artistic

Worship Leaders Lead People

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Worship leaders should make a priority of developing management skills, and not excuse themselves from this on the basis of their being artists. Rather, they are prophet-musicians in the church, a position that carries tremendous leadership responsibility.

I was startled one day to realize that worship leaders really don’t lead worship. They lead people. This was a new revelation for me. It meant that management skills were needed by worship leaders, too. Worship leaders, however, are not always happy to find this out. It may be a revelation, but it’s also hard work.

Rationalization by Artistic People. There are several problems inherent in building a team out of such a diverse group of people as “musicians.” Having an artistic bent myself, I can readily identify with the rationalizations artists use to escape management responsibility. Perhaps the first of these is, “Artists are supposed to operate more by emotion and spirit, less by reason.” That sounds logical, but it allows artists too much liberty to justify their moments of poor judgment or their impatience with details. It gives them the freedom to remain impulsive and unpredictable—not good traits for a leader of others.

Even folklore suggests that the more artistic one is, the less likely he or she is to be responsible. I often used to comfort myself with this alibi while remaining generally sloppy, missing appointments, or being chronically late to meetings. Again, this myth needs to be dealt with in order to become a strong leader.

Another loophole artists use to avoid change is that they justify any disunity that may appear among them. The excuse? “Artists just have volatile personalities.” In some circles denying the virgin birth of Jesus causes less trouble than the “proper” interpretation of a musical passage! Because of these and other “accepted” excuses for irresponsible behavior, it is no easy task to lead, let alone manage musicians.

Worship Leaders Are Prophet-Musicians. Some of these generally accepted rationalizations probably originate from a false identity among worship leaders. They don’t have a clear opinion of who they are. The importance of their role has been downplayed or unrecognized for years. In my chats with worship leaders, pastors, and other church leaders, I have discovered that many think of worship leaders as only being musicians or “entertainers.” But the Bible teaches that they function prophetically.

Rather than thinking of themselves as musicians first, worship leaders must see themselves as prophets, or at least as people who operate strongly in prophetic gifts. And prophets are men and women with tremendous responsibility.

Prophets are entirely different from worldly musicians. Prophets can make or break a church. Prophets are men and women of the Word who know the Scriptures and handle them rightly. They are leaders in their congregations. They have an awesome responsibility.

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. (1 Tim. 3:1–6)

In this Scripture, God describes the kind of people suited for leadership in the church. Prophetic worship leaders are far from being just “artists.” Like all spiritual leaders, they set the lifestyle standards for the church and are to be examples of excellence. Everything the Bible teaches about leaders applies to the prophet-musician.

Worship leaders who think of themselves as “mere musicians” have a lot of identity-changing to do. Clearly, worship leaders must have the correct self-image. They cannot cast themselves in the role of entertainers. Called to a high honor and much responsibility, their ability to lead worship depends as much on their exemplary lives as on their musical skills.

As I conduct seminars around the nation, I see an increasing number of churches that are becoming aware of the responsible roles of their worship leaders. In these churches it is no easier to become a worship leader than it is to become an elder; these are also churches that honor their worship leaders and are blessed for doing so.

How to Become Creative and Organized. With the right self-image, it becomes a little easier to want to get organized. One day the Lord spoke to me: “Just look at your desk!” he said. “It’s disgusting!” I responded, “But Lord, I am the creative type. You know—artistic, musical, and all that.” And he said, “Are you trying to suggest that I’m not creative?” I responded, “No, sir, I would not want to suggest that. But it would take a miracle for me to keep my desk organized!”

Suddenly, I realized that I had just stumbled onto a key for personal discipline. I began that day to trust God for the change he would work in me and have kept a pretty neat desk ever since.

This seemingly insignificant lesson has helped me to realize that most change begins when we admit the obvious. Though we may see ourselves as not having been born with the gifts of organization and leadership, the skills involved can be learned. If worship leaders lead people, then they must make a choice to develop the skills needed to manage or pay the consequences of lack of teamwork and lowered effectiveness.

Add Leadership and Management Skills to Your Worship Anointing. You can always tell a leader: People follow him or her. Getting people to follow you into the Holy of Holies requires leadership skills. Once you have a following of people, you need to learn how to manage them: to organize, to plan, to direct, to train, to delegate, to evaluate. It’s not an easy task. But the tools of leadership and good management will greatly increase the impact of your worship leading.

