WORSHIP: MUSIC,
MUSICIANS, AND MONEY
I enjoy speaking to young church planters
who are struggling to find out how to have an effective music ministry as part
of their worship service. Finding
musicians available, skilled, and committed is a very old problem. Nehemiah found this out when he came back to
Jerusalem and realized…”that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been
given to them, and that all the Levites and singers responsible for the service
had gone back to their own fields.” Nehemiah
13:10
It is a typical conversation in some
churches to ask, “should we pay musicians?”
Or, “shouldn’t Christian musicians simply volunteer their service as
their act of worship?” At first take
this sounds spiritual, it implies that the people with the faith and obedience
problems are the musicians and not the rest of us for failing to have enough
faith and commitment to provide money for them to do what we all want them to
do.
The passage in Nehemiah reveals a common
sense issue, and that is that people have to make a living, and even if they
want to sacrifice they will not be available to a congregation if they have to
provide for their families using the skills they have worked years to
acquire. In the temple worship either
the community brought in tithes to the storehouse so the Levites who were
musicians could survive, or the Levites went back to their fields to provide
food for their families.
I can hear someone saying, “Yes, but when I
was in my former church people shared their musical gifts without being
paid.” That of course is the optimum
solution, i.e., that a congregation would have skilled musicians who make
enough money doing something else, have the time to practice individually and
as a group, and freely offer those skills for worship. However, optimum isn’t usual.
I encourage pastors to pray and hope and
search for the optimal, but since Sunday comes each week and worship has to be
organized (if not produced) then a plan has to be made as to who is going to
help with the music, even if under less than optimal conditions. It is possible to worship without music, but
the Scriptures (in both the Old and New Testaments) example and encourage
singing and instruments in worship. I
suppose one could sing Psalms 149 and 150 acapella without irony, but it would
be hard for me. One reason the
Reformation was helped to explode among the masses was due to congregational
singing.
So, I am a supporter of paying
musicians. I know of several churches
where non-Christians, unbelievers, were hired as band musicians. Those churches were careful however to allow only
believers to lead the music, the singing, and the choice of music. The examples I know of made sure such hired
musicians attended the full service and came to practice. I have seen some of these band members begin
to bring their families over the years they have participated. I am not necessarily advocating this, but
making an observation here.
Musical and worship leadership has to be
spiritual, or else everything about the worship gets compromised. Musicians need to be pastored, and sometimes
evil needs to be confronted. This evil
can be in the way musicians interact, conduct themselves in the church service
or church organization, or live their lives.
They receive this pastoring much more amiably if they are well supported
organizationally, emotionally, and financially.
There are of course variations in musical
styles, and musical skills. Worship
ought to be a place where those growing in a skill have opportunity to learn,
share, and participate while we are also encouraged by those who are truly
gifted and skilled. Church is a place
where the call for an excellent sacrifice is balanced with an honest and
sincere one. It corresponds to how much
money one gives which is not based on amount but proportion. Many small and
financially struggling congregations are thankful to have a person who can peck
notes out on a piano, or simply sing acapella, or use tracks. One of my earliest memories of church music
was in a small house church where the pastor played the flute, his wife the
piano, and a young man played a carpenter’s saw with a bow. I didn’t know much about churches then, or
music, so I thought this was normal.
There have been, and are, “worship wars”
and those who hate contemporary music.
There are those who stress that true worship can only be achieved with
the refined skill to play and an ear to appreciate such things as the
intricacies of Bach. I actually heard a
lecture in a worship service along that line of thinking, and I would have to
say such an elitist view of worship is in fact heresy. It is one thing to praise God for the gifts
of Bach, this is indeed excellent music, but it is not always intellectually
approachable by the common man. All
people are called to worship but it is Spirit and Truth that qualifies, and not
an education in music appreciation or theory.
Most church planters do what they can to
find quality musicians and pursue a musical worship style that is participatory,
emotionally meaningful, and theologically sound while led by people of
spiritual integrity and musical competence.
That package is not always readily at hand. Some preachers will care little about music
being “emotionally meaningful” while others don’t pay enough attention to “theologically
sound.”
Music is by its very existence emotional,
the lyrics and message are always theological.
The message is either true, mostly true, confused, or blatantly false. The message in a song can be clumsily stated
or starkly clear. There are songs that have a penetrating and even beautiful
melody while conveying error. There are
many songs that hold great and exact Biblical truth while being stultifyingly
boring. Combining musical and artistic settings for truth demands some patience
and compromise, such as having drawn out words or filler words like, “oh,” and
“ah,” etc. To say every voiced phrase
must have a sound theological message puts a straightjacket on the musical line
and most of us intuitively understand that.
Every pastor has to be a policemen
regarding truth when it comes to what is conveyed in a worship service because
that is part of his job. He is not
usually a qualified musician and even if he is will be subject to his own culture
and tastes. A wise pastor knows when to
separate his culture and tastes from his theological opinions and will
hopefully humbly interact with musicians when it comes to their area of
expertise. He needs to support them when
they get attacked by a member or attender who “hates that song” or thought
things were too loud, or too slow, too fast, etc.
Church musicians should be able to trust
their pastoral leadership and know they are not going to be thrown under the
bus each time a song fails either theologically or musically. If a pastor for
church politics reasons says, “I hated it too and I don’t know why he (or she)
does that,” will probably not have a lot of loyalty coming from his worship
team.
So, pastors need to fight for the worship
and music budget, pray and search for a spiritually and musically qualified
person who can really lead your worship team, listen to them about pay scales,
equipment needs, and administrative support.
Pastors need to take the responsibility for the finished product. If you don’t like what you are getting than
replace your musician, but don’t hang them out to dry. If you have someone who can be an intrinsical
part of your ministry team then make sure they are honored, compensated, and
rested. Give them a sabbatical of a few
months every seven years so they can recover.
Send them to training and conferences so they can keep learning.
I confess I had definite ideas about
culture, styles, and performance quality and shared those with my worship
director. I had such respect for him
that I knew he could tell me if I was off base or not, and I would listen. (I hope he thinks I did.) I was immensely
honored when he listened to me. I was blessed; we were blessed as a church, and
even when our congregation was very poor we had some outstanding music and
worship experiences. It caught me up to
heaven, made me want to go there, sometimes devastated me before God, and
helped me to love going to church.
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