Episode 18 - Worship (Part 2)

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[Music] welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody this is part two of our conversation about worship we had so many great listener questions and stories that we wanted to expand this podcast so if you haven't heard part one head back to itunes or stitcher or whatever app you use to listen to part one first otherwise welcome to part two of our conversation on worship there were these conferences in texas called passion very evangelical very not where i'm at right now but for the first time i allowed myself to be open to god for the first time i learned that when i worship and where i meet god is not about who is to my left and who is to my right it's about an intimate connection of speaking god's name one time i i got up to sing a song and the first song was like in darkness it was like all dark and then there was like classic worship band style uh like a youth group zone where like a light would like come on me and i'll like spotlight and i'd sing the big note so the first note was be praised it was an old mikey g song called be praised and right when it's like a big note so right when you start off you go be praised and right when i went for it i went and i threw up all over my electric guitar no all over my electric guitar yeah and the piano player threw through a uh a towel at me and i wiped off my guitar and just went for the note again and hit it boom because i keep going bro yeah what yep that's not real oh that's real you know one time michael fell through a stage leading worship battle cry style kept playing guitar too right on his back as his leg was cut open because he knew what the true battle cry was praising the lord jesus christ oh man we speakers don't do that like you know one little problem we're like uh handler handler you're like oh where's my where's my um my armor there's no batteries in this remote we're falling through stages throw it we're throwing up on guitars falling on through stages because we are warriors you don't call me a worship leader you call me a worship warrior let me tell you why i can't get away from from worship um because i like i said this was something for a little while i felt like i was trying to run from a little bit because i had seen so much of the of the you know behind the behind the curtain um but there was something that i missed and really this is kind of at the heart of what brought me back or what kept me within the christian tradition at all after my deconstruction of faith because i started missing i could get poetic about about staying in the church service and thinking very humanistically you know what i mean like i could say how do i forgive my brother and you know treat my family and and love my enemy that's all and just from a humanistic point of view you can deal with that stuff but the actual worship and sacraments the the trying to um connect to some some sort of love some sort of ground of being in a direct way um so sitting there in church not being able to sing along in a way that was meaningful to me not being able to participate in communion in a way that was anything beyond just a metaphor i started missing some of the transcendence that i used to experience from those sort of things the the depth of connection that i would feel to god and to others through some of those more mystical practices and that kind of sent me on the journey back to searching again you know i went on another spiritual retreat read some more that's when i met mike and he gave me those axioms and some language and some way of starting to be able to be engaged in uh the language again without feeling intellectually dishonest and but all of that i'm worship was at the heart of it it was kind of i missed that opening the purposeful opening of myself to a thou if you will there is a thou nature to to god the idea of god the language of god that even if that at that moment especially of destruction even if even if that only could be to the to the physical universe there was something about having a vow even of a personified vowel to be able to talk to to be able to open myself to the the beauty of um on a larger scale than just you know another human being but on sort of like all of us together like this this unfathomable vow that i missed and that's um as i started coming back into being able to use some of that language that's when i finished vapor writing vapor and there's still i've i i guess i'm sort of an addict to that thing that i would call worship which is at this point posture posture to me almost feels a little um passive when i for how i think of worship it's it is a posture it's totally open handedness but you have to open those hands you know like there's a there's there's an element to a degree of effort to me that it costs you something a little bit it's like it's an actual giving up it's an it's an opening of the heart and opening of the mind opening of the hands that you have to do to let go to offer whatever is weighing you whatever is needs to be offered and i still find that act the opening of the hands to be so life-giving and healthy for me even when the thou that we're singing to has all this mysterious language and christian language connected to it that at times i don't know what i think of or if i even believe in some of that stuff or what does it mean we're singing to the triune god what does that mean but if i can just kind of stay open-handed enough to realize this okay this is the language that i've been handed for thou and and i'm part of a tradition i'm part of it's i'm part of a family i'm part of a long story and and passed down series of memes that have been handed and under the name of this jesus christ and for me with my experiences when i come and i use this language and i use it to open my heart to open my hands to to a to a thou and by thou it doesn't have to be a big other