How Imagination and Artistic Expression Relate to Worship

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Evangelical author and philosophy professor Dallas Willard writes, “Sometimes important things can be presented in literature and art that cannot be effectively presented in any other way.”[1] Given the way God has designed the human being and human community, people need all the capacities He created—reason, emotion, imagination, memory and language, all working together. As mysterious that transaction is, they need all these capacities so that they may “know” God and not simply know about Him.

In fact, the Bible reveals that people are to know Him so intimately that they ultimately live every minute of each day in a companioning-worship-walk with Him. Jesus pressed this very issue when explaining to the woman at Jacob’s well that, “. . . God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24, NIV). The Apostle Paul presses the same mandate when he urges Christians to, “. . . present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your logical, reasonable worship-way-of-living (latreian)” (Rm12:1, author’s rendering).

The Bible reveals that the essence of worship is to find one’s satisfaction in God above all and everyone else. The Apostle Paul boldly declares, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21, NIV).

But based on these submissions, there exists one important question: If humans and human community are to engage in an intimate and interactive involvement with God, how does this interactive transaction actually happen?

Most would say that the goal and essence of worship are both wrapped up in a relationship with God. But still, how do finite people have relational interaction with a Divine God? Is not God unique from humans? Of course. He alone is Divine, Holy, Supreme. But how; or in what way, or in what realm, has God created humans to ‘experience’ in transactional reality, relations with Himself?

At this point it is important to note Bible Role for Imaginative Expression. God designed finite humans in such a way . . . that the mystery of transactional engagement with God happens through environments of imaginative human expressions.

When people go to worship, whether in groups or alone, God designed them to need to exercise their imaginal intellect as much as any other dynamic of their being—including their rational intellect. When people worship God alone, they “practice” focusing their faith toward God through the gate of their imagination. As they couple their imagination with their intellect, they will imagine the unseen realities they “know” are true in Scripture.

Scripture assures the believer that one approaches God through the work of Jesus. So, when one prays, there is help by imagining Jesus on the Cross; picturing Him on the Cross; picturing their self bowing before the Cross; seeing with the eyes of their imagination His blood running down the beam, flowing right around their knees. This kind of ‘mental’ exercise—combining the objective historical truth of the Crucifixion with the eyes of the imagination—helps one draw near to God. Bowing the head, kneeling down, closing the eyes, holding a Bible, lifting an arm, looking up to the sky, or any number of other inward/outward practices helps look through the eyes of their imagination into the unseen realities of God. The mystery is that none of these practices provide in themselves any spiritual merit. But, when worshipers allow their imagination to join their intellect when they worship, they may indeed engage more fully with God.

When people worship in public, their worship is more fully facilitated by their environment, the influences of worship leadership, their understanding of theology, and the cultural contexts surrounding them. People come together, . . . in some sort of “environment,” . . . to participate in human activities, . . . that involve metaphors and symbols. When the experience is genuine, fused with reverence and focused faith on God, the worshiper often comes to a point where the “whole” of the experience is greater than the sum of its parts. When genuine worship is experienced, something goes on larger than all the parts of that gathering. It is at this point that Imaginative human expression takes place. And imaginative human expression is always present in any public worship context.

Additionally, public gatherings will often be more successful if . . . someone endowed and skilled with more-than-average abilities in artistic human expression . . . are released to plan and help implement the gathering’s process. Whether in private or public worship settings, 1) imaginative expressions help the worship experience; and 2) human expression specialists are strategic in facilitating worship. Therefore, we can be sure that God designed artistic expression to be a central part of the fabric of human life and community.

Along with being spiritual, cognitive, and moral, humans are also imaginative. Animals have instincts, but people have imagination in a highly developed way. And that imagination reflects, in a small way, our Creator. It’s no wonder that Paul reaches the limitations of language in describing the vastness of Christ’s love for us—its width and length and height and depth. He leans into the poetic to more fully express to us that this love “surpasses knowledge,” and Paul struggles to articulate his prayer for us to “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18–19 NIV).

