WORSHIP. PERIOD.

A good buddy of mine got married this weekend.

Good times all around. I sang. I toasted. I Best-Manned.

Sitting at the rehearsal, chatting with the officiating pastor (who also happens to be my pastor/boss and the father of the bride) we got to discussing the many weddings and rehearsals we’d both done in the past. We were joking about the tendency for there to be too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to wedding rehearsals. I remarked that I made it my own rule not to acquiesce to anyone’s requests or demands unless they’re the lady wearing the white dress on the big day. You may have plenty of fantastic ideas about what I should sing, how I should stand, what I should wear, when I should stand or sit and more, but if you’re not the bride you’re likely not going to get much of a response from me, Aunt Liz.

It’s the bride’s day. It should be all about her. Sure there are lots of things everyone else would prefer or enjoy or rather see, but this ain’t your rodeo. Wait your turn. (Or perhaps you already had your turn.)

As we discussed it, I realized there were some parallels there. I thought about how easy I found it to keep that kind of focus and endure the occasional snide remarks and indignant glares in a wedding context, but found it a different animal altogether at the ol’ church gig.

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Matt Redman writes first with the door closed, and then with the door open. (Metaphorically).

Chris Tomlin never writes without an open Bible in the room.

Tim Hughes often labors on a song for 6 months to a year before he lets it out.

Paul Baloche likes to “sing the Psalms” to get himself started.

I like to….(how would you fill in the blank?)

These are all comments on songwriting I’ve heard (heard in some cases, read in others) from these guys, each of whom probably has at least a leg to stand on when it comes to commenting on songwriting for the church. I was on a conference call today centered around songwriting and was reminded of just how different and hard-to-nail-down people’s processes are. There are all kinds of ways to do it, you might even suggest there’s no right or wrong (although there are probably some wrongs, if we’re honest).

The bottom line, I think, comes down to inspiration and craft (and the relationship between the 2). How we achieve each of them varies as much as our personalities, but I think they both need to be present in the process. For Redman, the inspiration is the “door closed” and the craft is the “door open”. Hughes’ craft involves a lot of time spent. Just like so many other things about our relationship with God, there’s the part we can do and the part only He can do. I believe when we’re writing for the church we need a revelation from God of Himself (by His word, in nature, general, specific, etc) to inspire and direct, and I also believe we need to be disciplined in refining that initial inspiration (re-writing, editing, theological scrutiny, etc). For me, inspiration is the fun part, crafting is the work part.

How does that shake down for you?

What’s your process?

Is this “Labor of Love” typically more labor or more love for you?

Love to hear about how you write songs.

- J

A friend and I were having a conversation about how often we all overuse the term “ironic” when in fact the events in question were merely “coincidental”. I saw a comic one time who has this whole bit about how nothing in Alanis Morisette’s song “Ironic” is actually ironic. Pretty funny.

“A traffic jam when you’re already late. No, that’s not ironic, that’s just a pain in the butt. There’s nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you’re late…unless you’re a town planner, and you’re late for a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area and couldn’t get to it ‘cuz you were stuck in a traffic jam.”

So, that being said, I guess I found it coincidental – not ironic – that a concept and a passage from 1 Chronicles and Psalm 84 has been popping up in my noggin a lot in the last day or two. I had been thinking about writing a blog about “gatekeeper worship” for a little while now, and I’ll explain that a bit further down. Then this weekend I was reminded of that because our weekend service was focused on a theme called “pictures of eternity” and the song “Better is One Day” made an appearance. I remembered a devotional I’d done with our team a while back talking about the Sons of Korah, the gatekeepers at the temple, to whom this Psalm is attributed. I filed the thoughts away again, now mashed together with this whole gatekeeper idea I had rolling around.

