Dr. David W. Manner is the Associate Executive Director for the Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists. He blogs at http://kncsb.org/blogs/dmanner . You can follow him on Twitter: @dwmanner.
If I sing like my favorite worship artist, but do not have love, I am just a loud kick drum or cheap crash cymbal.
If I have the gift of creative verbal transitions and understand the mystery and knowledge of chord charts and choir scores, and if I have the faith that can move the emotions of an entire congregation, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give the old sound system to a poor congregation, install the new one all by myself, and then post it on Facebook so all my friends will know, but do not have love, I won’t get any likes.
Love is patient with a congregation that is slow to change,
Love is kind to the tech team.
Love doesn’t envy the size of another church,
It doesn’t brag at the worship pastor’s lunch meeting,
It doesn’t incessantly promote itself on YouTube.
It doesn’t publicly complain about its players or pastor,
It doesn’t use its present ministry just to climb the ladder toward a future ministry
It doesn’t lose its temper when the lead guitarist misses the bridge
or keep track of the times it has happened before.
Love is not happy with worship team spiritual apathy
so it encourages a culture of mutual accountability.
It always protects confidentialities,
always trusts the team members,
always hopes biblical worship is central,
and always rehearses just one more time.
Love never coasts.
But where there are creative verbal transitions, they will cease;
where there are beautiful voices to sing amazing songs, they will be silent;
where there is musical knowledge, it will pass away.
For we kind-of know and can kind-of talk about worship,
but when Perfect Worship occurs, the kind-of will disappear.
When I was a child, I sang childish songs.
When I became a man, I traded childish songs for adult songs…but still just songs.
For now we see hazily, as through the mist of a fog machine. But soon the haze will evaporate and the room will be completely clear.
Now I kind-of know; Then I will fully know, even as I am fully known.
Until that time, until we fully know, we must do three things: Have Faith that God will help us; Hope that we are getting it right; and Love God and each other
As a worship leader, love often seems to be the hardest…but it is also the greatest.
Excellent words, Dr. Manner. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Very good.
I don’t know. I have been in a praise band before. I just like the choir. It is synonymous of the angel choir who sings back and forth to each other, “Holy, Holy, Holy”. I just have a problem with the “praise band” idea. It is good and it is not good idea. I am sure we have the liberty to do this but I really struggle. Choirs have influenced me from my new birth. I like the song, “God’s Choir”.
I’m just offended that I was never asked to sing on our praise team.
That might have required an Imprecatory Psalm adaptation instead of 1 Corinthians 13, Dave.
Wow.
(Not untrue, just wow.)
I’m going to channel my inner rabbi in response to Dave:
“A blessing for our pastor? A blessing for our pastor!! May the Lord bless and keep our pastor…as far from the worship team as possible…”
(Apologies to the screenwriter for Fiddler on the Roof of course…)
Dave 🙁 your calling must not have been musical. Of course I have not heard you. Lime green and preaching fits you best. Lol
so the ‘worship team’ is
the Church choir
(?)
Thanks for the challenge!
“Love is kind to the tech team.”
I like the way he thinks.
Few have any idea the labors behind the scenes and often thankless yet criticized those labors are.
Don’t underestimate our meager attempts at worship. For when we worship in spirit and in truth, we worship in unison with the saints and angels in heaven. It’s a cosmic liturgy to which we join ourselves.