So, when it comes to the activity of worship—worship that must make sense to us in the context of our culture if it is to have meaning at all—that sort of worship demands more than just propositions of fact. It requires symbols and metaphors and rituals that help people connect with the invisible realities of God Himself; the sort of worship that moves people to press toward the edges of one’s human capacity to express themselves. Those kinds of worship activities—private or public—demand that one takes the realities of God and His truths beyond the languages of the head into the languages of the heart. And that realm is the realm of artistic expression.

[1] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998., p. 78.

World Evangelization and Artistic Expression

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When an entire village of Bolivian Indian ranch workers came to the Lord a few years ago, some missionary friends of mine were faced with some steep questions. What do we do with this entire village of people that now know the Lord as Savior? How do we teach them to study the Bible when most of them don’t read? And when they have no Christian music, what do we suggest they sing?

My missionary friends encouraged the Bolivian Indians to make up their own musical expression. They understood the importance of culturally appropriate communication and affirmed the leadership in the village, that it would be appropriate to sing songs they composed themselves.

When evangelization happens in its fullness, culturally appropriate and sensitive communication is crucial. In many parts of the world, due to lack of literacy, such communication will be through artistic or imaginative expression. Music, drama, storytelling, painting, architecture, mime, puppets, crafts, festivals, movement, ritual, and on and on, are all forms of artistic expression.

Artistic communicators are Christians endowed by God with unusual wisdom in creative things. They may be pastors, teachers, musicians, painters, writers, managers, factory workers, farmers, or housewives. They are simply Christians with a vision and ability for actively incorporating appropriate artistic forms and methods into worship and evangelism.

People generally hear and understand with their hearts long before they hear and understand with their heads. And their heartstrings are generally plucked, not by the academic and the apologist, but by the artist and the poet. This reality leads me to shout from the rooftops that Christian musicians and artists play a critical role in world evangelization these days.

Where the Great Commission has truly been carried out, the penetrated cultures most often worship and proclaim their faith in their own mother tongues, heart-music, and cultural styles. These heart-languages and cultural styles are very often uncovered by indigenous artists or better stated, arts ministry specialists. Whether in ceremonies, liturgy, pageants, visual or movement expression, music, storytelling, or other dynamics of gathered expression, it is usually the arts ministry specialist who helps facilitate the believing community in its public and private expressions of worship.

The jewel of human activity is worship, worship that makes sense in the context of one’s own culture. It requires symbols and metaphors and rituals that help connect the people with the invisible realities of God himself. Those kinds of worship activities demand that we take the realities of God and His truths beyond the languages of the head into the languages of the heart. And that realm is so often the realm of artistic expression.

God has specially equipped present-day worshiping artists to express beyond words the realities of God’s supernatural person and Kingdom. We need to proactively recruit and deploy these worship and arts ministry specialists into the fabric of the church and its mission.

What Makes an Artistic Minister?

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The Christian Arts community—I’m clearly convinced—is often clearly confused about what ministry is. Not that other parts of the Christian community aren’t confused—they are. But Christians out of arts backgrounds oftentimes certainly face confusion when it comes to ministry.

Why are Christian Artists Confused about Ministry? Cutting to the chase, it’s at least because of three reasons.

First, human beings in Western civilization began to think of “the arts” the way we do—abstract objects and activities of creativity created as ends in themselves having no or little tie to everyday life and living other than their artistic value—during the 1500’s or so; mostly apart from the community of true believers in Jesus. This is a time when “secularism” began to take hold in the thinking of normal “marketplace” people; people who were separating themselves from any “religious” involvement, Catholic or Protestant. Why? Because the “protesting” church backed away from the “religious humanism” of the Catholic church (a form of religion with no connection to a “regenerated personal relationship with Jesus”—remember: Martin Luther was just trying to be a good Catholic believer, getting back to the Word of God and a vibrant personal walk with Jesus; he was not trying to cause a fuss).

Second, as the “protesting” (Protestant) church separated itself from both the Catholic church and the “secular society, in the process of backing away from the human corruption of the Church and the community, it backed away from a lot of the creative art that played a role in the Church, and it backed away from the entertainment art and the art-of-the-elite that was being developed in the “secular” market place (a “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” sort of thing).

