Music and Worship Are Not Synonyms: Why I Am Not a Worship Leader

We are blessed to have like-minded, faithful, and gifted believers serving and leading our music and worship ministry at LCBC.  The following article by minister of music Dan Kreider provides a lot of food for thought.  "I lead the music ministry at my church. My role as a musician has several facets. I plan—and arrange, if needed—the music we use. I lead weekly rehearsals for the singers and instrumentalists. Under the guidance of the elders, I set the ideological and philosophical direction of the music ministry as a whole and share that vision with everyone who serves with me. And on Sunday, our weekly preparation culminates in two morning services and one evening service. I lead the music itself, either from the piano or directing from the podium, usually with my voice, and (hopefully) always by modeling the visible exertion of hearty participation. And I lead the congregation through the flow of the planned musical elements, making brief comments or reading Scripture passages that build them up in their faith.

But I’m not a worship leader. Why? Because that’s the wrong title for my role, for two reasons.

1. Music and worship aren’t synonyms.
Worship is a misunderstood term in our contemporary context. At one level, a word means what the collective culture decides it will mean, and definitions can certainly change over time. But it’s a relatively recent trend to refer to music as “worship.” And though the new definition seems fairly universal at this point, its evolution has created a conflict with its previous meaning from Scripture.

What is worship? To answer merely with a simplistic definition such as “ascribing worth” would be an etymological cop-out. One might as well be asked to describe a rainbow in a single word. Here’s a brief distillation of several thoughts that, taken together, should provide enough clarity to address the original statement.

William Temple defines worship this way: “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose” (from Readings in St. John’s Gospel). This is poetic and certainly true, but David Petersen’s definition is even more expressly rooted in Scripture itself: “Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with Him on the terms that He proposes and in the way that He alone makes possible” (from Engaging with God).