Spotlight on Competence

The average church member has no clue what goes into preparing for weekly worship services. They come expecting that everything will work, there will be no mistakes, everything looks nice and clean and, we hope, that people will experience God. These members may not say a word when everything is working, but they will complain when one area is weak. Many church members want their worship services to look and sound professional.

Knowing the importance of making everything as close to perfect as possible, the behind-the-scenes teams work extremely hard to get everything right: musicians practice long hours to learn and feel confident with the music, media teams arrive well before most people in order to check and prepare equipment, etc. This attention to detail makes the difference between a good worship service and a distracting one. This is not a problem for most artistic people since they tend to be perfectionists.

The path to excellence is often one of the biggest problems in worship ministries. We choral directors demand that rhythms, pitch, dynamics, etc. are perfect. Pianists want the touch of the piano to be just right and the tuning to be crisp, yet warm. We singers and instrumentalists want our mics and monitors to be adjusted just so because we need to hear everything to be able to do our best. When non-artistic people see or hear how picky we are, they immediately think we are acting like prima donnas. If we are honest with ourselves, we would admit that at sometimes we do act the part.

I have known some people who seemed to be born for the spotlight. I don’t mean that they were extremely talented; rather they sought to be the center of attention. This attitude is completely against what God desires of us in worship. Worship is not one bit about us, but all about Him.

Artistic people often struggle to balance competence with showiness. We know that God demands that we do our very best in everything we do. We know we must practice and work hard in order to do our very best. We know that we should never stand before God in the church unless we are confident that we are prepared to do our very best. How then do we keep from allowing our competence to appear as a desire to be in the spotlight?

Check our motives. Be certain that we are using our talents to honor God and not advance our careers and receive applause. We need to determine what it takes for us to experience worship. There is something wrong if the only way an artistic person can worship is in a group setting. We should focus on experiencing God when we are completely alone. This is very difficult for artistic people.

Check our motives. Ignore the comments of others: good and bad. We need to listen and focus on God. Talent is not something that we can control based on polls, yet that is exactly what many artists try to do. When someone compliments your performance, acknowledge them with a simple “Thank you.” I do not know anyone who is impressed when a musician tries to act humble and say something like, “Don’t thank me, it was all for God.”

Check our motives. Volunteer to help in other ministries of the church where artistic talent is not required. This allows you to meet “normal” people and to allow them to get to know you. One of the biggest complaints that I get about people in the music and worship ministry is that they never show up for business meetings or church work days or other areas where they are not able to be in the spotlight. Make a point of being humble and helping out in other areas outside of your comfort zone. It is easy for a singer to agree to go on a mission trip when they are going to lead worship services the entire week. It is another story if all they will do is clean out and fix old buildings while nobody is watching.