Music Matters to Pastors Part 5

Music Matters to Pastors Part 5

             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 the senior pastor his or her boss and try to squeeze out of the pastor 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!