In one of the last scenes of “Runaway Jury” Nicholas Easter, played by John Cusack is talking with Rankin Fitch, played by Gene Hackman. This conversation takes place after the trial in which Fitch has tried many tactics to sway and intimidate the jury to go in favor of the gun company he represents. End the end, Easter is able to cancel out Fitch’s tactics. This is one of the final conversations:
Fitch-”How’d you swing ‘em your way?
I hear you got ten votes. How’d you do that?”
Easter-”I didn’t swing anybody.
I just stopped you from stealing the thing.
We let ‘em vote their hearts.”
I recently was reading a post by Kent Schaffer entitled “Top 10 Pet Peeves about Worship Leaders” in which he groups responses from a post orignally written by Carlos Whitaker of Buckhead Community Church in Atlanta in which he asks simply:
“What is the biggest gripe you have about something a Sunday worship leader does?”
There are a lot of responses that you would typically think of. “Worship leader closes eyes”, “It’s all about the worship leader”, Worship leader sings the same chorus over and over and over”. There was one response which sums up what we are to do as worship leaders. One responder wrote:
“Leading worship is the art of removing distractions.’”
That is something I have thought of from the beginning but what made me originally think of it was that quote:
“I didn’t swing anybody. I just stopped you from stealing the thing. We let ‘em vote their hearts.”
That’s our goal! Our job is to remove distractions as much as possible and create an environment of worship where people can focus on God and be open to Him.
So let me ask you a few questions:
1. What is top on your Pet Peeves list?
2. What do you do as a worship leader to remove distractions?
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on Aug 20th, 2008 at 5:23 am
top on my peeve list is talking and delivering sermonettes between songs
i try to dress decently not to attract undue attention to myself
on Aug 20th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Pet Peeves: I don’t like when worship leaders talk between songs, but have nothing to say. If the service has a theme, or the song has a special meaning, worship leaders should share something that’s relevant…not something out of left field.
Removing Distractions: Playing music during prayer saves the flow of the service and helps listeners/worshipers stay in that mindset. Also, avoiding dead space between service elements helps. If there’s 15 seconds of transition between songs or between the band’s part and the pastor’s part, members of the congregation can sort of hit a mental wall and begin thinking about whatever is weighing on their mind…bills, job, relationships, etc. In a media-driven society, everything is fast-paced, like commercials on a TV. It doesn’t take much of a black screen or a lame commercial before we are flipping channels. We should do the same in worship. True, experienced worshipers should have the maturity to stay focused and not depend on the “entertainment” of the band or speaker, but the fact of the matter is many people come to church looking for a show. Keeping the flow will keep them in that mindset and allow the Holy Spirit to do it’s work.
on Aug 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Ndege, the comment about dress is great. That’s something that we need to emphasize in our youth and adult teams. The way you put it about not attracting attention applies to so much more than just “Don’t wear revealing clothing”. I could wear a $400 suit and I would be attracting attention to myself. Thanks for the thoughts.
on Aug 25th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Amen on the dress comment!
on Sep 29th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I recently went to a concert (no, it wasn’t a worship service per se, but they did do worship music) that violated just about every pet peeve I have. I would like to share real quickly how those went.
1. Vocals in sung in unison need to match. All vocals need to match and blend, but if there is no harmony, the melodic lines need to be spot-on.
2. If a guitar player has over $5,000 in guitar equipment, he/she should be able to get good, quality tone out of it.
3. If the worship leader is going to speak between songs, he should say something besides “God is good, Amen?”
4. Lead guitars shouldn’t overplay over the vocals, even if the lead singer and lead guitarist are one and the same.
5. Tempos should be somewhat consistent throughout the song.
6. Don’t air out your dirty laundry on stage, i.e. sharing with the audience about disagreements musicians have amongst themselves.
on Sep 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Oh wow.. did all of these happen? I like number 4 . Kind of like having a battle with themselves?