Music Matters to Pastors-Part 4

Music Matters to Pastors Part 4
            It is amazing to me that although pastors are well aware of church music’s capability to cause complete chaos in the church community; many senior pastors ignore pastoring the music minister and the volunteer music staff.  Many pastors that I have worked with failed to even have prayer with the musicians before, during or after the worship or evangelistic service.  This blatant ignoring of the church music ministry staff sends the clear message that church music doesn’t matter or at least that it doesn’t matter to the senior pastor. Any part of the church’s ministry that doesn’t warrant prayer is certainly not very important.
            There are many philosophical principles that surround the use of music in the Church. Is church music only a “getting started” task or a vehicle used to pick up the offering?  Does the effectual fervent musicing of a righteous man or woman avail much?  It is my belief that Spirit led musicing can and should be efficacious in the 21st century church.  Music ministry can be a very effective vehicle for the Word of God to ride into the hearts of the worshiping body.  Music can and should be a means of preparing people’s hearts in the worship or evangelistic service.

             Another philosophical issue it that of whether church music should be an end in itself, or whether it should be a concomitant of preaching of the Word of God.  Sometimes a minister of music and the pastor thinks of a song service and a preaching service as two separate entities.  In my opinion two distinct things are not happening on Sunday morning or at least there shouldn’t be two distinct things happening in the worship service.  It is useless to say that a church service is unified merely because the musicians sing and play about God and the pastor preaches about God.

             Philosophically, what should be happening is a worship service.  The pastor should work with the minister of music in developing a direction for that service.  So, what is needed is “songs for the service” rather than a “song service”.  The pastor must take the initiative to communicate directly with the worship leader.  It is certainly not the responsibility of the minister of music to corner his boss and try to squeeze out of him or her what the intended tenor of an upcoming church service is.

            I believe that it is a mistake for a pastor to teach the music staff that everyone should pray and let the Lord lead by giving separate esoteric direction to everyone who will be participating in the upcoming worship service.  Prayer is, of course, necessary but we should never ask the Lord to do for us what we are capable of doing for ourselves.  Never has communication capabilities been as available as they are in this century.  Almost everyone has available to them a cell phone and or an email account.  So we are left, in most cases, totally without communication excuse!