i don't think that that lets us have to get rid of our responsibility on earth or you know where it just they take all the responsibility away from us it's it's it can be broader open and more mysterious than that in my experience and so that's why i'm still trying to write music that leads me to that place and leads to others to that place of openness because it's it's a similar experience to when i was a kid and singing about penal substitution or any it was there was something about it at that time i could it was an opening of myself and it was opening of like i'm going to get rid of my guilt and shame i didn't happen to see that a lot of that was kind of reinforcing my guilt and shame um but that opening and trying to let go of my sin let go of my ego let go of uh that which is holding me back and kind of give it over to god even though my language has evolved and my metaphysic has certainly evolved and philosophically and theologically i've changed i still am an addict to that experience of being open and laid bare before god and i want to i want to be part of liturgy and a church experience that makes me feel that i know we've been talking about like not it's not just a feeling or an experience but i don't know there is a part of it that for me is um because i i'm not i have i can have all these grand ideas about how following jesus makes the world a better place but if that doesn't get into my heart if that doesn't get past my prefrontal cortex rationalizing some meta-narrative to be able to philosophically spew onto other people and theoretically make the world a better place if it doesn't make me actually feel differently about my neighbor i don't find much use in it anymore so i i need that i know i need those experiences to get past my philosophical thoughts i needed to get into my heart as a rule i kind of hate being in a large crowd of other christians for some reason it just everybody bothers me and rubs me the wrong way and it's terrible i know but that particular day gunger actually came up and started playing dry bones and from the first notes my husband and i felt like we were taken to a different place both of us connected with god in a way that we hadn't before through music and i think part of it was related to being able to say words that we actually were feeling at the time and not as a typical worship experience say words that we wanted to be feeling the words of this song just really connected us with god and i think communally together as a group you know i always as a worship leader when i was like on staff as a church worship leader for years i would always teach like our worship team and even to the church that worship was never supposed to be just about singing in church that that worship is something that can happen as you sing in church and and but they can worship in their jobs they can do they can anything you know that old uh practicing the presence of brother lawrence practicing the presence of god wrote this little book um about how he used to worship and his primary use way of worshiping god was through these like washing pans um as a monk and that was the worship that he could engage in in a and so i always taught that to people and and we were always really careful um to not call you know i i never refer to the to the music part of the service i don't i don't call that worship um i say the music part and i noticed david said that before i think that's i think our language does matter here because when you separate and you limit worship into this small little world i think it limits what worship can be it would almost be nice for the rest of this podcast to separate music and leading music in a congregational setting and the word worship because even if we even if we start saying like you know it's funny because we grew up michael and i grew up in an evangelical church with a dad as a pastor that any time we said worship automatically the first thing we think of is music and if you're going to go back through church history and say are we going to gather for worship or or how do you worship god i doubt that they think about music as the primary way that they worship god in the first century in the second century in the third century not that it isn't a part of the way that they worship god but our entire focus right now as evangelicals oftentimes when we say like oh do you you know how do you worship what do you do we automatically think of like worship music or singing songs and all those things and some people just don't connect with that but that doesn't mean they're not worshipers and how many people throughout history and denominations and really you know the catholic church and the orthodox church when we say worship how music is a part of their worship but their worship experience is really like much more found in the liturgy through leading them up to the eucharist like that is the ultimate worship experience um so even when we say like things like leading worship it's hard for me now because my view is a bit different than it was when i was growing up as a kid but my view now of worship is much more centered around the eucharist and what the church is there for in a sacramental way and going the sacraments are how i worship and so therefore if i'm a worship leader i think about leading the sacraments what's hard is if i only say worship leader and i'm only talking about it on the music level i feel like for one side of it is i make the music side of things holier than it should be and i take it in a way that not that it can't be a holy moment but i almost over spiritualize it overdo it to where it has to be so accessible and it has to be so you know anyone can do it everyone has to sing everyone has to do this why because this is the way we worship if that's all that music is the only way that you worship then you are gonna you're gonna simplify it so much that those who cannot connect to the music then