FIXATING, Part 1

Fixation can do damage to your worship ministry.

How and where you put your trust shapes your ministry as a worship leader and as a pastor to your people. Let's look at some common fixations and how they can have negative repercussions.

Over the next week or so, we'll talk about a few of these fixations and how they can frustrate your worship if you're not careful.

HOOKS

What It Looks Like: As worship leaders, we fixate on specific song "hooks." This could be a piano intro, a guitar lead, drum roll, vocal cue, etc. Since a lot of the records we listen to are (for the most part) live, it's very easy to imagine those powerful music cues in a live context like our weekly Sunday stage.

What It Does: Nailing those hooks is really fun and most of them are the absolute best way to transition and build. The trouble starts when your team can't pull it off. Maybe your guitarist didn't get time to practice or your vocalist can't get the timing right. At that point, you've got to be wise. Certainly, you're going to work on it - hammer it out, try it again, loop the section until everybody gets it. Most of the time that works and it's how we grow as musicians. But sometimes it doesn't work and worship leaders who are fixated on that "thing" end up sacrificing valuable practice time and relational credit by pounding on their team to nail it.

What To Do: Nobody is telling you to avoid the hard stuff. But hold it loosely. Find the bigger, greater purpose of the song and use THAT to measure success rather than all the individual sections. I think the best plan is to have some sort of default time in your mind. If you know something's gonna' be a challenge, spend a few minutes before practice to make a fair estimate. ("If that acapella-to-full-band transition, doesn't happen, we'll spend no more than 10 minutes on hammering it out.") Having some sort of baseline for how you use your time can create some good boundaries for your rehearsal.

Worship music has been blessed with some creative writers...utilize their giftings but don't let it paralyze the job you're called to do week in and week out.