Third, the “protesting” church (most of the Reformers, with the exception of Martin Luther and a few others) seemed to buy into a non-biblical view that there exist “things secular and things sacred”; and “the arts,” which already had prominence in the Catholic church and were gaining prominence in what they were beginning to view as “secular” society, were therefore seen more and more as worldly and thus inappropriate for “sacred” life, living and worship.

With these three reasons in mind, it’s time we got back to the Bible, and God’s perspective on things. God wants creativity and artistic expression. He designed it into the fabric of the human species. Our ability to imagine and to “recreate” reflects His image (His perfection of creativity) in us. Animals possess instincts. People possess imagination, a much more god-like capacity. People, not animals, are made in God’s image (Genesis 1: 26). When those creative and imaginative endowments are under the redeemed Lordship of Jesus, God’s Messiah, they are “sanctified”—set apart for special service unto His glory and purposes.

Do not see artistic expression as “secular.” Don’t consider artistic expression as “worldly.” As God created them they are reflections of His image in us; and in fact, it is our duty to dedicate them—all our imaginative expressions and efforts—to His glory and for His purposes . . . of reflecting His truth, and beauty, and reconciliation in Jesus!! (1 Cor. 10:31)

Now, seeing a bit not why we are confused, what is Ministry? Simply defined, it’s . . . serving God; serving His purposes and others on His behalf. In other words, ministry is . . . Dealing with God about people, and dealing with people about God. That is it. Anything else beyond that, and it gets too complicated.

Ministry practices seem to be five (5) simple things: 1) assuming God works supernaturally (in and through the fullness of His triune Self). (Humans can’t initiate the supernatural work of salvation, or the miraculous working of God for conviction, enlightenment, forgiveness, healing, change, etc.; the supernatural part of ministry is only and always effected by God Himself. We, the humans, are simply pots. He’s the Potter and the Water, so to speak.); 2) praying for and with people. 3) caring for people in the Name of Jesus (not just doing good in some abstract way—but intentionally doing the good because of your life from, in and through Jesus’ work in you!); 4) guiding people for help into God’s Word, the Bible; 5) sharing your faith simply when the time is right. That’s it. No matter what your title or education is or is not if you do these things you are ministering. If you do NOT do these things—no matter what your title or education is or is not, you are not doing ministry.

Ministry price? Ministry is always FREE. payment related to the doing of ministry is technically something else—ministry support, or occupation, or business—but don’t get confused; ministry is always FREE.

How is Ministry supported? The Bible (OT or NT) only shows two ways of ministry support: a) support from the believing community, or b) a side job. Yes I know the Levites were allegedly full time. But they were supported by the tithes and offerings of the believing community. Yes I know Paul defended the right for full-focused ministry workers to be supported full time (e.g. 1 Corinthians 9 l& 2 Thessalonians 3). But he modeled that it was not always tactically wise to exercise that right. And, yes I know it is assumed that ministry-related products were sold at the Temple; and that folks like May and Joseph at Jesus’ circumcision would bring or buy doves at the Temple to use as offerings (e.g. Luke 2:21-24).

But there is absolutely no place in the Scriptures where an indication is given that the Temple ministry was supported by sales of ministry products as a major source of ministry funding, not is there any assumptions or direction that believers should support ministry through the sale of ministry products. Sales are related to business (which almost every believer is to be in—e.g. 2 Thessalonians 3:10. And though ministry ought to happen in every business context (because we never stop being believers, ministry is categorically different than ministry.

Keep these definitions in mind: Business is the sale (or exchange) of products, performances or services in exchange for value in return: Ministry is serving God; and His purposes and others on His behalf. Occupation is where you get your money. In a fallen world rarely is your ministry assignment the same as your occupation; and never is business—strictly speaking—ministry.

When am I in ministry? Because you are a believer priest (1 Peter 2: 9-10) no matter what your occupation is or isn’t, you ARE in ministry full time. If your business furthers ministry, praise God; but if it doesn’t, you are still in ministry, and responsible for ministering in that context.

When does ministry happen?  When three intentions actually occur: 1) when you intend to engage people about the purposes of God; 2) when you are consciously faithing that God is at work (where there is no faithing going on, generally speaking no supernaturally initiated transaction goes on); 3) when you actually make contact with people about God and His purposes. That means that, at a Christian concert where none or few of these things are intentionally going on, event though it’s a concert of “Christian songs” there will generally be no or little actual ministry effected . .. or affected.

