In the Wild Frontierness that God is, I gift you this video of the Pufferfish. Amazing.
The Worship Art of the Puffer Fish
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Author Archives: Worship Fermata
The Fear of Hot Grits Won’t Stop Me
I love this quote:
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
–Dr. Brene Brown (of course)
I included this quote into a letter I sent to one of our “sons” who is serving year 15 of a 30-year sentence. He is still serving time in a supermax prison (google everything scary about prisons and you’ll see what a supermax is). The reasons why he is still there have a lot to do with how badly we need prison reform but that is another blog topic I doubt I will get into.
I gave him this quote in response to a question he asked me. He has been given a job (rare, again we need prison reform) in the kitchen but asked me this question: “I just got hired to work in the kitchen. Here is some hope for you. I hope no old beef come to haunt me and someone tries to throw hot oatmeal or grease on me. I don’t care about knives but I do care about that hot stuff. How do you defend yourself from hot grease or oatmeal or grits. You can’t. I told you my mind is in a negative place.” Continue reading
Dear Worship Band Leader,
My name is Generic Joe and as you know, I am a member of this congregation. I wanted to tell you that I am a really good plumber and I have friends in this congregation that are great teachers, accountants, government works and auto repairmen. I also wanted to remind you that none of us are seasoned, professional singers like you are. I was hoping this note might serve as a reminder that as the leader of the worship ministry of this church, by definition that means you should keep in mind that leading, not singing, is your most important job on Sunday mornings.
So when you sing the melody I can usually follow ok. I have heard most of the songs enough to grasp the basic melody, although even that’s tough sometimes. Continue reading
Cautiously Rash
I’m not a spontaneous person by nature. Well, it depends. I’m quite influenced by my emotions. If I’m rash, it’s because I’m experiencing strong emotions. Actually, I’m a really rash person. I’ll admit it. My feelings, desires, and temptations are quite strong. I don’t always think before I say and do stuff. It helps to be with a rational person who can say, “Wait! You should think!” before I do something stupid. I mean, it’s not like I wake up and think, “Hm, I’m going to do something rash today.” It just sort of happens. Continue reading
Worship Leading is Also Leading Your Team
When we (myself included) think about what it is to be a worship leader, I think we often give priority in our thought process to things like helping the congregation enter into a spirit of worship, arranging the songs we play, cleaning up vocal harmonies, choosing songs and taking care of sounds issues–the Sunday morning obstacles. And those are all good and necessary things to nurture and it’s a huge part of our responsibly. But for me the term “worship leader” has a dual meaning. We are leading our congregation but we are also leading our own worship team and sometimes I feel like this is the forgotten half of the job description.
Break Your Bad Habits
Every worship leader has bad habits of some kind. We all tend to fall into a groove in our leading style, playing style, singing style, song choice patterns, microphone dynamics or some other thing we’ve been doing for years. So here are some of my least favorite bad habits that I see pretty frequently, including when I lead.
1. Shouting Out The Words: You know what I mean. You felt compelled to lead a song that wasn’t in the original plan. You’re already playing in the key of A, so why not throw in How Great Is Our God? You get through the first verse and chorus just fine but for some reason you just feel like you have to yell out “Age to age he stands” just before you sing “Age to age he stands.” Trust me when I tell you everyone knows the words to most songs like this and you cramming in five words between the last upbeat and downbeat before you start to sing the next verse is just distracting–way more distracting than if one of your five background singers sang a wrong word or two that no one will hear anyway. Trust your team. Trust your congregation. Sing the song. We’re not narrators, we’re leaders. Continue reading
Break Your Bad Habits
Every worship leader has bad habits of some kind. We all tend to fall into a groove in our leading style, playing style, singing style, song choice patterns, microphone dynamics or some other thing we’ve been doing for years. So here are some of my least favorite bad habits that I see pretty frequently, including when I lead.
1. Shouting Out The Words: You know what I mean. You felt compelled to lead a song that wasn’t in the original plan. You’re already playing in the key of A, so why not throw in How Great Is Our God? You get through the first verse and chorus just fine but for some reason you just feel like you have to yell out “Age to age he stands” just before you sing “Age to age he stands.” Trust me when I tell you everyone knows the words to most songs like this and you cramming in five words between the last upbeat and downbeat before you start to sing the next verse is just distracting–way more distracting than if one of your five background singers sang a wrong word or two that no one will hear anyway. Trust your team. Trust your congregation. Sing the song. We’re not narrators, we’re leaders. Continue reading
Don’t Ruin the Hymns
I am a lifelong musician, longtime worship leader and love worship music and music of all types–but I am definitely partial to modern, contemporary worship with a rock and roll edge. And that “edge” sometimes rears its head in the volume of our instrumentation, our song choices and style of leading. So from time to time I try to change things up by leading an acoustic set, or starting the worship set with a slow introspective song, or doing something else that might help bridge the gap between young and old, old school and new school or traditional and contemporary.
One week a few years ago while preparing for worship that coming Sunday I had the “brilliant” idea to incorporate a few hymns into the worship set. This would clearly make the older or more traditional folks happy, right? So I grabbed my guitar and proceeded to play “Come Thou Fount” in my comfortable up-tempo, modern style. It sounded great, if I can say so myself. But a few minutes later I realized how “not” brilliant this was. To someone that loves contemporary worship and traditional hymns, this was the equivalent of a worship leader playing my favorite Third Day or Toby Mac song on an accordion and saying, “See I did this just for you.”
So if you’re a worship leader in the kind of church that has a little bit of everything, by all means sing and play some hymns, just don’t ruin them like I almost did. It’s perfectly acceptable to add your own team’s style to a hymn, just make sure you can still tell it is that beloved hymn.
Know What You Sing and Play, Sing and Play What You Know
I’m a huge sports fan. I know Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball; I know the football Hall of Fame is in Canton, Ohio; I can name the NY Mets starting lineup from the first game of the 1969 World Series; and I know Jim Thorpe actually never lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. But until recently I didn’t know that Jubal, the son of Lamech and Adah and a descendant of Cain, was known as the “the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe” (Genesis 4:21) and he may very well have been the inventor of music as we know it. I also didn’t know until recently that a lyre was a ten string instrument. I was also surprised to learn that the “organ” or “pipe” in Biblical times was the instrument we now call the “flute.”
So as a life-long musician and long time worship leader why didn’t I know these simple biblical truths about music and instruments in the Bible? The truth is I just never thought it was that important. But my opinion on that has changed about a year ago when I was singing “Days of Elijah” and realized I had no idea what “Out of Zion’s Hill salvation comes” meant. That small wakeup call made me realize that I was singing a song that I didn’t know the true meaning of, and I was singing about a time in history that I didn’t have a musical grasp of. And that’s just not acceptable for someone called to lead worship.