cannot connect to worship and therefore they think they they can't worship god i guess where i'm at with both worship and church music that hopefully leads to worship um i'm just kind of a pragmatist at this point i like what and and that's kind of protestant of me to say extremely protestant i guess of me to say um because it's kind of a constant experiment for me um but i i asked my question like why why are we doing this and what are we hoping to accomplish so at this point honestly when i go into a typical church service that's singing worship songs church songs um there's there's very little of that that moves me at this point that you know most most that i experience in in kind of a more uh usual protestant or especially evangelical situation you know we're singing these hymns or whatever even even hymns like we call them ancient uh this is one of the critiques that that guy had said in this panel he's like we think we're saying this ancient stuff you're just singing like victorian these little victorian songs from that that make us feel like we're connected to the ancient church and i get the critique i really do but the thing is when i went and i decided that set list um for that chapel i knew that by singing that victorian or whatever at the hymns they come from a very specific place in history and is no more holy than rage against the machine as one of our listeners or one of our yeah one of the questions kind of pointed out like what would you would you ever have rage wrench against the machine but i guess to me like what when i step in to a role as a as a song leader a music leader or a liturgist um in a in a community where i take on the role of the responsibility of deciding what we are going to do with that time together what songs we're going to sing what prayers we're going to pray whatever it is it's a very pastoral and prophetic um position within the community and it's up to me it's a servant position as well it's it's no longer it's not about my personal artistic expression at that moment it's not about what songs are my favorite songs to experience it's not my time to get filled up and inspired and encouraged it's my time to serve the community and i see that role when i step onto a stage in a church which the fact there are stages says something about the most of the churches that i have been a part of usually um that which is not we we got rid of stages when we started our own church by the way we just kind of went into a circle but anyway when i step into that role i'm thinking who are we who are we in this room what are we trying to accomplish and what can best help us get there and so for some communities yeah maybe singer songwriter having a singer songwriter get up and sing about heartbreak is going to accomplish the liturgical purpose that they're hoping for for me personally i don't know why i wouldn't just go have a drink with you at a bar and listen to the singer songwriter in the bar or at a club or like i think it might be better a lot of times like it seems like a crappier version when i've when i've seen churches trying to do like just popular stuff or whatever a lot of times it just ends up being like a worse version of the real thing and just a little awkward because everybody's in these totally different aesthetic that's not built for that kind of music or that kind of experience that's one of the things that i wanted to say the other panel guys like i get it i get that you're not into like singing to some big other you don't believe in any kind of sky god neither do i um but why why are you here you know like what are you doing in the room um and i later i thought the example of uh emily is my little daughter amelie's for and she she loves to dress like a princess and she likes to have princess parties and uh if i'm gonna go be a part of the princess party you know i don't believe in the sort of princess mythological constructs that she has i mean she believed we had just had breakfast this morning and she's like but she was saying she didn't believe in god and we were having a good laugh at that she's like but i believe in elsa and elsa is real right anyway uh i mean there's a lot of evidence that elsa is real in her defense there is she can see her um there yeah there's there's a lot of experience that she has with with elsa it exists not only in her mind and in her community but she sees she watches her on tv you know she listens to her music um anyway so but if i'm gonna go to the princess party um i could either if i'm gonna be true to my ideas of of what princess who it is i could either um cross my arms and be cynical and kind of sit in the corner and scoff at what's happening at the princess party and how it's just so unenlightened to think like that or i could go ahead and get a little poetic with it and just enjoy it and it's going to speak different things to amelie than it is to me um so i'm kind of that's that's where i'm kind of like yeah okay so could i chime in there so the way the way that you could enjoy the princess party is because there's something where you value that if you can play imagination like the the way that you imagine things helps give you a sense of wonder and a sense of um a new a child's view on the world which makes you appreciate the world in a different way and i think when you say what is the point of music specifically within the context of church music i think that anytime we do church music what are we why are we doing this and what are we trying to accomplish i think all leads to the christian imagination and so when you talk about the christian imagination and you say someone that's leading the music or you said pastoring them through the liturgy or prophetically speaking through music whatever language you want to give um christian imagination can then lead us to a place of worship and of wonder and of beauty and of awe of the divine and of the more common which for