Worship is not a Performance
I am venting for a couple of minutes. I was asked to lead worship for a conference and for 20 minutes the organizers talked about the worship performance. I raised my concerns and now I am no longer their choice for worship leader. Sour grapes…..possibly but my principle remains the same. Worship is not a performance.
As a musician I know that it is important to rehearse for excellence, balance the instruments and vocals, work on the dynamics and agree on how to express the music. These are all components of music that I picked up as I played for secular groups. As a worship leader I may use these tools to offer God my best music offering but since God is my audience and my purpose is to lead people into the presence of God Almighty I lead as a servant not a performer. The quality is not the main concern. The main concern is my heart relationship to God.
I don’t really think that style matters. You could be in a blended worship, extreme worship, multimedia, jazz worship bluegrass or traditional worship service, the responsibility is still the same. To provide an atmosphere in which people bring their everyday, busy, confusing, frustrating lives and leave the cares and concerns at the altar trusting God through faith to speak to them in the midst of their lives. Music is to lead other people into the presence of God not to show off our gifts and talents. Showmanship, crowd manipulation and spiritual cheerleading must not be a part of the equation.
Worship is a lifestyle of sacrifice not an event. Musicians and worship leaders drop the performance mentality.
Now we can all return to blogging as usual.
November 8, 2007 at 2:59 am
[...] is an awesome video that illustrates an earlier blog Worship is not Performance [...]
November 9, 2007 at 12:42 pm
excellent video and I completely agree with you… worship is an expresion of the heart therefore it cannot be staged or performed… is telling God how much He means to us and how much we love Him, praising Him for who He is.
At the same time, we have the responsibility to develop and use our gifts and talents to the best of our hability, not for our own satisfaction but to offer Him the very best, trusting Him to work through it to minister to people.
February 12, 2008 at 12:31 am
Hi–We are just leaving a church because I used to be in the praise team and the worship leader (pastor’s wife) and the pastor think that we are to PERFORM for God. That didn’t sit right with me because I think we are to WORSHIP God. The worship leader was always trying to get us to “loosen up” and get wound up. She said it “bothers her to look out and see the congregation not worshipping God”. I more or less told her that when I worship, I don’t watch to see if the congregation is jumping or whatever, that I close my eyes, raise my hands if that is the way I feel I should worship, and worship God. Not every person worships God in the same way.
Anyway—I don’t think that our worship is supposed to be a performance for God–just heartfelt, personal worship.
August 3, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Tahnks for posting