What is the purpose of a worship band?

Music is a big part of most people’s lives; even the non-musical recognize tunes and jingles from commercials, and it’s rare for someone to never voluntarily listen to music in any format. Music is also central to a church service. Many churches call their services “worship services”, and many people equate worship to singing and making music.

I believe worship is much more than just music, but that’s a separate discussion. Right now, I want to consider the purpose of music in worship.

Music has power. There’s no arguing that music can set your mood: slow classical pieces can be really relaxing, hard, fast metal can be depressing or energizing, and bright, energetic music in a major key can make you feel happy and positive. Music can create an emotional mood that can have a dramatic impact on how something can be perceived. In a worship band, this can be both fantastic and awful.

My church has had some meetings over the last few months with all involved in worship to figure out our direction for this year, and the big question that we asked was, “as worship leaders, what is the ‘win’ for us?” In other words, how do we know when we’ve succeeded? The two suggestions we focused on were engaged worshippers and removing obstacles keeping people from worshipping and meeting with God. While these are both good ideas in the right direction, I’m not convinced they’re the full picture, the reason being that they tend to see music as an standalone activity and not as part of a larger service.

What is the goal of the Christian life? Most people would suggest that it’s to be a disciple of Jesus and to make other disciples. In the words of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship motto, “to know Christ and make him known”. Church becomes no more than a social gathering if it doesn’t contribute towards this goal. Music should also be measured by its contribution towards this goal. Does music help people meet with God? Of course, but it can also be misleading; I believe there are times when people have a high experience because of the music itself and not because they’ve met with God or learned some new truth. That doesn’t mean that music isn’t important or that making musical perfection one of the goals is wrong: Psalm 33:3 says to “play skillfully”. The ultimate question though that I believe will be asked of me as a worship musician is how my playing was used to help make disciples, and I believe that there’s more to that than a real or perceived/fake emotional experience of meeting God through music.

In a church service, what is the focus? For most people, probably the music: it’s the most memorable (whether done well or poorly). I’d like to suggest that this misses the point for two reasons. One is that I think the real core of a service is the sermon. Not all sermons or speakers are good, but the sermon contains not only the truth of God present in music but also explains and teaches that truth for the purpose of understanding and applying it to our lives. If I walk away with something to take out of a service, it should be a truth that changes my life, not the fact that I’m excited and energized because the service closed with a song like “My Redeemer Lives”.

The problem with emotional highs is that they’re often not achievable in the real world. The extreme example is working at a summer camp. You spend so much time in a Christian-friendly environment, studying the Bible, worshipping, praying, and serving with other staff members, but things are very different when you go home and recognize the world is not like that. If your only focus at camp was experiencing God in special ways, you’ll be invariably disappointed when the other 10 months of your year aren’t spent in a Christian bubble. If your focus was on deepening a relationship with God and learning more about Him, you’ll leave camp with something much more lasting.

So how does music fit in a service? What is its real purpose? Well, I don’t suggest that emotional experiences are a bad thing. My church has a monthly worship night with a band that’s much more polished than our usual Sunday morning gathering, and other than the headache-inducing volume, I think these nights are a great thing. I think that having good worship through music during a service is a good thing. It’s just not all there is, both to worship (giving is a form of worship, acknowledging Jesus’ lordship through becoming a disciple at the feet of the pastor is a form of worship, seeking to learn more about our God is a form of worship), or to the service.

What should music in church be then? A part of the big picture. It should certainly enable people to meet with God and experience him in new ways, to discover new truths, both through the singing and the speaking of the worship leader between songs. If lives are not changed in a service though, worship has missed the mark. If God’s truth is not revealed, if music is the focus of the service, it has missed the mark. If the only thing my playing does is create emotional highs, I might as well join a secular band and play outside church, because I’ll be making as much difference to the kingdom that way.