me this is more theology of like what we sing about but i i wrote a song years ago for our church where i tried to write a song that um tried to encompass like the entire narrative of god and it was called our god alone so it starts off with god as creator and the verses hit creation the next set of verses uh hit the idea of jesus and death and resurrection and the third verse hits the idea of new creation and a new world so these like christian themes and even though i was trying to inspire the christian imagination it was interesting because the chorus was we will worship we will worship our god alone our god alone and i was with a friend that does not come from a christian background and i was trying to sing our god alone in a very inclusive way of like our god like all of humanity's god but when he heard it he heard it as our god was something very exclusive like ours mine versus yours so anytime you think like sing like a song like how great is our god sing with me or our god is an awesome god you know a lot of songs are like oh these are great songs it tells about how awesome jesus yeah yeah our god is great exactly some of these uh these lyrics that we sing in this theology even though it can come from a good spot end up really not inspiring the christian imagination as in the imagination of like when jesus always is telling the people that seem like they're out he's saying they're closer to god than they realize and always to the people who think they're the insiders they're farther away from god than they realize and even though we're trying to inspire the christian imagination if if all i'm doing is singing about how awesome this sky god is or how great my god is sometimes it can be very unchristian because it can feel very exclusive it feels very all of these themes that are oftentimes not like christ um and so i had to i mean it's funny how often times like people ask us to sing this song that's a song that we wrote michael i'm sure you have many songs that you wrote in the past that you don't do anymore i.e friend of god or or any other song that you wrote that you're maybe like i don't sing that much anymore um not that like i enjoy when people like them but when i sing that now literally i see my friend that's flesh and blood standing in front of me feeling like he's excluded from the party feeling like he's he's excluded from worshiping the divine and so i try to think how can our songs when putting together a liturgy how can our music inspire the christian imagination now it does not say how can our music like how does this form the entire worship thing no our music is a part of the liturgy which is a part of the whole forming of worship but for me like there's a simple rule that we say for like choosing songs which is we gather to tell receive and join in the story of the triune god which means when i gather to tell the story of god it's not a story that i make up i am telling the story i'm just like i'm doing this i gather to receive the story of the triune god which like oftentimes within evangelical sets we think that we always have to have people like get up stand up with me clap your hands sing along like in new york when people come on sunday morning they a lot a lot of times come and they are tired because they work their butts off all week and then to come up and be like okay everyone stand up let's do this let's do this it can feel like oh you're just taking it out of me again and so for me to have moments where it's like we can create music where people can actually sit down and receive and then also have have music that people can join the story of the triune god so every time we take the eucharist we tell the story of god we receive that story eucharist isn't something that we do it's something that we receive and then lastly we join in that story we become the eucharist so for our music is the music supporting that idea of christian thought of is it is on one level we should be telling the story of god creator but when we tell the story of god creator does it have to be a literal seven day creation if our theology isn't that well no so how can we get songwriters to inspire the christian imagination through different ways of telling about scientifically you know talking about creation and that's one reason michael why i've loved you know there are songs that i do at our church where you talk about like the song like vapor like our church sings that out like nobody's business and it's got so many themes in there that aren't you know that aren't so cut and dry but more poetic and yet are telling the story of god as creator and telling the story of god as king and telling those stories so for me it's like this music that we do it should inspire the christian imagination the problem though is all of us have different imaginations about how we look at christ in that [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess 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off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists there's a band called loud harp and in one of their songs um it's based on psalm 73 i think where it says my flesh and my heart may fail whom have i been you and these lyrics just hit me and i was like that is the most stupid stupid stupid ridiculous thing for the psalmist to write like my body the thing that gives me life may fail but humor if i but you i've got nothing else but you god i was like god i don't know you in that way and that really kick-started a journey of me thinking like what is it to worship what is it to not just sing words but to to live them out i love one of the things that your pastor betsy said mike she was talking about how you hold on at your church you hold on to the language that you've been handed through the creeds and stuff but everybody kind of interprets those individually in different ways you know different denominations everybody thinks different things