We met on a warm day in Baltimore. I thanked him for giving some of his time to a traveling worship minister like myself as I slipped into the smooth benches of a booth at a local chain restaurant to begin the usual ‘get to know you pastoral chit chat’. Questions like, ‘How did you end up pastoring in this city?’ and ‘What is the vision God gave you?’ Then, as always, the conversation turned towards worship. “We don’t have a worship team,” he said with a surprising confidence. Excited by the possibility of being helpful, I was about to tell him how, in short order, one could be made from the people he probably already had with minimal investment in gear and so on. When he stopped me in my mental tracks by saying, “Don’t want one.”
I was shocked, speechless even. He must have anticipated the questions or could tell from my blank expression to offer the reasons as to why. “I’m tired of inexperienced and immature worship leaders ruining my church. This last week we had some of the finest worship leaders at our service, Darlene Zschech, Eddie James, and Chris Tomlin.” Still reeling from before, it took me a moment to realize that he meant they used lyric videos as their worship team. I asked, “Do you not want to be able to flow?” to which he replied with something like, “Haven’t met any worship leaders that knew how to.”
For years I had dedicated the entirety of my life’s effort to training worship teams but it had never once occurred to me that some pastors don’t even want one. On this day, as this pastor continued on, I had a whole lot more to chew on than just my lasagna. “My worship leaders show up on time, take direction, and never complain,” he said with an air that nothing I could say was going to convince him to take on the task of raising up a worship team again. The subject changed and then the check arrived. I thanked him for the meal and left with my head spinning.
I have since met lots of pastors who feel the same way, that there is no valuable difference between a live worship team and a recording. I have also met a lot of pastors and many worship leaders who have begun to push for replicating a worship recording exactly, increasingly to the point of using a karaoke version of the actual recording. The growing trend has been to replace or add to the members of your team with these prerecorded parts played on a machine. But as I often ponder the words of the pastor in Baltimore, I wonder how far this replacement will actual go. Will even we, the worship leaders, be replaced by recordings?
Seems far fetched, like something out of science fiction movie, until you realize it’s already happening to Pastors. Many churches have decided to expand their congregation by using satellite campuses where the people gather together to watch a recording of a sermon by a pastor they probably have never met projected onto a screen. I have even been to a very large church where all of their campuses are recordings, even the main one. The people don’t seem to mind. The messages are good, presented well, edited, and end on time. Right now, most all of these campuses have a version of ‘live’ worship. (I use quotes because while there are some actual people on stage, many times most of the sound is a recording) The question then becomes, “If churches have replaced the most central figure to a church, what stops them from doing the same to you?”
I’m personally challenged by the comments of pastors who have given up trying to find quality worship leaders. I wonder why they don’t exist in spades? When did we stop training up the next generation of people who know how to flow, how to be faithful, how to play music together, and who know how to be more than an echo? More importantly what are we going to do to fix it? Because, while it’s hard to stomach the thought of replacing humans with recordings, I do understand the mindset of many Pastors, which is, if there is no difference between you and a recording then why not just do the recording? Seems outrageous, but it’s the same mindset that some worship leaders have. If there is not a difference between having a bass player or a recording, then why find/teach/train up a bass player when you can just push the play button?
Wanting to having a worship team, but not knowing how, can be fixed with teaching, training, time and effort. But not wanting to because it’s easier or just as good to not, means it’s over, just like my meal in Baltimore. So I leave you with some sobering questions, is there a difference between you and a recording? If there is, you should know it, because it might be challenged. If there is not, what are you going to do about it?