When people read the chapter on Praise and Worship Inc in my book, some may just think I am just against making money through the worship business. So let me clarify, I am NOT against making money in the worship business. If I was, why would I be selling my worship ministry e-book? I should be giving it away free! (and have it valued as much as everything else I’ve given away free…)
My attitude towards the praise and worship business is heavily influenced by Marc “Animal” MacYoung. He wrote this about the Martial Arts business.
“As we said earlier, we're capitalist swine. We do believe in a fair exchange of service or goods for money. And that is where you run into problems with common practices in many commercial martial arts schools. If you are paying for something, then what they are providing had better well be what you are supposedly buying.”
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/MAbusiness.htm
And that has pretty much summed up my attitude towards the worship business.
That means I am totally FOR anything that does work and that does add value to other people’s lives. I unashamedly price my e-book higher than other worship books out on the market, because I know what I teach in my book is of comparable (or greater) value than what is out in the rest of the market. I totally support copyright and royalties to songwriters, because they don’t earn money unless what they wrote ministers to the Body of Christ. And how much they earn is in direct proportion (as far as humanly possible) to the degree they have blessed us.
Read the story behind Laura Klein’s ‘I Love You, Lord’ here at http://www.ccli.co.nz/articles/article.cfm?id=8 It is one of those fantastic songs that you have specially put in effort to mess up. I challenge you to read her story, consider how many people have been blessed by this song, and tell me to my face that she doesn’t deserve to be a millionaire…
Or how about Sondra Corbett Wood’s “I Worship You, Almighty God”? Read the story here at http://www.ccli.co.nz/articles/article.cfm?id=4 How much did she bless the Body of Christ by writing one of the very few ‘in-case-of-emergency-break-glass” songs? What I found touching is the implication that, through the royalties from this song, God provided financially for her even when she lived her life totally away from the Lord.
But this kind of quality isn’t largely what comes out in the praise and worship business. What usually comes out is a lot worse.
For example, when you think about ‘worship training’, what are you expecting? If you sign up for it, what do you REALLY want? A very broad scope overview that encompasses every aspect of your life but doesn’t change any part of it? Or specifics on leading or playing music for worship, whether at small group or congregational level?
Think very carefully about your reply. Because all too often people have entered the worship business arena with the desire to learn the specifics, the details on how to lead or play for worship. Then they are told that worship as a lifestyle encompasses so much more than that (true). Finally, they are given a whole load of stuff that briefly touches on all the spiritual, non-musical aspects of worship, but leaves them still unprepared to lead or play for worship (what they paid for in the first place).
And they feel proud that they have a more sophisticated, ‘in-depth’, deeper understanding of worship than the ones who CAN lead and play for worship. The Americans have this expression called ‘drinking the Kool-aid’…
While we’re on the topic, who is the best person to teach you all the non-musical, deep, spiritual stuff about worship anyway? Wouldn’t it logically be your pastor? You can guess from my e-book that I do not have an elitist view of the Bible (i.e. I do not believe that you have to be a pastor to interpret it correctly), but why pay for training and seminars to teach you what your pastor probably is already yearning to teach you if you ask him/her nicely enough?
Now about the teaching of 'worship' music, I feel bad saying what I have to say, because many of those teaching performance music as worship music sincerely believe that they are teaching worship music. Round about the mid ‘90s, the floodgates of worship chaos (trying to use performance music for worship) were unleashed in
What this means is all the people who came to Christ from the mid ‘90s onwards were brought up on performance music as worship music. That is all they knew, therefore that is what they sincerely teach. You can imagine how difficult it is for them to believe what they knew from the very beginning of their Christian lives is wrong. The thought would probably be totally incomprehensible.
But all the features and criteria for worship music (given in my book) still remain true and applicable, whether or not people believe or accept them. And those criteria mean that it is very much easier to play worship music than performance music. Which means it should NOT take that much time to train a person (even a music newbie) to play worship music.
What DO you need to play worship music anyway? You need to be able to keep a steady beat. As my first guitar teacher once said, think of your grandmother patting a baby to sleep. She doesn’t try any erratic tempos or odd time signatures. She just naturally, instinctively keeps a steady pulse that soothes an infant to sleep. So if your grandmother can do it…
If you want to play the piano for worship, you can be very adequately prepared to play knowing five common chord types. With 12 keys and 3 different finger positions (voicings or inversions) that gives you 180 chords and shapes to know in your right hand.
Many people at this point are screaming at me “Are you nuts, JJ? There’s no way I can memorize and remember 180 chords!” These screaming hysterically to me are the very same people who:
1) type on a computer keyboard that has 26 letters, 10 numerals, and lots of different punctuation marks (while a piano has only 12 different notes repeated over and over again)
2) type (often without looking) on a keyboard that has keys a fraction of the size of a piano key (more precision and accuracy required)
3) type in English, which has a working vocabulary of 2000-3000 words, for which they have memorized the spelling of probably 850 words. These words vary in length from 2 to more than 10 letters (‘complicated’ has 11) and are made up of combinations of 26 different letters. On the piano you are pretty much playing 3 notes in the right hand, 1 note in the left, and they are made up of combinations of only 12 different notes.
So if you can type in English (and pat a baby to sleep), you have what it takes to play the piano for worship.
Or how about the drums? I’ve had a number of people tell me that they could never play the drums for worship, because they couldn’t coordinate all their four limbs the correct way at the same time. These are people who had the confidence to get into a car and drive it (using coordination of the same four limbs) in traffic situations that fluctuate continually.
More importantly, if you mess up playing drums for worship, the worst thing that can happen is that you don’t play the next week. If you mess up driving a car, you AND your loved ones are in deep trouble. These people can still tell me with absolute sincerity that they have no confidence to play drums or take drum lessons.
The whole point of what I share here is that it should not take you that long to be ready to play for worship. I’ve seen people who’ve attended ‘worship’ music classes and practiced diligently for more than a year and still can’t play for worship. When I teach them what’s in the chapter Worship Music 101, they’re like people who sat at the driver’s seat of a car for years, prayed to have the right heart to drive a car to the glory of God, interceded with God about the heart condition of the rest of the people in the car they are driving, and were suddenly told they had to turn the ignition key to get the car to move…
Of course, I am not saying that there is no value in learning performance music. Right now I want to spend more time studying classical piano. Though understanding it has greatly improved my worship music sound (especially when looking at Baroque music) and my harmonizing, it is still very much performance music. I would highly recommend that keyboardists without classical training get at least a few months of training in it, because it is great for your personal growth as a musician.
And I’m seriously looking at voice training. My voice is more than fine for leading worship, though no one is gonna pay me to sing in the near future. But, just for growth’s sake, I’d love to improve my voice so that it can work in a performance setting.
If you are continuing to learn performance music, then recognize you are learning it and remember that worship music is a different skill set. If you are happy learning performance music, great! I’m happy for you! I just don’t want you to pay to learn worship music, get performance music instead, and think that there is something wrong with you because you still can’t play for worship, get it?
In other words, I don’t want you to pay for Japanese lessons, get Chinese lessons instead (but termed as Japanese), and think that you are not called to be a missionary in
Anyway, that’s all for this topic. Stay tuned, my next post will probably be on why I keep talking about 14 years in the music ministry in my promotional materials. It’s actually very important. More next time…
Be blessed, everyone!
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