metaphysically philosophically theologically about all these words but that was why my biggest critique i think and still my biggest critique of sort of the radical theology is um why call yourself christian anymore like i i have no problem with a group of people getting together and saying nothing about god or christ or any sort of religious anything there's great do whatever you're going to do to make your life you know more spiritually rich whatever you're after but why sit in the christian room if we lose the language what do we have i get losing the metaphysic but if you can't sing about god or sing to god and if you're in that place maybe you should just take a break from christianity if it's not working keep following true keep following good keep tr following beautiful but what we don't need is to turn the worship space into a cynical space i think and so i i want i'm constantly looking for things that will open us to that posture that mike mike is talking about and this is something that i ran from i feel like for a couple years recently i i really had seen so much of the facade of worship as done in sort of the mainstream christianity in western culture you know i've been behind the stage enough times to see the games to see the production to see the manipulation we hear a lot of times from people and there are questions about the you know how performance relates and how production elements relate to this and and people feel like they're just manipulating people's emotions and you turn up you know you you the sound person eq's it better and all of a sudden all the hands lift in the audience and and you kind of see oh these people are just responding emotionally that this is not you know what did this is the spirit of god really related entirely to to the eq on the board um is the spirit of god just limited to that or is it just people getting emotional as i as i do something here and i don't actually see a problem with that i actually don't see a problem with the emotional side of what we do with church music because again it goes back to that place of what whatever we can do to create openness and within the christian setting to use this language to use the story that we've been handed to see what what happens as we experiment with it as we as we put these words in people's mouths and we sing them together even if we don't even know what that means or can't believe it on some days either the christian story has some some use or it doesn't and if uh if if you're gonna try to let it have some use don't be cynical about it that's that's kind of where i'm at sometimes you have to be cynical i think for some people where they had an image of god and knowledge of god that was real and true and powerful and the puzzle pieces all lined up beautifully into this mosaic and then they looked closer and they realized those puzzle pieces did not fit and they felt like it was a lie and they go upon a quest to figure out how the pieces really fit together because that image that totality of all the mystery pointing to something was meaningful to them and so i think when you look at radical theology when you look at the the kind of deconstructive process i think for many people that's an essential part of their journey of faith now camping out in cynicism living in cynicism is not healthy but i could not approach god the way i do now if i didn't have that journey through doubt through deconstruction and yes even through cynicism to get to the point now where i realized that although maybe my you know my image but the the construct i had before was wrong what the construct was pointing towards was beautiful and useful and vital and true and so i you know i just look at it like it's it's a thing some people have to go through and i'm happy to take a few steps with them because i've been there oh yeah i i certainly didn't mean to say deconstruction doubt questions or even cynicism on that level is bad but i i'm talking to myself as much as anybody uh because i'm you know i still get have gigs uh sometimes where where i'm placed in in scenarios that i'm totally not in my zone uh well i don't believe any of these things these people are saying um and it's so easy for me to just kind of like cross my arms and get jaded and harden my heart and that's the kind of like landing in that place where your heart is closing off try to get out of the room rather than and then that happening is yeah i totally agree so i guess if you're gonna be a community that's based around the idea of like the eucharist like why do we meet on sunday mornings for a worship gathering [Music] if your theology is we gather so that we can listen to this sermon so that we can all agree or we can sing these songs and then listen to this sermon so that we can all have a uniform mind about the way that we think about god then yes i would not i would not stay in that context but if you're in any church that believes in like the eucharist and what that is for when you come to the table and the themes of the eucharist of the table of forgiveness the table of a broken god broken for the world god's love poured out into the world even if you're not a christian those themes of like like let's imagine that i'm really jaded by those thoughts if i'm like okay i'm a part of a community where every sunday i'm examining the way that i treat my best friend that i treat my kids that i treat my spouse or i can find something beautiful in that and the same idea with the idea of grace and these things so the idea of that is like the table itself through the liturgy it's given you all of these ideas that are based around grace and love and hope now if if you're a part of a community that cannot like see that because the only reason that you go to the community is to sing songs about how great your god is and you have you're disagreeing about the way that you don't even know if there is a god or whatever that is then yes