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Being a Canadian (and even more so as a Maritimer) I’m familiar with inferiority complexes. From my experience in the worship realm, we tend to be suspicious or dismissive about things that are homegrown. We tend to look to the U.S. or U.K. (or “out west” for us Maritimers) for our music, teaching and resources. No knock on the stuff that’s going on elsewhere, there’s certainly no shortage of great things for the church here to adopt and use. That being said, part of the reason I started blogging in this vein was because of the lack of contextualization we end up with as a result of looking elsewhere so much. Many of us have probably been to a big conference and got lots of great teaching about leading worship (or whatever other context). Sometimes what happens next is a struggle to connect everything we experienced to our specific context, which is likely very different than that of the folks doing the presenting. Or maybe it’s just me…

Regardless, that whole phenomenon is part of the reason I wanted to point out a cool new project/movement going on here in the True North Strong and Free. It’s called “Worship Rises”. The idea came about when some worship folks in Ontario were discussing the need for more homegrown Canadian corporate worship offerings – some songs for the Canadian church born out of the Canadian church and her worship leaders. A group of worship folks got together for a “writing day” to see what would happen if they just got in a room and wrote together as a starting point. Fast forward about a year, and we arrive at the release of the first “Worship Rises EP” – 4 songs birthed out of that initial and subsequent writing days. It has taken on a broader scope across the country as things have grown (which was always the plan) and this EP truly is a uniquely Canadian collaboration.

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Here’s an interesting and entertaining post from a cool site called Shrink the Church. Do you remember all of these stages they’re reminiscing about? Were you guilty of any of them? I must admit to contributing to the cliche a number of times.

It’s entertaining to take a self-deprecating look back at some of the stylistic choices we’ve made in the worship leading milieu – especially in the context of the stuff that doesn’t really matter, like music style and hair product. But what about the things that do matter, as referenced in the closing paragraph of the aforementioned post? How have you evolved as a worship leader over time? How have you grown? Take some time to look back at the journey God’s taken you on as you’ve endeavored to be used by Him to lead His people in worship. Feel free to share with the rest of the class!

Scenario 1: You put a worship set list together, print off all your charts for the band and arrive at practice. You say to one of your female singers, “I’d like you to take the lead/melody on this song,” and she agrees. Only one problem – “Can I have this a bit lower? It’s kind of high for me.” Now it’s transpose-on-the-fly time. You bark out chords to a band with pens in hand, while the drummer and vocalists get bored and distracted.

Scenario 2: You pick a song, the best fit key-wise is Eb. But you want to play it in the D formation (capo 1) so you print yourself a copy in D. Maybe another guitar player wants to go capo 5 so you print him one in C. Pretty soon you’ve killed 7 trees and confused everyone when you try and point out the punch on the “D” after the first line…”is that D…or Eb….or C…?”

I could continue with scenarios in perpetuity, probably, but you get the point. I’m sure many of us could insert ourselves easily into a similar situation we’ve experienced. Having a handle on chord changes and keys and transposition – all that fun stuff – becomes a pretty important skill when you’re leading a band whose players are different every week and you’re playing different material each week.

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Ok, pet peeve time. You’re at a worship rehearsal, running through the set list for an upcoming service or event. You meander through the song a few times and nobody is 100% sure if we’re repeating this chorus or if the outro is the same as the intro or if we’re ending on 4 or 1. Everyone looks to the leader and he shuffles his pages, clearly moving to the next song and then he casually drops the bomb: “Ok, that’s good, we’ll just let the spirit lead on that one come Sunday.”

At this point a scene usually kicks on in my mind that portrays me darting across the stage, tackling the dude and shaking him mercilessly. I have anger issues, apparently. Qualified therapists, feel free to email me.

So, why does this bug me so much? Is it that I don’t believe the spirit can lead us in a different direction on Sunday, or that we shouldn’t leave room to adjust ourselves based on what God is doing at that moment as we lead? Yes, that’s it.

Just kidding. (I trust that was obvious.)

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I’ve never been an American Idol fan, to be honest (or Canadian Idol, for that matter). I’m like a lot of people, in that I catch myself watching the trainwreck auditions during the first few episodes (which always reminds me that man’s capacity for self deception is limitless), but I don’t generally watch beyond that. I’m not going to get into all the debate about it or play the snooty musician role and whine about how “unpure” and “non-artistic” it all is, just never been a fan.

Last night, however, after my PVR finished providing me with the season finale of ‘House’, the live tv feed came on to the American Idol finale. I watched for a while because it happened to be in the middle of the Simon Cowell send off. Turns out he’s leaving the show that he put on the map (and it he) and made him a very rich and famous grouch. I thought it was interesting to watch for a couple reasons. Firstly, based on the snippets I’ve seen from him he’s a bright guy and pretty astute when it comes to spotting talent. He seems to take the nasty role a bit “out past the breakers” sometimes for the purposes of good tv, but to be honest I’ve always thought he was right on the money by telling people how it is. What help is it to massage these folks delusions and encourage them down a path that obviously isn’t right for them? It’s a singing competition. If you want someone to tell you how great you are no matter what, sing for your mom. But I digress.

