On Mondays I’m posting about the 7 levels of musical worship leading. If you missed it last week, click here for LEVEL 2 – The Creator. If you want to start at the beginning, click here for LEVEL 1 – The Worshipper. Here’s the third installment:
The Performer (LEVEL 3 Musical Worship Leader)
The level 3 musical worship leader begins to inspire people with their excellence. They are participating in a team and they are making music together with them… but now they reach another level of devotion to the art—and they put in the hard work to make it “just so.” The Performer has learned to minimize distractions and maximize attraction. The distractions take the focus off of the music and the words, so they ruthlessly eliminate the things that irritate a congregation. The attractions help lift the heart as one experiences the arts in a way that reminds them of the Creator God’s beauty. Sometimes musical worship gets dismissed as “mere performance.” This may be short-sighted.
There is a place for performance in musical worship–and we are reminded of that when someone leads us in worship who hasn’t practiced or perfected their instrument. We mock performance worship until the guitar player plays an E minor 7 chord instead of a C chord. In fact, the word “performing'” is pejorative when used of musical worship leadership. If you want to dismiss someone as a shallow worship leader all you need to do is label them “performance worship.” I wonder if we have swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.”
Performance does have a place on the 7 levels of musical worship leadership. I don’t think it’s the highest level–but I put it right here at level 3. You won’t make it on to the other levels if you haven’t learned some of the art of good performance. One large church pastor I know, when evaluating potential worship pastors, simply asks, “Do they know how to kiss?” Whether or not you would use that metaphor perhaps you can see that knowing how to competently play music does come into play. The Performer is a worshipper who elevates the mood of worship by lifting the congregation’s eyes to a loftier perfection.
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Links to all 7 Levels of Musical Worship Leadership:
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7
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Another excellent contribution. I’ve often wondered about my public prayers. They are very different from my private prayers (which are more raw). Is public praying really praying or is it another form of public speaking?
Hey Tim, just discussed this in the van in Tenn with Emily Vermila, Keith Drury and Dave Bever–all quite knowledgeable on this stuff (unlike me)
Yes it seems a pastoral prayer is a different bird all together.
Two ways:
Either it is the pastor speaking to the people for God (another semonette in prayer form) or the pastor speaking to God for the people. We all say it is #2
How about you?
I do think there is a performance aspect to this
I’ve been rating myself, and I think at level 3 I’m reaching my limit. As leading worship in music has always been a secondary ministry for me, I’ve rarely taken/had the time to practice as much as I think I should. I’m a good, sometimes very good, performer of music, but I feel I’ve only pushed myself to excellence a few times. While there are people who have great natural ability, what we might think is natural ability is in fact many hours of practice.
Great post Dave, love the questions you raise. i have heard the performance language thrown around a lot in regards to worship, however, I think there is a certain level of performance to the entire liturgy of a service. Part of performance is the orderly structure of things and a perfection of your craft (whether praying, worshipping or preaching). The question for me becomes are there ways to perform in such a way that draws attention to God and not to the performer? i think yes.
Meanwhile a lack of performance can draw more attention to the person and away from a moment of worship, when a preacher poorly presents a text or a worship team cannot hit notes the reality is our focus tends to shift away from worship and towards the distractions that a lack of preparation and reaonsable performance brings.
Maybe those thoughts made sense, but its monday so no promises!