Spirit Led Musicing Can Be Efficacious-part 2

 

Spirit Led Musicing Can  Be Efficacious-part 2

           The larger church has a regular music staff including a minister of music, pianist, organist, keyboards, and instrumentalists.  These professional musicians need mentoring and personal attention of the pastor.  The church musicians of a small congregation, who are most often volunteers, need even more pastoral attention.  They need musical and spiritual mentoring.  If a pastor is going to mentor these volunteer amateur church musicians, he is going to need to know more about music than the names of the lines and spaces.  Pastors of a small church will find that their two to four hours of music taken in Bible College or Seminary will grow thin under such conditions.

          A regular part of a pastors “lifelong learning” and continuing education should include continued training in music and music philosophy.  Understanding problems of developing and administering a Christocentric biblically based music philosophy must be a preferred claim of the pastor’s continuing education.  Churches should support Bible Colleges and Seminaries that provide an opportunity for continuing education in church music for their pastor.  Pastors must take a hands on approach to church music.  This does not mean destroying all initiative of the novice church musicians who give selflessly of their time and energies.  Many pastors who are strong leaders make the deadly mistake of choosing all the music for the worship and evangelistic services.  This is demeaning to a church musician.  Although it may be easier to pick all the selections and push the musicians around like they were pawns on a chessboard, it is the wrong decision to make.

          This style of leadership is not “pastoring” or “mentoring” but rather the work of dictator.  Pastors with strong personalities often treat professional church musicians the same way they do novices.  Rather than defining exact style and sequence of worship they desire they become silently frustrated with what is happening in the worship and evangelistic services and blame most of the problems on the musicians and the music.