i can see your point of like why would you still be a part of this system and this thing but i don't look at church especially within my own community and i realize i'm biased but within my own community i no longer go to church for me for just like getting you know there's there's something where it's like people are going to listen to this podcast there are a lot of church podcasts where it's like if you want to hear a good sermon you can hear any sermon that you want anywhere in america by downloading that you can do it by yourself and it's your own form of worship or you can listen to music and be like oh i hate church music why i like to put on a freaking radiohead and i love to to listen to ray and just be by myself or maybe it's all j whatever it is you're sitting there and you're having your own personal worship experience the only thing that you can't do by yourself as far as the christian narrative goes is well you can't take the eucharist by yourself it's through a community and really confession isn't to be done by yourself in those things so when you think about like your forms of worship you don't go to the church on sunday morning for you just you personally you're going for a bigger thing that is gonna form you but it happens on a universal level and then followed by the individual it takes a long time for you to be formed through the liturgy or through going to church or through the practice of being a part of a community and when i'm a part of a community i'm not a part of it just because i go i just believe everything that he says it's like no i'm a part of it on the christian narrative at least is because these are my family members and even if my family members are crazy there's never a my whole life there's never been a time where i'm like oh i just believe everything that my dad says or believe everything that robbie g says or anything that mikey g says it's like no but because of the posture of love that i have towards these people somehow when they told me things that i disagreed with i saw that over time it really shaped me even to being more open to the world to where now a lot of times i do agree with a ton of stuff that robbie g would say or mikey g or my dad or whatever that is so for me right now and this is like a very broad brush thing the reason why i would call myself a christian and like i follow jesus christ in the ways and teachings of jesus christ is not because it makes sense to me in fact in my life right now christian theology oftentimes doesn't make any sense and it really rubs me wrong and yet i find that the more that i look at jesus when i think about god becoming flesh and the idea of humility and posture towards creation and the posture of god and the posture of jesus and how i view the other how i view humanity when i look at jesus i see what it fully means to be human and this way that like when i look at jesus and i think of like think of possibilities of peace and think of possibilities of like what it means for humanity to how we relate to one another i find the ways of jesus to be truth and to bring life actual life and i i just feel like especially for us right now our church is not based around everyone in new york city you come to our church because we all believe the exact same thing it's like no that's that's not why we all come we come as hungry beggars and people that are broken and we come ready to eat we're just hungry and the thing that we are eating is that idea of jesus christ and jesus christ everything that jesus is about is going to directly impact the way that i view the world and view humanity i have really i don't know like transcending moments when i feel like it's suddenly a lot more intimate it's not just me singing to god it's god singing back i know that sounds kind of silly but those are my my powerful worship experiences i mean music i think is one of the most powerful ways of getting into the heart i think that's why we all sing at church and why we all sing happy birthday and why we all do anything with music culturally music has this way of of getting past the prefrontal cortex i experience that i don't happen to experience it very often with church music as as i hear it right now i very easily experience it by going to a you know a rachmaninoff symphony and listen to an orchestra play a beautiful piece of romantic music or something like that's an easy place for me to like i'm all of a sudden in this transcendent beautiful open space of worship you could call it that's easy within church as we practice it i think it's theoretically possible and i have experienced it and i occasionally still experience it i just think we need more work that does it for certain kinds of people because there's not that much work that i experience that is that uses christian language that does it for me but it's but sometimes it does so i would say worship songwriters church songwriters out there look at what you believe is it good you're forming people's thoughts you're forming people's views of god we need better stuff about the cross we need more enriching liturgical material artistically that brings us into a broader ever expanding view of god that connects us to our enemies connects us to our neighbors not that isolates us and walls us off as some elite people that have our own little idol that we elevate above all the other idols look at what you're writing and we have to be a little subversive about it put in little you know little turns even with the hymns so those are kind of the things i as a worship leader i just can't deal with i'm not going to sing some things and the three things that i'm not going to sing i'm not going to sing that that god is angry at you so he had to kill his kid i'm not going to sing that kind of stuff i'm not going to sing um overly escapist stuff you know like i just can't wait to get out of here sort of like i will ch on some of those hymns that to you