Be More Than a Cover Band
There are some seriously good musicians out there. Even in our culture—saturated as it is by generic pop music—there are some stunningly talented, uber-creative, genre-bending musicians on the scene today.
But you may not have many of them on your worship team.
I don’t mean to be negative at all. At least, not in the way it might seem. I’m a worship director, and my team and I are faced with the weekly dilemma of translating recorded worship songs into arrangements for our church’s Sunday worship gathering. Inevitably, the drummer, lead guitarist, or uber-talented vocalist on a certain recording absolutely crushes it. And as we start rehearsal with the recording in mind, we can quickly stumble into frustration when an arrangement doesn’t turn out the way we hoped.
Now listen, we need to strive for excellence in our church’s worship, as we always should in any station of life. Christians are exhorted to “do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). In both the planning and the leading of our worship gatherings, we should help one another grow spiritually and in practical ability on our teams.
But much of what I’m about to say also hinges on the point of how we actually define the kind of excellence that glorifies our God.
WHAT IS ‘EXCELLENCE’?
The short answer about excellence is that Scripture defines it in a way we don’t hear very often from the business world, politics, or many other sectors of the Western church today. God actually values the unseen realities of our inward lives and ministries over any tangible outward results. And he goes even further to redeem the imperfections of the tangible matters as well.
“Pursue excellence, yes. But this pursuit doesn’t always equal tangible results or visible polish.”
Read 2 Corinthians 4 to see exactly what God values and how he works in the lives of his people. We bring the treasure of the Gospel to others in “jars of clay,” by which Paul means us; all power and all beauty are in Christ, not in the weak vessels that proclaim him (2 Cor 4:7). Weakness is intentionally woven into our lives by God and is Christlikeness appearing in a growing Christian.
Pursue excellence, yes. But this pursuit doesn’t always equal tangible results or visible polish. We always bring the glorious Gospel as clay vessels needy for grace. God looks at the condition of our hearts as we work for his glory and is pleased by weak, trusting Christians who love him. This is a Gospel-shaped tension: leaning into our weaknesses and doing our best while knowing that God’s economy works mainly in unseen realities.
HOW TO BE MORE THAN A COVER BAND
So we plan our worship gatherings with this framework in mind. And when our songs don’t sound like the recordings or the church across town has a better band, we don’t lose heart. When we can’t get the complexity we’ve heard elsewhere into our version of a song, we stay encouraged.
Here are three ways we can plan and evaluate our corporate worship according to a more biblical standard and be much more than cover bands for our churches.
1. Let congregational singing be its own beauty
A downside for church musicians is that folks are probably hearing more studio-produced versions of songs week to week than the one time they hear our live versions on Sunday. But don’t let this get you down. Congregational singing is and should be upheld in our churches as its own unique beauty, and simplicity is often the better way toward a singing church.
“Pick songs that serve not just one singer’s vocal range but that encourage and enable the gathered body to sing together.”
Pursue this goal more than anything else in your church music. Pick songs that serve not just one singer’s vocal range but that encourage and enable the gathered body to sing together. Pick keys that are singable by the average church member. And when your church sings together over and over again like this, enabled by God’s grace, they’ll forget about the produced recordings. When gathered, your church will desire and expect keys and arrangements that help them sing as a body.
John Witvliet provides counsel that “While there is a kind of beauty in a carefully-honed studio recording, there is another kind of beauty—an often remarkable and haunting beauty—in the sound of a congregation of mostly unmusical people singing together.”[1] Plan your songs to achieve this kind of remarkable beauty.
2. Embrace diversity
Not having the musicians to duplicate exactly what you hear in a recording is really a freedom. Know the people in your church who are musically gifted and qualified to serve. Create room for them to play the way they naturally play. Learn to help everyone hear the core of a song—the melody in its simplest form—and play through it simply. Then, let your musicians try different variances with chords and dynamics underneath.
“Don’t try to force your people to fit the cookie-cutter shape of what another Christian has done with their gifts.”
The point here is also to sing and play with your team often so that you can mutually learn each other’s strengths. The results of building a song back up from its simplest form, using the advantages of your unique team, will often surprise you. You’ll discover arrangements to hymns you hadn’t thought of on your own, and that I daresay are sometimes much more interesting than the recordings.
God has given your church a unique group of Christians with unique combinations of gifts and skill sets. Create space to find out what these gifts are and let your church members serve the Lord with them. Don’t try to force your people to fit the cookie-cutter shape of what another Christian has done with their gifts.
3. Make more with less
Everything we hear in recorded music or in a live concert is not necessarily helpful in music intended for a congregation. I’ll go a step further to say that too much fancy stuff threatens to obscure the purpose of corporate worship. A congregation should be carried along into real engagement with the truths being sung; you don’t necessarily want everyone noticing a sweet guitar lead or measuring how close your version resembles Hillsong’s.
“Failing to produce a close cover of a worship song is not real failure in God’s economy of grace.”
Consider how the powerful sing-along moments in a live performance concert are often when the band pulls back to let the lead singer accompany the crowd with one guitar or piano. You don’t have to do everything as simply as possible, but it’s a healthy rule-of-thumb to err on the side of simplicity. You may even have to rein in your more talented musicians and singers to simplify or quiet down for the sake of leading well.
A singing congregation is the goal, so serve this goal with all the pieces available to you. Create a sound that invites your church to participate in worship of God through song, and make sure they can hear themselves as they do.
Doing less than the recordings can be wonderfully purposeful and can serve your gathered worship more effectively. Failing to produce a close cover of a worship song is not real failure in God’s economy of grace.
LET’S BE MORE
God has provided a wealth of incredible songs to his church through gifted songwriters and recording artists. And because of the recordings and the ways we can now share music, the best songs written for the church are more accessible than ever in history. And we praise God for all of this.
But with our worship teams, let’s fight the need to simply copy another artist or another church. Be more than a cover band, and have a grander goal for your congregational singing.
[1] John Witvliet, For the Beauty of the Church, (Michigan, Baker, 2010), 48.
Josh Starkey serves as worship director at Grace Church in Simi Valley, CA. He and his wife Jenny have three kids and have been members of their church for over ten years. You can follow him on Twitter.