Christians can get really particular about our worship music. Some of us love hymns. Love love love them. Can’t get enough of them. Think no other form of music is proper worship music: If the music pastor made the church sing anything else, they might stay standing, but they’ll sing none of it unless it follows the proper hymnal format of first verse, chorus, second verse, chorus, skip third verse (don’t know what they have against third verses, but oh well), fourth verse, extra-grand chorus, a-A-men.
Others of us love the stuff on the Christian radio, and don’t want to sing any old-timey stuff unless their favorite band has figured out a way to incorporate a backbeat and put it on their latest worship album. Others have their absolute favorite worship musicians; I know certain music pastors whose repertoire consists entirely of Hillsong tunes. For a few months, my own church’s youth band did nothing but Jesus Culture songs. They get a little fixated. It happens; I had my own phases, growing up, where I’d play nothing but Prince or U2. Hopefully we grow out of these phases.
But some of us don’t, and have to have to do our church music our way. And I’ve seen churches divide over this.
Sometimes entirely: One group starts a new church, and the other group stays in the old one. But in recent years, churches have decided to be a little more mature about it. (Well, only a little.) They create multiple services: Older-style music in the early-morning service; current music in all the others. A decade ago, my then-church chose to do this very thing, ’cause too many of the older folks were complaining about all the rock ’n’ roll worship. I don’t see any point in driving away the hymn fans either. I just wish both groups could accommodate the other a little more.
See, a pastor’s duty is to point the people to Jesus. And a music pastor’s duty is to do that through music. But the specific style of music has nothing to do with that duty. A hymn can point to Jesus, as can a worship chorus, a gospel song, a Christian pop tune, or a Gregorian chant. The difference between these songs is stylistic; nothing more. When it comes to style, we’re to accommodate the people we minister to, and submit to them. Not demand they follow us because we like a certain style more than they do.
Imagine a long road trip, where one guy has control of the radio, and even though the majority of people in the car would much rather listen to classic rock or oldies, he has to listen to nothing but Top 40 music—’cause he likes it, ’cause it’s “better than that old junk you like,” and turns a deaf ear to all the complaints. Well, that’s the same attitude we see in too many music pastors. They insist on their own way. Which means they’re neither submitting nor ministering.
Which leads me to my own particular peeve when it comes to church.
“I can’t hear you!”
I first heard it in the youth groups. Our youth pastors would break out the guitar and lead us in a few songs. Usually worship choruses. Some of the songs were a little cheesy—they were novelty songs, goofy kid songs, but we were kids, and some of us liked ’em. Others thought they were stupid and immature, and sat them out. (I was immature, so I wasn’t among them.)
Well, not every youth pastor approves of it when kids sit out a song. They want everyone to sing. Woe to you if you don’t, ’cause some of them will single you out. Say a hypothetical kid named Luke decided he wouldn’t sing along. Once my pastor noticed, he’d pause the song: “Luke, why aren’t you singing? I can’t hear you. You’re gonna have to come forward and stand where I can hear you.” Luke didn’t wanna, but Pastor would insist: “Come on forward. Come where everybody can hear you. In fact, why don’t you lead this song?” Unkind kids like me found Luke’s discomfort entertaining, so we’d add to the pressure. Pretty soon Luke found himself, in red-faced embarrassment, forced to sing for our amusement.
Not for the greater glory of God. He had nothing to do with this. It was entirely about our pastor getting his way. He wanted everyone to sing his songs, and share his enthusiasm. The punishment for not going along with it was humiliation.
He’s not the only pastor who did this. All my life I’ve seen music pastors who felt we weren’t worshiping God with all the devotion they felt we ought to give him. We weren’t enthusiastic enough. We weren’t loud enough. We weren’t clapping enough. Not enough of us had our hands in the air, or eyes closed, or feet stomping. Some of us were actually sitting down during the music. How dare we? We were supposed to be making a joyful noise!
Some of them would engage in the same embarrassing tactics as my youth pastors. Yep, even among adults. (Not like it’s okay to do this with kids either.) Most of them keep it a generic, “Come on, people. I know you have it in you.” But some of them will actually call you out: “Leslie? Why’re you sitting?”
(Well… okay, thus far none of them have called me out. Maybe ’cause they know I’ll respond with something sarcastic: “I’m waiting for the real worship.”)
Encouragement versus nagging.