know take me home i would say make his home or something like that and then thirdly that it's not that god doesn't become this small object that i'm comparing him to other other objects as though he's just because i feel like what that does is exclusivity and uh actually shrinks god so i think those are challenges uh to extend to those that write and and and program worship spaces get that stuff out it's unhealthy so here's here's a question if a lot of the ways that we're talking about music still are having to do with music inspiring us and the way that it inspires us is usually through beauty the hard thing is for a lot of listeners right now probably much like many of them especially if they're in like a rural part of the country or at a smaller church whatever it is they might not have music that is like very beautiful at all the point of the music is not to be beautiful it's to get everyone involved then do you see music inspiring in a different way or is it just frustrating or like michael and science mike you've probably been there where you get in there like a church and the music is just terrible yeah to me that's one of the most beautiful things about corporate worship there's hardly anything as moving as hearing a heartfelt awful voice to me somebody singing behind me you know but they're in it i love that so much i love that communal like we're here singing together and giving it our all and it sounds so bad there's something that is beautiful about that to me that there is this we together are pouring out our hearts and that's messy and that's ugly and listen how bad that sound we can laugh at ourselves i'm not i have no problem with that i don't need every church service to be a rachmaninoff piece right so michael so let's like name the tension then because i am the exact same way with you and i feel that coming from an evangelical background i always say when i'm leading worship and when i'm actually like leading the music or whatever we want to say pastoring being a prophet music prophet um whenever i'm doing this and what are the expectations because there are times where you're an event like there's probably some worship leaders listening right now where like in theory the pastor really loves really loves it when um everyone is involved and there's a sense of community and there's this like beautiful part of it um messiness to it and yet so many people feel like their bosses being like uh that's great don't let her mike be on and uh you need to sound better you need to sound like this you need to you need to have this like this certain sound a certain form of like oh that doesn't sound good and so a lot of people like like the ted are they they like the idea of like oh man this is gonna be so community but they don't live in that reality like they don't work in that reality what would you say to those that like are forced with they might work at a mega church or even not a mega church but there's this expectation for a certain sound i say strive for for communal experience with whatever context you're in i mean if you're not trying for a communal experience why are you gathering together um and i think that speaks to some of the production questions that we've gotten i think there tends to be this desire to put on a good show because it attracts a crowd and that's a lot of the bigger churches i think there's kind of this mentality that you up the excellence enough where people come and they want to watch this show every week and they wouldn't call it a show that you know you just want to put it on with excellence and give them musical excellence and something people can enjoy and not be distracted by how how poor the music is and i get part of that like because it is distracting i don't want to hear a person with a microphone sound bad i like if you put a mic in your hand you should sound good you should be amplifying it because it sounds better um because it's more it helps us all sing louder and more you know well can i can i give like an alternative because i 100 agree with everything you've said but let me give you like an alternative maybe view of that so i i would say like within my church context i 100 agree that worship should be corporate but that's where the reason why i use liturgy is because i wanted to be corporate but for music the same way that i wouldn't just let uh you know you don't um you don't just have anyone go up and speak a sermon why because you could and we could have like oh every week we're just gonna have anyone who wants to get up and share can yeah that's fine but there's something to like someone has really prepared and done something put in the work to be able to teach this in a way that is well thought through and all of the other things there's something about music where it's like i don't have the urge in new york to just be like anyone who wants to come play music everyone come through this no because the point of our music is not community the point of our music is to inspire the christian imagination to be able to worship as a community and so therefore because of that there are going to be times where it's like i am okay with non-christians and christians and people that are great at music being able to do something beautiful that all is pointing us towards god or the or you know the idea of of god and these bigger truths um to then be able to go okay now how am i inviting people into this story all throughout and it doesn't mean that you if if the only way i do worship is music then yes i would be like well then you should totally have an atmosphere where anyone can play but for our situation it's kind of like i i'm i want to have certain things where in the same way that the church has commissioned artists before to paint these beautiful things you don't just go hey random joe schmoe you wanted to paint this wall with your own piece of art it's like no there's something about like we're letting