The other reason I found it interesting is because he is leaving a very popular (always at or near the top) show which also happens to make him the highest paid dude on tv. So why leave? Or better yet, how do you bring yourself to leave all that? I thought he had an interesting quote, in which he said, “A friend once told me you’ve got to know when to leave the party.” Huh. Sounds simple enough.

This weekend marks the end of an era for me (among others). I’ve been fortunate enough to have been part of the founding and fruition of a monthly worship event called “The Spot” for nearly 10 years now. On the last Sunday of every month we’ve gotten together with young adults from our area to simply worship God and that’s it. Hence our motto: “Worship. Period.” (you may recognize that slogan from somewhere).

The creation of The Spot came out of a passion I had to see my peers given an opportunity to go deeper and express themselves in worship in a way that was culturally accessible to them. At the time, the churches in our area were fairly traditional across the board with regard to their Sunday morning worship experiences, to generalize a bit. That and the struggle churches often have with ministering to the young adult “20-Something” crowd made for a bit of a hole (or niche) that something like The Spot could help fill. We had a blast doing it. We went from 12 or 15 people and a less-than-fantastic band on our first evening to averaging close to 300 at our peek coming together monthly to stand alongside their peers and enthusiastically and passionately lift up the name of Jesus. Some cool.

Fast forward a decade, and the landscape is a bit different around here. Most (or at least many) of our churches are on some sort of journey toward a deep and relevant worship experience. The so-called “modern worship movement” has brought some not-so-good things with it, but it has also prodded some churches to examine the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ in their own worship areas. I myself have been blessed to be part of one of those churches on that journey for some time now.

One of the values The Spot held from day one was that we were not a church. We wanted to build up the local church by hopefully sending the folks that attended back to their local churches with a bit of fire and passion for worship. We called it our “John the Baptist” role. So as I noticed numbers dwindling in recent months and a bit of a change in temperature at The Spot, I began to reflect on all these things I’ve just talked about. After rolling it around for a while and some good chats with trusted friends, it became apparent that perhaps The Spot’s time had come to an end. It seemed like the reasons or needs that prompted the event to be created in the first place were not the same today.

So, in a few days we’ll hold our final event (May 30) and that will be that. I’ll be sad to see it go – it’s been a part of my life monthly for a decade now – but I’m comfortable with the decision. I’m comfortable with it because to be passionate about a need in starting an event and then turn around and ignore the changing needs to hold on to it would be foolish. I’m excited to be in a city who’s churches are journeying and growing in their worship – but that means it’s time to “leave the party”.

I think sometimes we have trouble with this in our churches, don’t we? We have programs that have run for a hundred years “because we’ve always done it”. But if we were to ask ourselves, “What’s the purpose? What need does it meet?”, we may have trouble coming up with strong answers.

What things exist in your ministry that have become a bit sacred and perhaps outstayed their welcome? A program? A service order? A song? How do you hold yourself accountable and evaluate these things? Do you clearly define purposes and goals for the elements of your ministry and regularly evaluate them against those standards? How often to you stop and ask God to speak into what you’re doing? Do you make plans and then ask the Spirit to bless them, or stop and look for what God is blessing and align yourself with those?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions, however I’ll be honest – the “you” in them was me…

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Happy to have guest-blogger and friend Jamie Cambers share some thoughts about the cost of worship. Jamie’s a great guitar player and leads worship at Lutes Mountain Nazarene Church. You can check out more from Jamie on his blog.

From Jamie:

I recently bought some fencing for my backyard through a connection at my work. My company supplies industrial parts for a local fencing company and I asked if he might be able to get me a deal on a 25 foot length and a gate. He said to me, “Of course. I’ll see what we have lying around and put something together for you.” Maybe I’m just naive, but by his tone of voice and the “wink-and-gun” he gave me, I thought that meant “free fence”. The next day I got a quote. Now, I did get a good deal and still have the laborious task of putting it together, but it was not free. It cost me money. The old adage “nothing in this life is free” certainly applies here and for most aspects of our lives. This includes our worship which I’ve come to discover by reading 2 Samuel 24:18-26 (NIV).

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