When I’m on stage leading worship, I try to focus on offering to God the best of my musical abilities. I don’t want to offer a half-heartedly sung song. I want to put everything I have into it and not hold back. It’s my gift to God and it should be the best it can be.
When I’m out in the audience, it can feel like American Idol. It’s big, it’s flashy, it’s showing off. The guitar riffs and the vocal divas can give me headaches.
There’s a fine line between performing and worshipping. When I am up front leading, are people wondering the same thing about me; why am I turning worship into a production?
I believe God wants our best, no matter what our gift may be. Some of us have been given musical gifts and we need to offer them back to God like everyone else. So in singing/playing/leading worship, that’s what we try to do.
Where is that fine line? At what point does our worship turn into a performance, a production? What if my heart is in the right place, but someone in the audience perceives it as a production? What if my “performance” obstructs someone else’s worship? Is that my problem or theirs? Do I tone it down for them, or is it something they need to work on? I don’t want to get in the way of someone’s worship, but I don’t want to give God something half-hearted.
I’ve struggled with this for years. I’ve known musicians who love Jesus with all their heart lead worship. At some point in the worship leading, it shifts to performance, at least in my eyes. As they’re up there lost in the Spirit, I’m lost in the congregation, shifting uncomfortably. When they’re done, people say things like, “Wasn’t that SO spirit filled? What amazing worship!”
The best I can sometimes offer is, “Meh…”
So then I feel like a bad Christian for not getting into the worship that was a little too showy for my taste.
I really have no answers on this one. Take out all the stage lights and fog machines because, honestly, they’re just too much? Go back to organ music because it’s less pretentious? (I went to a classically trained music school… organ music can definitely be pretentious… so that’s not a good answer.) Stick to simple acoustic songs because they’re less showy?
I wish I had a better idea to offer, but this is probably my biggest worship struggle. Anyone else have any good ideas?