When the Worship Leader has been to too many Christian Conference!

It is that time of year again. Wimbledon is on the television and England are scraping unconvincing victories in the football World Cup. Plants are withering under the sun, last minute holiday deals are constantly on the TV and Christian festivals are about to launch into full swing. Now I love a good festival or conference or whatever you wish to call it. A week camping (unfortunately) with thousands of other Christians (fortunately), all full of love for God, each other and for clean showers with hot water (when and if available). However, eventually the week will come to an end, the teaching stop, the tent needs packing up (seriously how did it fit into that small bag?) and the car be severely overloaded (I really shouldn’t have spent so much in the book shop). But don’t worry, you have so many new ideas to take back to your church, to make things even better. Vicars are keen to try out new structures for their services, the prayer team have some crazy idea about marching round the streets of the town wearing tabards and offering a ‘pray as you go’ service and the youth worker is planning a trip to South America so that the locals can share the gospel with her social media obsessed flock. Unfortunately, and inevitably, the Worship Leader has plans too.

You can always tell when the Worship Leader, Musical Director, solo piano player or whatever title you have in your church, has been to a Christian conference. They come back with ideas. It’s not that they don’t have these thoughts for the rest of the year. It’s just they haven’t usually got the time or energy to implement them. Now, having just spent a week relaxing in the porch of their tent, trying to avoid the constant drizzle, with nothing to worry about except whether the ice packs will last another day or how they are going to find the toilet in the middle of the night, they have all the time in the world. In fact, you can pretty much guarantee that they will do some, or probably all, of the following;

Introduce new songs

It doesn’t matter which festival they have been to. Any good worship leader (plus many mediocre ones like me) will have gone to the conference armed with a small pad and pen. You can pick them out in the crowd. Whilst the rest of the venue is full of praise, they are scribbling down the name of the latest song.

For the next 4 weeks you will be learning three new songs at a time, each with a complex verse, chorus, bridge, tag, tag 2, tag 3, bridge 2, verse 3 (not sure what happened to verse 2) and ending, structure. Just when you think you have got the hang of one, it is put on the back burner and yet another new one emerges. Seemingly the only way to get through this is to grit your teeth in the knowledge that their list will eventually run out and when it does, they will go back to singing 10,000 reasons for the 10,000^th time. But at least you know and like that one.

New instruments

Inevitably the band on the main stage at the conference will be a lot louder, a lot bigger and have a lot more instruments. This will simply have given your worship leader ideas. How about a second piano, to give some depth? All they need is to persuade the pastor to forfeit a month’s wages (or two) and spend the money on a new Nord keyboard. It doesn’t matter that you can’t find enough piano players for the rota as is, surely if you buy it God will find you a pianist… or two.

What about a brand new drum kit with screen and all? That will raise people out of their earthly slumber and get them worshipping. If that isn’t possible then you might find a Cajon (the drum kit for people who can’t play the drums) appearing in the service.

Whatever it is, be warned, for the next few weeks there will be a range of different instruments and with it a call for more people to join the worship group. The aim of most Worship Leaders being to have more people on the stage, leading worship, than in the congregation.

Prayer and reflection

On the first Sunday back, the worship leader is likely to ask the piano and flute (no drums or cajon yet) to keep playing whilst they launch into a time of prayer and reflective worship. To begin with this goes down well, giving the congregation time to immerse themselves in the moment. However, by the end, the band have repeated the chorus of Bless God 23 times, the vicar is tapping their watch repeatedly and all but two people in the church have sat down to rest their tired feet. Suddenly there is no need for the carefully planned talk that the vicar had painstakingly written, re-written and prayed over all week. The Worship Leader has stolen their thunder and their time.

Number of songs

The number of songs sung in a service and the length of time given to worship ‘slots’ vary from church to church. However, no matter how long you usually have for such elements of the service you can guarantee that after a conference it will double. Suddenly instead of choosing the regular three songs at the start, the Worship Leader will sneak in another one, or two or even three , with the obligatory additional chorus from a fourth. Suddenly the service has doubled in length and is ¾ worship, with the final quarter being filled by the talk, the prayers and Mr Mullaly alerting you to your chance to join his newly formed Christian Cooking Club – next week is quiche week.

Conclusion

Now it may seem that I am being critical of Worship Leaders. Far from it, they are incredibly important people who often give up what little spare time they have to serve the church. However, and I speak as a Worship Leader myself, we can get a little worship obsessed and never is this more evident than when we have just returned from a Christian conference. After all, we have just witnessed what our church could be like, if only it quadrupled in size overnight, and we simply want to replicate it. So, watch out over the next few weeks… that or book to go on holiday the same Sunday that the worship leader returns. After all it should have settled down by the time you return in the middle of August… that is until next year of course!!!