Part two from Chico Woo’s blog. Part one is here. Its provoked a lot of interesting discussion.
I am not a worship leader. I did have a secret ambitions of being one but those dreams were crushed many years ago when I led worship in our Bible College chapel. But if I were a worship leader these are some of the people that would frustrate me.
Obscure Hymn-Loving Guest Speaker.
There is always that guest speaker you ask over and over again, “Do you need anything special for the service?” and they say, “Nope, all good”. But then as they start doing the altar call or ending prayer they make a special song request. “Can you do that 16th century hymn written on a German castle dungeon wall in blood by two blind monks?”
Humming Senior Pastors.
When senior pastors come back and ask you to do a song that they heard at a conference. They do not bring a CD or sheet music nor do they know the title, author, or words of the song. All they can do is badly hum the bridge. They hum it and with expectant eyes hope that you can hear and recognize the song. They keep saying, “It was so powerful and awesome!” Of course it is Friday at 4 PM and he wants you to do it this Sunday. So all Friday night you get CSI on it and finally track it down and realize it is a song you were going to sing next weekend. Ugggh…
Tech Loving Staff.
In most churches staff usually sits up front. But that can be frustrating if your staff loves technology. That means that during worship they are in the front row texting, twittering and facebooking during worship. I go home and read the post, “Worship was so awesome today”. How do you know it was awesome? We should have a no Twirshipping rule.
No PowerPoint Rhythm.
These are the people who run the PowerPoint and yet have no PowerPoint rhythm. There is a rhythm to changing the slides. Not too fast, otherwise people start singing the next verse early, and not too slow, because then people start giving you that “Where are we in the song?” look.
The Late Unstealthy Socializer.
This is the person who habitually comes to church 15 minutes late. As they enter the auditorium they start high-fiving, blowing kisses and doing the call-me hand signal, saying hello to everyone they pass. If you are going to be late, be stealthy, choose an aisle seat in the back and quietly come in and join worship. The only reason why you should be late is if you are Latte Late. Latte Late is when the coffee bar at the church is running behind or you have multiple services and the outgoing people and the incoming people are all getting lattes, which causes Latte Congestion. You can use the Latte Late if you were on the coffee bar line 10 minutes before church started. You are only allowed 1 Latte Late per month; anything over that you will be put on Parking Lot Traffic Cop duty during a winter storm.
The Watcher.
This is the person that does nothing but watch during the service. You don’t smile, you don’t sing, you don’t raise a hand, you don’t bow you head, you don’t close your eyes, you don’t blink. You just stare. I can understand if you are new to Christianity, but my goodness, you have been in the church for 10 years and you’ve been staring. You are kind of creepy. At least blink.
The Overly Affectionate Worshippers.
They are the ones constantly touching their spouse, fiancé or boyfriend/girlfriend: rubbing their necks, shoulders, doing the itsy bitsy spider down their spine, kissing (no tongue of course –that’s over the line) and even holding each other in the front-to-back hug during worship. Thankfully, we are lowering the house lights in the auditorium and I can’t really see you anymore. But every once in a while I see you two holding each and swaying to the music. I guess it’s okay now as long as you two don’t try fancy claps.
9 Comments
I find this article and the previous one very disappointing. There is a real feel of judgement and dishonour here that I find undermines and opposes the very heart of worship. Worship is meant to bring the body into the presence of God and bring honour to the King and to each other as we worship together. Quite frankly, as a worship leader who leads regularly and mentors upcoming worship leaders I would have to have a loving but serious discussion with anyone on the team who commented on people and situations like I have just read. It is more than disturbing to me. I am not saying that we can’t observe what is going on around us in worship as leaders- that is part of the responsibility to determine what God is doing and where He may be leading us in worship at any given moment. We have to be very careful to not judge those who may look like they are not worshipping in the way we think they should be. As leaders under pastoral authority we are to serve one another and that will mean doing things that we don’t always like.
If the article was meant to make us think and stir things up a bit then great! But for me, I’d like to see a little more discernment and wisdom on this site when it comes to what should be posted for viewing.
Bev Moorhead
If we ask how did the Twitter know worship was good, except for the humming pastor, how do we worship leaders know this is all going on? Are we such children, we can’t focus on our marvelous King for an hour? Oh wait didn’t Jesus ask that of the founders of the new testament church regarding prayer?
We cannot control our band members why would we want to control the congregation? Yes the list includes distractions that occur during worship but are we not here to serve them and the Lord? If people ignore God and He loves and woos them still, should we not also?
Again, we who God allows to do something we love so much every week need to lighten up on our flocks. More time put in offering classes on worship, expressions of it, and recognizing the God the way Jeremiah, Isaiah and the 4 and 20 elders did/do might help our congregations respond to the Lord during cooperate worship in more respectful ways.
But oh wait, all us musician/worshipers are probably to busy with our outside gigs to dedicate time to that? In fact I need to run right of the stage Sunday to get to my next gig, maybe I will catch the podcast?
Great article (along with many other articles on the site)! Thanks for helping us to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously!
I agree in principal with the first post and comments. These remarks border on unbrotherly and typify the so called modern church attitude. We want people to respond when we stand up to lead sing or play and not to identify stereotypes identified in this article. I am sure we all have suffered in part from some of these things but there are ways and means of dealing with them. I am in a “modern” church and we think we have it so sorted sometimes with our modern songs and seeker friendly services. But we would do well to remember that those who we bring to church or meet at home or work are looking to see how real Jesus is in us and not how big the PA is or how fancy the light show is. It is good we have the oppertunity to express these views.
Best Regards
Mark
These are really funny. The things many worship leaders (and others) have thought many times but don’t dare reveal.
How about the worship musician/singer who WILL NOT take direction, and just does their own thing?
Reminds me of the girl who once turned up with a tuba.
So we’re rocking out to “Army of God”, and in the background…om-pah om-pah…
She didn’t last long.
Yes! Thanks for keeping it light, guys. I enjoyed and related to both articles. Keep ‘em coming!
Nice stuff. Slightly confused as to why so many have taken these things so literally when it’s clearly intended as a bit of fun!!
I reckon around 1/3 of our church get there habitually late. I’m going to start taking a register soon and issuing detentions for a number of people.. We have a few watchers too – sometimes I want to push them to see if they move or even blink. Fortunately we don’t have too any diva musicians – although excruciatingly, we do have a couple often out of tune with joyful abandon.. As someone who also serves in the tech team, it’s been great fun to enjoy the many typos that we have in our database. Even more fun is adding typos deliberately.. Not that anyone would ever do that.. Ahem!
Anyone else have any more categories?!!
These are funny comments clearly written by someone who has been involved in church life for a long time. I have no doubt that the writer is as focussed on their worship leading as they need to be, and these things are all part of the fantastic family life that being part of a church entails. Sharing fun and having a laugh at ourselves (because these are all things that definitely do exist!) is part of ‘life to the full’ in my view! Anyone who likes this could read the likes of Jeff Lucas and Adrian Plass for more humerous observations on church life. Love the church and appreciate it for what it is!
I’ve just written an “Editors comment” to all this on the first part of the original post. You can read it here http://www.musicademy.com/2009/05/21/people-that-frustrate-worship-leaders-part-1/#comment-1853