the artist do this and really create and it's making beautiful art for the church i guess for me for worship music is i long for more art and then from there having times where i can pastor and go every week i know they're always going to sing and this is where i bring this in the liturgy every week we always sing the doxology together we always sing a very similar to confession we always sing a very similar um prayers the people like chant where we go lord have mercy christ have mercy every week and there's familiarity and there's something to it where they can sing i don't pick a key where they can't sing there are intentional moments where i'm like this is a congregational song where i want everyone to sing as loud as possible i'll bring in hymns for the same reason but then i also have in intentional space that's like they're i'm not interested in everyone having to be able to sing this song or having everyone have to be able to play this type of music in fact as if it's more restricting in fact i can open up a whole new door of freedom for art and for the imagination and so that's for for me anytime i talk to like a worship leader that's like down on this like idea of like should it be like artistic or does it have to be fully congregational or what does it have to be part of the hard rub of this is just like you said if if i have a mega church like i'm gonna say bethel if i have bethel and the whole idea of bethel is like this experience and it's a large group and everybody's singing at the top of their lungs and there's almost like this like youtube feeling or or a big feeling of like a rock concert and then i try to do that exact same music in a tiny little venue it's like david burns style it's like we all create music for a specific venue and if that's a different venue you can ruin everything an awesome jazz band would sound terrible in a huge arena and so it's like i i feel like if we only have this one type of sound for worship music and the only way that we're creating is that we're just recreating a certain sound for a certain community then the expectations are always going to fall on their face because i'm going to try to bring in like a screaming electric guitar for my little tiny baptist church that has a terrible amp and so it's just the guitar is going to sound terrible and people are going to be uninspired and like why doesn't it sound like this why doesn't it do this because i'm not actually creating for my space or for my community all that i'm doing is trying to replicate something else and i'm never going to be able to replicate replicate that in the way that really inspires the imagination we use these tools whether that's a piece of congregational singing or music or musical instrument all those are as tools towards an end a liturgical end whatever we're intending and i don't i think what we need to think through as people that are making decisions on what sort of what we do in those church spaces we need to be more intentional about what sort of tools we're using like why are we doing it and then use the sharpest tools that you can i'm all about uh excellence and so far like sharpen the tools if you're going to use like instrumental music to try to move you know like uh that one of the guys on that worship panel had at his church had used a string quartet in his service recently and they just played a piece of cigaros piece and they used this just you know whatever mainstream band their music to to facilitate a liturgical moment and i think that's amazing but just make it good like that doesn't mean any church should just try to assemble anybody that plays violin or cello or viola and just say okay play siguros and that's going to be effective a lot of churches probably don't need fancy production they don't need smoke machines you know what i mean but if there's a context that you're trying to accomplish a specific liturgical purpose for instance maybe you know i know there are more like secret sensitive churches that will just do straight mainstream pop top 40 songs in the middle of their services for illustration purposes or whatever for the sermon i actually don't have a problem with that you're gonna do a you know we went to this one church where they they did an eminem song and it was to illustrate one of the points of their sermon if you're gonna do it do it well you know what i mean so if you get doing an m m song and somebody's rapping and somebody's like going lights and smoke and whatever can actually totally enhance the feeling of whatever you're trying to accomplish with that so i don't i don't think there are any like boundaries as to what sort of production elements what sort of musical elements what sort of excellence elements um there should be or should not be in church or even or even what we're singing about or what we're doing i think there's so much room for experimentation here just be intentional because if you don't know why you're doing it you're just going to confuse people i just think what you're going to do know why you're going to do it and then do it the best you can so as we speak about the topic of worship if you'd like to see the materials that we have actually produced for worship that we never tell you about you can go to liturgists.com and click the button that says the liturgies up top and you can see we've produced several self-contained movements there that take you through different ideas and different explorations of who god is and what that means to us of course we'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode so go to the liturgist.com podcast you can leave a comment there we actually look at them read them and and respond you can also interact at facebook.com solidus or on twitter at the liturgists thanks for listening to the program and we'd love to uh hear your responses i'm science mike i'm michael gunger i'm david gunger thanks for listening [Music] everybody you