What are you doing when you’re not singing or playing?
My role these days is usually as the worship service “producer” at Northview. It’s my job to lead the planning process. It’s also my job to make sure that all of the elements are solid, and that they fit together and flow well.
We work on transitions a lot – we don’t just need great worship music, videos, etc… – the service elements all need to flow well and fit together in a way that makes sense. We also take the visual into account. I’m a musician by background, and I know that one of the weaknesses of my kind is that we tend to focus on the music – only. There’s so much of an emphasis on making it sound great, that we completely ignore what it looks like. We lose focus of the fact that a big part of communicating is visual. And that’s our job. To communicate. To communicate God’s love to His people, and to communicate our thanks back to God.
So back to the visual side of things. Keeping the focus where it should be is critical. All it takes is someone messing around with an effects pedal, or scanning the congregation for friends, or – and I’ve seen it happen fairly regularly – scratching themselves, and you’ve just pulled people’s attention away from the elements that you worked so hard to put together in the first place, or – even more seriously – away from focus on God. Focus on God if it’s a song to God. Focus on the congregation if it’s a song designed to encourage each other in following/serving Him. Between songs, vocalists and band members should be looking at whoever is talking or leading a moment.
More in the days to come on focus..
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