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Yesterday I wrote a response to a post wherein someone else argued that church praise bands, by virtue of the type of music they play, speak a special language and have become a worship intermediary for the congregation. I disagreed to an extent, but promised some thoughts on principles for leading worship that can make participatory congregational worship more effective. Here are those thoughts:

Planning

On the planning side we need to carefully consider what new songs we bring into our congregational repertoire. We need new songs. We may find songs that play on Christian radio that are good choices; we will also find plenty there that are not. We will undoubtedly get requests from church members (and leaders!) to sing their new favorite radio song on some Sunday. This may times turn up good new songs; however, it may also be an area where we need to graciously exercise leadership and say no. If a song seems a little bit too simple and too easy for your highly-talented praise band, it’s probably just about right for your congregation.

We also need to be careful about the rate at which we introduce new songs. Back when I was leading on a weekly basis, when it was time to introduce a new song we would sing the song two weeks in a row, skip a week, and sing it again the fourth week before then adding it to our regular repertoire list. I would alsobe sure that every other song we sang those four weeks was a familiar song.

These two suggestions actually complement each other pretty well: if you’re more choosy about what songs you want to add to your repertoire, you won’t feel such pressure to add new songs at an uncomfortable frequency. And you can still manage to work in at least 10 new songs a year, which isn’t bad.

Execution

Lots has already been written on this topic, so I’m unlikely to say anything very new or novel. I love my church’s approach of having a large number of vocalists on the stage; it takes the pressure and focus off of any one or two people being soloists and lets us sing as a mini-congregation right there in the band.

Modern popular praise bands have developed an environment that resembles a rock concert more than a congregational time of worship, and the temptation is there to roll that right into our Sunday mornings. (I’ll leave only one example here.) The issue isn’t that they like to play rock music and that there’s a crowd that enjoys it. The issue is that we often, consciously or not, take it as a model for how our Sunday morning worship should look and sound. And that can be a problem.

If, during congregational worship, the focus frequently gets shifted to a gifted soloist, or a kickin’ guitar solo, or some novel and funky instrumentation, it’s a distraction. We’ve verged into concert territory and turned our congregation into an audience for the band instead of regular participants in worship. (There’s still room for ‘special music’, though. I’ll get to that.)

Really Leading

The other key thing we can do as leaders during the service requires a focus on that word: leading. One of the nicest things a person ever said to me after I led music in a service was that they felt like I had really led them; that there was no uncertainty about what was coming next, or what they were supposed to be doing; they were able to just comfortably settle into worship.

Here’s where we can be very practical in our leadership. If we’re introducing a new song, we should say so up front. If a band member is going to sing the first verse solo to allow everyone else to learn the tune, cue the congregation to that fact so they don’t feel the uncertainty of wondering when they’re expected to sing.

There’s still room for “special music” if that’s a regular part of your worship tradition, but set it apart in the service in a way that it’s clear what the intent is. By saying “Julie has a song to share with us now, so please have a seat and listen to the message of this song”, we can prepare our congregation to receive the song far better than if we just have the soloist start singing as if the song were just another part of the worship set.

Physical and verbal cues during songs are important ways to lead, too. Especially in songs where there may be more time between verses - provide clear cues to the congregation as to when to come in. Maybe just call out the first few words of the next line. (The person running your lyrics on the projector will appreciate this, too!)

Wrapping Up

Leading worship is an art as much as a science, but if we can approach it humbly and pastorally we will always be finding ways where we can improve as leaders, with the result being more appealing and engaging worship services. It should never be about us; it should always be about Him.

Yesterday I ran across a recent post from Lutheran pastor Erik Parker provocatively titled “Praise Bands are the new Medieval Priests”. In it Rev. Parker says that praise bands are alienating him from worship.

I just can’t access Praise music anymore, I don’t hear Praise songs as the music of worship. I find myself wondering why I am just standing there, in the midst of a group of people who are also not singing. As the Praise band performs song after song, I am consistently lost as to how the music goes, what verses will come next, how to follow the melody, when to start and stop singing, or when a random guitar solo will be thrown in right when I thought I had figured out when the next verse starts.

Parker recounts a recent church service where he observed that even as the very talented praise band was playing beautiful music, the people in the pews were, for the most part, “not really being a part of the music at all”, but rather just bystanders, “being played at, rather than played with”.

Parker draws the analogy that modern praise bands are the new medieval priests - leading worship in a ’language’ that few speak or can participate in. As such, he claims, “Praise Bands are incompatible with a worship that is done by the community… they are a performative medium, not a participatory one.”

I posted a link to the piece on Facebook last night and got an interesting mix of responses. A friend who has recently been looking for a new church noted that being directed to raise her hands to a song she has never even heard before makes her feel like a bystander rather than a participant in worship.

Another friend who grew up on the mission field in Africa said that music in small African churches that can’t afford a sound system is much more participative than in those that can. As he notes: “human nature being what it is, everyone turns it [the volume] up.”

What Language is that, again?

Full disclosure: I’m a member of a praise band. I have spent nearly all of my adult life either leading or playing in praise bands on a regular basis. So I clearly am unlikely to agree with the full premise of Rev. Parker’s post. However, I think he has identified some concerning symptoms, even if he has perhaps misidentified the true problem.

I share Rev. Parker’s concerns about planning congregational music that is regularly unfamiliar and difficult to sing. I have been a part of rehearsals where a team of professional-caliber musicians have had to work for a solid hour to get one new song learned to the point where we can sing and play it consistently. I have on more than one occasion wondered out loud how the congregation had any chance of singing the song on their one time through it if it took the band an hour to figure it out.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s imperative that we continue to teach our congregations new songs. But when our primary musical influence is Top 40 Christian radio, the songs we’re pushed to select are often difficult songs to sing, often requiring an unnaturally large vocal range and designed for professional vocalists. That concerns me.

A similar issue often exists with song familiarity. If my own experience is representative at all, our ‘best’ worship times come when we sing familiar songs. Familiarity allows us to think less about learning the words, melody, and arrangement, and think more about the message of the song. It’s no accident that a congregation stands mostly silent as the band leads a new song from the radio but then wholeheartedly belts out all four verses of a 200-year-old hymn.

It’s not (necessarily) about the band.

Where I think Rev. Parker gets it wrong is in pointing the finger at the Praise Band as the issue. The praise band is not the issue. Praise bands, playing in pretty much any style, can do music in a way that engages and draws in a congregation, or can do music in a way that pushes the congregation off to be ’the audience’ rather than ’the body’.

Rev. Parker makes a fair point that style can distract from real congregational worship. As he puts it, “rock bands are by design meant to overwhelm the audience with sound.” And I agree with him that overwhelming a congregation with sound isn’t conducive to congregational worship. But I’ve also attended services in Parker’s own denomination where more traditional instrumentation was used in a way and at a volume that still served to overwhelm the congregation. So it isn’t strictly about instrumentation or style.

However, there are planning and execution aspects that as worship leaders we can focus on to provide consistent inclusive congregational worship. Rather, though, than turning this into a two-thousand-word post, I think I’ll save those ideas for tomorrow.