My family and I decided to attend worship at a different church than usual last Sunday. We really enjoyed the worship, the message, and the people. But I had a rather unique experience.
First of all, I need to tell those of you who may not know – our home church doesn’t have a praise band or worship leader in the front of the church. We have singers and musicians off to the side, and we tend to sing older, more traditional music.
But at the church we visited on Sunday, there was a praise band that started the service, and they led us in singing some worship songs. The first thing I noticed was that these players and singers were excellent musicians! They had great tones, great skill, and great dynamics.
The songs they chose were well-written, and I really enjoyed singing them. (I probably would have chosen to rearrange them a bit so everyone could have connected a little more with the lyrics and emotion of the songs, but that’s another blog for another time.)
But even though the music and the songs were great, the singers and players did a great job, and dynamically and musically the music really moved me – the visual didn’t match anything this worship team did!
They did a very mellow, meditative song. They did an up-tempo, energetic tune. They used instrumentation that included strings, a Hammond B3, and more… each song was unique in flavor and style. In fact, I can’t stress enough how broad the range of dynamics was throughout the entire worship. If I closed my eyes, it was perfect!
But the minute I opened my eyes to see what was in front of me, I felt robbed! Nothing I saw matched the beauty or the emotion of the music.
The musicians were all sitting down and hidden behind a wall of instruments. The singers were standing behind music stands, and the only movement was the occasional “half-raising” of an arm or two – certainly not what I’d call spirit or passion in what they were doing.
The mood of worship depended almost entirely on me closing my eyes so I couldn’t see what was (or wasn’t) happening up on the platform. I kept thinking “I wish this praise band was sitting in the back” – it would have been easier to worship!
Fortunately, I didn’t feel robbed when the pastor came up to deliver his message. He was definitely passionate, both verbally and physically. He matched what he did visually with the words he was using.
He wore a headset so he was free to move around the platform, using eye contact and zone communication with everyone in the congregation. He raised his arms and gestured in order to help make his verbal points. Everything he did physically matched the tone and emotion of what he said.
It’s too bad the praise team didn’t understand that they needed to use the same communication concepts that their pastor did. The message they were delivering, the job they had to gather the congregation into the presence of God… it just wasn’t as effective when the visual didn’t match the verbal or the musical.
We all have friends who constantly talk about themselves for hours on end. If by some miracle, we get a chance to interject a personal thought, it is met with a blank stare and the subject is quickly escorted back to something that relates to their life.
As a worship leader, you know that it’s important to grow as a singer, as a musician… and to do that, you need true humility. A real humility that says “I want to learn!”
I have a dear friend (I’ll call her Susan) who lived in another city so we didn’t get to see each other often.
It really gets me going when I hear from clients who are using the tools we give them, through either a session together, Tom’s DVDs, or an 
