Don’t play the guitar – play the song. Don’t sing the notes – sing the message. I am a BIG fan of good music – I have spent a good chunk of my life trying to get better at creating it. However, churches are not musical organizations, meaning that the reason for the existence of the church is not to create quality music.
Worst-case scenario, musicians play music AT people. This is “gigging” mentality – ie. music as a job. In your average musical organization [something with at least some heart], you primarily play or sing music FOR people. The object is to entertain. You want to make people happy. In a church, we play/sing music WITH people. The object is to worship [if the song is directly aimed to God] or to inspire [if it’s a song about God]. In either case, it’s joining our voices together – not to make ourselves happy, but to say: “YES, this is true!!”
Hmmm - well, let's see...
I'm a Christian, a husband, a dad, a son, a pastor, a consultant, a musician, a writer, and bits and pieces of a bunch of other things. My work life has followed three main phases - business to teaching to church. I was the Weekend Services Pastor for nine years at Northview Church, an awesome church in the Indianapolis suburbs. I used to work for Willow Creek, another awesome church in the Chicago area. Plus I've written for various magazines and websites, and other freelancy sorts of things... My life mission is to help the church be as excellent as it can be.
Oh yeah - the name's Greg. Greg Wallace. But not the race car driver or the major league pitcher or the British celebrity chef. Just the creative worship guy. Hi.
It's my hope that these ideas, musings, rants, raves, etc... will inspire you. They're just my opinions - but again, I hope that they'll help to inspire you. Because the church really, really needs inspired creative types. If you're a creative type (and most people are, deep-down), ask God for help. Then take any ideas that are useful to you - borrow them, nab them, use them, adapt them - and make them into something greater...
You can head over to my Instagram site for an abundance of shorter posts: creativeworshipideas. If you're looking for consulting - especially on weekend services, team leadership or multi-site strategies - I'd love to help. Just message me here, and I'll be in touch - Greg
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