Worship Hot Takes – Part 1

I Can’t Believe It’s Worship is starting a new series today, called “Worship Hot Takes“.

After a pretty esoteric and theologically deep study of the Tabernacle (you can listen to my 4-part Equip course here), Lester Sim and I decided to do some episodes which were (perhaps) less intellectually rigorous.

So Lester S found some hot button worship topics and over the next several episodes, we will give our views on them. It’s pretty unscripted and raw (and maybe our perspectives might be wrong) but one thing is for sure – we are bringing our combined several decades of worship ministry experience to bear on the issues.

The twenty statements we set out to address are:

1. If the congregation can’t sing it, it’s a bad worship song – no matter how good the song is.
2. Worship leaders should stop introducing so many new songs.
3. It doesn’t matter who wrote the song. If the lyrics are Biblical, sing it!
4. A worship leader who is an excellent musician but a mediocre pastor is not an excellent worship leader.
5. The worship industry has too much influence over what the local church sings.
6. Worship teams should deliberately sound less like the original recording.
7. If your congregation isn’t singing, your worship team is failing.
8. Some worship services are fundamentally Christian concerts with a sermon attached.
9. Worship leaders shouldn’t be celebrities.
10. You don’t need to be a great singer to be a great worship leader.
11. A worship leader should be chosen for character before musical ability – even if it noticeably lowers the musical quality.
12. Modern worship songs are making Christians theologically shallow.
13. Emotional manipulation in worship is real – and worship leaders sometimes do it without realising.
14. Worship teams rehearse the music too much and worship too little.
15. Worship leaders talk too much between songs.
16. A perfectly executed worship set can be worse than a messy one.
17. Worship leaders shouldn’t choose songs because they personally love them.
18. The congregation’s favourite worship song may be exactly the song you should retire.
19. Worship ministry has become too obsessed with young people.
20. If your ministry could exist almost unchanged without the local church, something has gone wrong.

Recording these episodes was fun because we didn’t prepare beforehand and which statements were addressed depended entirely on three random rolls of a 20-sided die.

The three statements we addressed on this first episode are bolded above.

I especially resonated with the thought that you don’t need to be a great singer to a great worship leader. In fact, I didn’t realise how much I needed to improve on my singing until COVID forced us to livestream our church services. For the first time, I could hear how terrible I sounded! And I had already been leading worship for more than 20 years. There’s definitely much more to worship leading than singing well, but singing well is an important part of the discipline too.

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Or click below 🙂