of people well. I think as long as it is not always the same person every time, that the body can appreciate the leadership gifts of each one that takes a turn.
Caleb. I think the point is that this practice just reinforces that the institutional church system is really a business, patterned after the business world as well as a performance/show/event opposed to the living organism that she really is where Jesus Christ is known, ministered to, given, and expressed by every member of His living body.
FROG I played with worship teams for 11 years and experienced times of closeness with the Lord and my team mates, but also felt pressure to manufacture a spiritual experience for people. We were seen as people who led others into the presence of God, like priests. I also sensed that we were being used to bring people into the systems and programs that we call church. It is easy to fall into performing for people because there’s a lot of good feedback that comes to a musician who moves people. Performing is not an evil in itself,(I’m a working musician) but I don’t think that the church should meet to watch performances so frequently. I think that fellowship with the Lord and with one another should be primary, to be a family and the house of God. I also found that setting up the sound system, rehearsing the band, and playing during the meeting took up three hours that no one got paid for. I think it’s an injustice to expect professional musicians to work for free. A laborer is worthy of his wages. However, I believe it is a poor use of resources for a church to hire a rock band. Jesus told us to do stuff like feed the poor and share our goods with the needy. In home meetings I found it fun and liberating to play, but to follow whatever songs people in the group started singing spontaneously or requested. The focus wasn’t on me, it didn’t require extensive preparation, and I had a deeper sense that the Lord was directing the meeting and that the songs people selected had a wonderful cohesion.
Really enjoyed this interview. I’ll attest to the fact that hiring non-Christian musicians is not a phenonmenon limited to places like Florida. Sadly, even here in Washington State (where mega-churches are maybe not as numerous as other parts of the country) this is a coommon practice for churches whose budgets can accomodate it. Also, the statements made about sticking to a strict time-schedule within church services is no exaggeration!
It is indeed about the show, about bowing to the idol of a polished performance. I have even experienced this as a musician playing in worship bands where no one was being paid. There is still is greater emphasis put on sounding good, and appealing to the tastes of the majority, than what is going on internally…
At this point, we’d rather sit around our living room and bang out a few chords on our out-of-tune guitars, and have whatever music we make be honest, and from the heart, rather than remain caught in the cycle of thinking that there needs to be a stage, and a PA system, and “pro” musicians in order to be able to worship Him in song….
Thanks again for sharing this interview.
I am so amazed at this interview, because I was just sharing with friends recently something that dawned on me the other day about worship teams and ‘controlled singing’ vs. ‘open singing times’ as in an organic church.
Imagine a completely ideal scenario in a traditional church –everyone on the worship team loves the Lord, they are fairly close, they pray together before services and touch the Lord together, they pick the songs that speak to them or say what they want to say to the Lord that day, and then they go out on stage and have a wonderful, real, corporate time worshipping the Lord. They get to share any insights they’ve gotten from God with everyone, and speak out their praises to Him. They control the timing– the pauses between songs, and how long the ‘worship time’ lasts. And they think it’s great, they get fulfilled, and naturally want to keep doing it. No surprise there; I would too!
But the audience doesn’t get that same experience. They don’t know each other well. They don’t pray together. (Short pastor- led prayer doesn’t count.) They didn’t decide on a theme for the meeting or help pick the songs. They don’t get to share any insights from the Lord, or praise him in their own words. If they really ‘enter in’, they may have a nice personal time with the Lord, but they won’t have a corporate experience with the Body of Christ. They might as well be listening to a CD at home.
It’s no wonder if the ‘worship team’ is looked at as a great spiritual advance by folks in leadership, while those in the pew are still less than fulfilled at best, or very frustrated at worst!
And this is just looking at it from our human point of view, I know. Who knows what the Lord thinks of it. I assume He’d rather be ministered to by all, not just a few.
this was really good. i’m not that surprised that the mega churches hire people to play in the bands who aren’t even believers. working off the model of the corporate world, this would be the natural course of action. it’s outsourcing!! ; )