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Email Darin at
darinb@darinb.com
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i will be glad if you can extend your missions to african.
I’m sitting here listening to the Unmet Expectations episode and have such a different perspective as a worship leader that I just had to share.
Perfection: I have lead worship at many churches since starting worship leading over 10 years ago and I have found that most people in my congregations don’t KNOW what perfection is and only don’t necessarily care. For instance, at my current church, prior to my arrival, they were attempting to do contemporary worship WITHOUT a band (other than perhaps one keyboardist). They were doing this with five vocalists (most of them not harmonizing). No one complained about the lack of a band or too many vocalists on the lead giving everything the sound of a choral group. When there are complaints (then and now) it is mainly about volume (a whole different discussion).
I came in and built up a band and split my vocal teams between two services. If I know anything about music, I can say that we most definitely sound better today then before, however I rarely receive feedback confirming this.
Here’s another example on perfection. I recently acquired a fantastic vocalist. She has a voice that brings my congregation under a sort of ‘spell’. However, recently she was given the ‘stage’ to sing at a Thanksgiving dinner with just her acoustic guitar. I was amazed at hearing her sing a couple of songs in one key but play them on her guitar in a totally different key. What amazed me most wasn’t that she did this, but that no one noticed! All of this cements my impression that most people do NOT musical expect perfection because they don’t know what it is.
And please don’t get me wrong. Because of my imperfections as a worship leader, I don’t exactly want them ask for perfection, but at least appreciate and notice excellence.
Entertaining: I believe we are called to perform… but God is our audience
Annointing: I hate this word because it is usually used to mean the following. Annointing is anything I like or that moves me within a church service. This word, in my opinion, has become problematic for the reasons you guys stated in your podcast. No one really knows what it is. You guys didn’t even define it, other than to say it means “spirit filled” or “spirit lead”. While I agree, the problem is that we can get behind our own personal agendas and hobby horses and call anything that is congruent “anointed” while labeling the rest as unannointed. In my opinion, unless you can provide a specific litmus test for objectively measuring “anointing”, the whole concept is unhelpful in these discussions.
I enjoy the show…. just wanted to get those thoughts off my chest.
God bless.
Greg
Greg, you pretty much hit the nail on the head! Our congregations don’t know what musical perfection is, only that they like a song, or not. I guess our issue is that we need to make it sound good for our own appeasement as much as others! I know people don’t get it, or hear all these things when listening to a CD, but I still spend hours trying to get every little bit right, and mainly for my producer and myself, because I will hate it if it isn’t close to right. Always a tension between excellence and perfection, right. Mind you, the girl singing in a different key is a worry!!! I guess because we can hear it, we assume others can, and many times this is incorrect. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Love it, and please keep contributing. If you can join the Facebook page and share things like this it would be great also. Cheers mate!
Why am I ready to leave the church? I have been a deeply committed Christian for 40 years. I am also a professional musician. Now I find myself ready to quit the church altogether. Why? Although I mildly agree with some of the reasons in the pod cast, I have, over 40 years, been extremely active in 8 churches. The first 3 we left because we moved; but the last 5 we find the same problem in all of the churches. Selfish, prideful leadership, that would not listen to our complaints about injustices, hurtful things being done to myself and those I loved in the church. Every church we encountered seemed to have leaders who thought they were God’s man, and if they didn’t like something, would demand their own way, to heck with what anyone else thought.
I was a worship leader for nearly 25 years, as well as pianist. I rehearsed the band, worked with the choir, put on kid’s musicals, did bell choir, and arranged instrumentals. In two different churches, the pastor used to stop the worship whenever he felt like it, and would grab the microphone away from one of the singers and interrupt the music. This hurt people on my team. When I objected, I was ‘punished’ by being set out of ministry for a time. It tore my heart out. In another church, the pastor decided that HE wanted to lead the worship, though he couldn’t sing. I had been picking out the songs, preparing the overheads, singing and playing, but because I had a disagreement with him about something, he decided he could not let me lead anymore- only play the piano. Again, my heart was torn out.
In another church, the pastor was part of our worship team. We got along great, but we had a jealous secretary who was angry because her brother in law had not gotten the pastor job. She took it out on our pastor, who had become our dearest friend, and turned an elder against him unfairly. An ugly dispute broke out, and the church split. The elders refused to deal with the secretary because she had been there longer than the rest of us. Instead, they decided to fire the entire staff, except for her. The worship team and I went to another church, along with our pastor and about 30 others. My heart was broken.
In the last church, our discouraged pastor got mixed up with the youth pastor’s wife, and was fired, but the elders promised to work to restore the two. After 16 months of lies, procrastination, and misleading statements, I realized they were going to do nothing, and insisted that they obey the scripture to restore our fallen brother and sister who had repented. Several people angrily said they would never be allowed back in the church. It was then that I realized that all I ever saw in leadership was pride, hypocrisy, power plays, ego, and lies. When I got angry with them because of their refusal to obey scripture, they fired me as well. My anger because of the nonsense I had witnessed in leaders over 25 years drove me to the point of never wanting to be a part of the church again. Now we are looking for a church, but I have no desire to do anything. I am more interested in doing things that don’t tear my heart out, and will not hesitate to take off for the weekend if something arises. I gave my best to the church, and they used me and spit me out.
I hear you! These horror stories are common, and I have suffered at the hands of leadership as well. However, I still love the church, and if there is no avenue to serve in my church, I am now going out and doing ministry in other churches… and loving it! Serving the church universal is more important than locking in with an abusive leadership in a single church, in my way of thinking anyway! Thanks for sharing your pain, I know many will relate to it
Dear Sir or Madam,
I play keyboards in 1 or 2 of the worship bands in my church, and am hoping to try for a position as one of the worship leaders, and to get more information and training, I have decided to use the praise and worship leader website. However, I am totally blind, and I have found that your website, particularly the home page, are rather difficult to navigate with a screen reader, which reads out what is on the website to me. For example, the home page causes sluggishness, and may even crash my screen reader, Window-Eyes, particularly when I go to the top of the page. Also, I have noticed that when going into a list of links, most of the links on the home page after Worship Accadamy won’t read at all, and on the contact page, there are some parts which are not labelled properly. I am using Internet Explorer for this. Moreover, some of the links to blog articles, such as leading worship with an inexperienced team, are broken.
I was wondering if it would be possible to review the website to see if these problems could be rectified. I will be happy to assist in any way possible, such as free testing, and can provide links to resources such as websites about accessibility standards. Thank you for your time.
Yours Faithfully,
Samuel Wilkins.
Samuel
Yes, it is under review. Not enough hours in the day is my problem, but I will do what I can to help. The teaching in the academy is video, so you will find the audio section really easy for yourself. That is if you can understand my accent!
Hi Darin
Please can you send me the Bible in a year reading you mention in your podcasts.
May I just mention, your worship leading podcasts are amazing.
Regards
Barbara
Manchester, United Kingdom