By Any Other Name

Jun 10

bradLinks, Music , , 1 Comment

I think sometimes we take the word “worship” for granted. We know deep down that it’s more than singing, and yet we typically mean “singing songs to God” when we talk about worship. It’s even in our titles: the “worship leader” is really “the song guy”, right?

In a recent blog post, Vicky Beeching takes on this topic:

Other church traditions – mine included- use “worship leader” to refer to the person who leads the musical and sung portion of the gathering. This also seems unhelpful, as it implies again that singing is the main or only form of “worship” in our spirituality, and also that we need someone at the front to enable this “worship” to take place…

Any ideas? What do you think good alternatives to “worship” and “worship leader” might be?  Perhaps “sung worship” and “song leader”? Other suggestions?

Jump over to Vicky’s blog for more discussion – there’s some good stuff in the comments.

So what say you all? What do we call it? And what do we call ourselves? What do you think?

Some Things To Think About

May 31

bradLinks 1 Comment

Here are a couple links that I wanted to share:

1) Pay On Stage Or Free To See – Ragamuffin Soul:
Some questions about whether worship team musicians should be paid or not. I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts on this. On this blog, we have representatives from the “full time paid worship leader” camp as well as the “volunteer, but I get paid with the occasional free lunch” contingency. Thoughts?

2) Jon Acuff on perfection:
Greatest trick of perfection is that it pretends it’s possible. Take solace in “finished,” beware the trap of “complete.”

3) Sacrifice Of Praise – Kevin Riner:
But how does one offer up praise when the heart wants to cry? How does one lift his eyes to the Lord when his life is turned upside down?
What strategies/ideas/suggestions do you have for worshipping through the hard times?

4) There Is No Such Thing As Christian Music – Gungor
I was going to write a whole post on this one, but since Rich already touched on it in the comments, I’ll just share this excerpt:
Then I realized that things like labels or CD’s can’t be “Christian”, only people can be “Christian.”  Christian means being a follower of Jesus.  Music can’t follow Jesus.  Only people can.  That means there is actually no such thing as Christian music.  That would be like saying that a house is agnostic because an agnostic built it.   A house is a house.  Words are words. Music is music.  This also means there is no such thing as “secular” music.  It’s all just music.
Definitely worth a read.

5) The Paradox Of Tone – Guitar Blog:
I suspect that most of us play guitar, so I thought I’d throw this one in, too. I know that lots of worship leaders tend to lean on their acoustic most of the time, but I’ve been finding myself  playing my Gretsch more and more on Sunday mornings. For the record, my favorite tones are a combination of my Gretsch and my Floor Pod Plus. I can dial in a bit of drive without being too obnoxious for the more conservative members of our congregation. Plus it has great delay for those U2 inspired intros. Are you obsessive about tone or any other “non-worship” element of the worship service?

And I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment on this Memorial Day to acknowledge the sacrifice of those brave soldiers who fought and died to keep us free.