I don’t have a problem with music pastors who like to give a lot of instructions. Some of them might give a whole lot of detailed instructions—“Turn in your hymnals to number 216, ‘Oh Lord Please Don’t Burn Us.’ We’ll sing it in A; everybody will sing the first verse, the men will sing the second verse, we’ll skip the third verse, the women will sing the fourth verse, then we’ll do a key-change to C major and sing the final verse together. Hymn number 216. Everybody! … Now the men! … Skipping the third verse; now the women! … Now everyone!” They get nuts sometimes, and sometimes pull us out of a worship mood.
But instructions aren’t really a problem. Sometimes they pull us out of our comfort zones, but big deal; some of us need to do more than we do. “Stand to your feet, everybody. Clap your hands. Praise his holy name! Give him honor. Wave your hands in the air; praise Jesus like you just don’t care. You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out…” Okay, they don’t necessarily go full-on “Hokey Pokey” (although some have been known to pull a “Father Abraham”) but telling everybody it’s okay to shout, clap, lift their hands, and so forth, is fine too. Visitors don’t always know what’s allowed and what isn’t; longtime attendees sometimes need reminding.
But I’ve been in services where the music pastor didn’t like the church’s lack of enthusiasm. So he stopped the service, and gave us a lecture. An impromptu lecture; he didn’t go home, get hold of his emotions so he could speak in patience and kindness and forgiveness, spend a week in prayer about what God might want him to tell us, study the appropriate scriptures, and give a properly-prepared sermon. He simply stopped the music and rebuked us for not worshiping, to his mind, properly. He felt we dishonored God.
Well, we hadn’t dishonored God. The only thing we’d done is disappoint our music pastor, who wanted us to respond to his musical selections more than we had. We didn’t; he was pissed; he took it out on us.
Thankfully, our senior pastor knew better than to allow this sort of behavior to continue. But in some churches, the senior pastor leads the music too, and the senior pastor will do the very same thing, and vent his musical frustrations upon the people in the congregation. And this isn’t appropriate. This shouldn’t happen.
We go to church to worship God. Usually, our pastors teach us we don’t have to be proficient, or able, or loud; we just have to be willing. So how come some music pastors get to judge our willingness based on how proficient, able, or loud we are?
If the people in our churches don’t respond to the music in the way we like, as leaders our job is to find out why. Have we taught them what’s expected of them during the worship music? Have we taught them what we can, and can’t do, during the service? Have we taught them why we worship with music in the first place? Have we shared with them what we get out of it, as leaders?—or what we hope they’d get out of it as worshipers? Are they having trouble because they’re sad? Discouraged? Depressed? Tired? (Did we foolishly start ’em with too fast of a song, instead of working them up to that point?) What’s the Holy Spirit telling us about the mood of the room?
Christians need to be kind. Leaders especially. A music pastor who forgets this, mustn’t lead. Doesn’t matter how musically gifted they are, how talented and clever and creative they are. Most artists tend to get a free pass on their behavior because of their abilities. They shouldn’t. The “artistic temperament” must never be found among Christian artists. Again, especially when they’re in leadership.
And if a church is gonna make exceptions for any of its leaders, perhaps it’s time to rethink those churches.
Not putting up with that.
Back to that hypothetical kid in the youth group, Luke. He’s based on a lot of real kids who were singled out by those youth pastors. The pastors tended to pick on regular attendees. That’s if Luke was a visitor, or someone who wasn’t committed to the group, he’d never return. Understandably, Luke’s response would be, “I don’t need this crap.”
For some of us, especially when we’re proud, it only takes being humiliated in this way once. In college, I watched it happen to one kid: One of our music leaders singled her out during chapel. She wasn’t clapping or something. She didn’t attend chapel thereafter. Didn’t matter that chapel was mandatory; she’d go in the door, sign the roll sheet, and slip out the back. She wasn’t letting that situation happen twice. She was done. Can’t really say I blame her.
One of our professors was in chapel when a guest pastor tried to single out one of our students. Eventually he had enough, went forward to the stage, rescued the embarrassed student from the pastor, and they both sat down. He deservedly became the school’s hero for a few weeks after that. I’d like to think I’d do the same thing if I ever find myself watching such a spectacle again.
Then again, last month I was in a service where the music pastor started haranguing us for not “pressing through” in worship; not enough to her taste. I sat through that, though I felt like walking out. (I still wanted to hear the sermon.) So, I dunno.