Summary: Do not define ministry as occupation. If you do you are Biblically incorrect!! Ministry is NOT occupation; it is simply something else—that often happens in the context of occupation. Do not define ministry as business. If you do you are Biblically incorrect!! Ministry is NOT business; it is simply something else—that sometimes, the income from which the mature believer often very generously invests into ministry—via donations, offerings and tithes. You will know you are in business, if when it does poorly or fails you think you no longer have a ministry.

Also, do not buy into the strategy of trying to fund ministry by business income. Only a few have done this, and it’s only worked because they have not let the business tail wag the ministry dog; and they are still confused about what business is, and about what ministry isn’t. Jesus said that we cannot serve God and mammon (Mt. 6:24; Lk 16:13-15).

If you try to tie ministry to business . . . and fail at business, you may think you’ve failed at ministry, when in fact your business failure may produce a context for great ministry in your life and lives of others. Or on the other hand, if you succeed business selling Christian things (and still have not been doing the five things I listed above), you may think you have ministered when all you’ve done is the natural function of selling Christian things while in substance seen no spiritual transaction moving through your efforts..

If you try to tie ministry to occupation and for some reason your occupation ends, you may mistakenly think your ministry has ended. If you keep the simple definitions in mind I’ve suggested while continuing to do ministry (which is always free), you’ll be certain to progress in fruitful ministry—whether or not the Lord releases you to earn your living through the doing of ministry.

Arts in Evangelism … It won’t happen fast without Non-Artist-Advocates

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For the arts to become effectively used in evangelism the Church needs Non-Artist-Advocates or it won’t happen fast, if at all.

Most Christians have some sense that artistic methods, and artists themselves, could be and should be powerful sources of evangelistic efforts.  But most artists and musicians will confirm that they feel most conventionally trained and serving church leadership doesn’t have the foggiest idea or vision of how to envision artists to be used; nor even possess the simple conviction to give artists and musicians permission to come up with ideas on how to engage the community around them for the sake of the Gospel.  In fact, often musicians and artists will tell you that they feel that church leadership doesn’t really trust that they will get the “content” of the Gospel right, or communicate it well.

That may sound a bit harsh. But I’m deciding these days, after some 49 years in Church and mission ministry, to speak more frankly about these things. Though there’s been some very good progress in Church leadership feeling the importance of artists and musicians in ministry, we are still not seriously and aggressively tapping into the reservoir of these dynamic and God-designed “specialists” who God has created to engage the community and culture through their imaginative and emotional intelligence – to encounter the objective (yet transcendent) reality of the Triune GOD we love, worship and serve.

  • Church leaders still remain skeptical that artists and musicians are really declaring enough content about God.
  • Mission leaders still overlook the fact that “indigenous” Christian community formation is expressed through artistic human forms of expressions (metaphors, symbols, and human signal systems*).
  • Congregational and Denominational leaders do not provide budgets or the systems which affirm the development of quality artistic methods and efforts of community engagement via the arts.
  • We are still thinking to much about entertainment, and too little about encounter – and how artists and musicians are the best God-designed facilitators of the latter.

So how could that change?  Well, a lot is needed. But a strategic starting place is the rise non-artistic-Artist-Advocates.  We need Christians, normal and clergy, who will advocate for the reality that we must embrace artistically gifted disciples as ministry initiators – and to have a sustained, long-term plan – we need the following, not very popular, but very strategic, concerted efforts to press for …

  • more artistically gifted people in the clergy (the Church’s gatekeepers, budget developers, and permission-givers);
  • more artists on ‘ministry strategy development’ teams;
  • more non-Christians coming providing a community for Christians in the arts in the marketplace (encouraging them to move forward via those portals into culture);
  • more artistic-ministry efforts.

All these areas are generally initiated NOT by artists but by artist-advocates who are NOT artists, or clergy and Christian ministry staff (like yourself) who are functionally advocates for those for the above-mentioned needs.  Sl I’m praying for you to play into that role — whether you are directly playing the guitar or writing songs or sitting in the broadcast chair.