the baby and the bathwater

Apparently in the UK the number of accidents at work has fallen recently. Health and safety experts are claiming victory and justifying their rigorous processes, guidelines and checks.

I fear it may have to do more with the fact that lots of people don’t have jobs at the moment.

Anyway, the most recent consequence of overbearing health and safety is now, apparently, that Asda have put a warning on their milk bottles that says ‘warning – contains milk’.

Oh my giddy aunt. Where will this end?

As it happens I have also become aware recently that soon all newspapers will have to display prominently on their front page ‘warning – contains news’. Apparently the Sun has decided not to display the message for fear of breaking the trade description act.

Maybe soon we’ll have to put a notice on the door of church saying ‘warning – contains God’.

When we are told that ‘the battle belongs to the Lord’  we are not being encouraged into a lifestyle of glorious inactivity, we are being compelled into a lifestyle of radical obedience.

It is always dangerous to make any judgment as to whether any one people, church, stream or generation does this thing called worship better than any other: we must be very careful to take into our own hands a judgment that is ultimately only for God to make.

But in my mind, if any one people, church, stream or generation does do this thing called worship better than any other, it isn’t because of their songs, it isn’t because of their bands, it isn’t because of their amazing visual presentation, it isn’t  because of their beautiful buildings, it isn’t because of their cd’s.

It is because of their ‘yes’.

Just recently I was emailed about a new worship resource web site fqworship.com.

Now regular readers of my blog will know that I don’t really get too excited about this sort of thing. I mean, I don’t mind people trying to resource the church and place songs etc into worship leaders hands, but it seems to me that there are many such web sites around, all circulating pretty much the same stuff.

But a couple of things caught my eye about this one.

Firstly it was coming from one of the organisations surrounding Chris Tomlin. Chris, in my mind, is one of the best worship song writers around at the moment. His songs have great melodies and tend to be really singable – with songs like ‘How great is our God’ and ‘Holy is the Lord’ two of his best and most widely used. So the fact that he was setting up a worship resource sight interested me. The second thing that caught my eye in the email was that there was going to be a cost involved – not a cost per song downloaded etc, but a monthly direct-debit type of cost. An in additional to that, you could choose your level of payment. Pay more, get more. That sort of thing.

So intrigued by what I read in the email I went onto the website and found out more.

It is a very well designed web site, with all the knobs and whistles you’d expect, and it certainly promised a lot of song downloads, streaming of new songs etc. But it was the price that leaped out of the page at me and started me thinking. OK, you can sign up to a ‘free’ level. Which I did. And this gives you access to…well not very much it seems. I was a little disappointed to find all the things that I wanted to get hold of were labelled ‘requires upgrade’.

For various levels of upgrade (and associated costs) you can start using the worship planner – uploading chord charts and then producing a song list for Sundays: if you get all your band signed up on there too, they can access your songlist and chord charts for the Sunday service too (of course I assume that they will have to pay as well). I tend to use the ‘jot down on an old envelope five minutes before you start’ method of producing a song list…but I’m sure this other way will work too.

You also get sent a ‘worship theme’ every month, although I’m not sure what a ‘worship theme’ is. It certainly sounds tempting. I wonder if it lets you type in a theme, and it picks the songs for you. That sure would save the bother of listening to God and being obedient. Anyway, I am just guessing on this one because for the moment I don’t believe I am eligible for one, or at least I haven’t received one if I am, so have not explored it further. Anything else requires a monthly cost, so I have declined an upgrade to my membership.

The top level cost is $20. For that I think I would get all the chord charts for lots of songs, I believe it will mean I can also hear some audio of new songs as and when they come out, as well as get an ample supply of worship themes.

But let’s think about this. $20 a month. That is $240 a year. If only 1000 of the massive number of Chris Tomlin fans sign up for this, that is $240,000 a year income.

Something just doesn’t feel right.

Firstly, if I am a worship leader in a church, then surely my church is already paying a big chunk of cash for the CCLI license, which was set up to ensure that songwriters received a fair wage for their efforts.  I imagine a fair wack of this already goes to this organisation. My understanding is that this new resource doesn’t replace or lessen those costs. It is just another layer of expense.

Secondly, if part of this is about getting new songs, then presumably I could buy the regular yearly CD from for around £10 giving me access to the audio. Most of the chord charts are then either available free somewhere on the net, or transcribable from the CD. So $240 a year really does seem harsh.

Recently in the news we heard about the proposed transfer of Kaka to Man City, for which he was apparently going to earn around £200,000 per week. Now that, too, I have concerns about. But Kaka is apparently a committed Christian and gives alot of his money away to the church. If that is true, then at least this means that new money is coming into the kingdom. I’m all for that.

But this recent web site isn’t even doing that. It is asking one section of the church to pay a whole lot more money out of the giving of it’s members to fund worship in their churches, and paying it to another church organisation that in my mind, is probably not short of a bob or two.

This may sound a little critical. But I feel that if someone is going to email me and ask for money to get hold of their worship songs, then at least I think that gives me the right to ask the questions.

I will still use Chris Tomlin songs. They are great, and they bless us.

But there is something about all of this that just doesn’t seem like church.

Or is it just me?

In a couple of weeks we are having a Trinity Arts Jazz Bar event that apparently is causing quite a stir within the town.

Once again, the design is mine. The words ‘genius’ once again comes to mind. Whether you agree with me on that one, I hope you agree that this event is worth stepping out for on Monday 16th February.

On his first day in power, Obama has made many decisions. One of his first was to freeze pay for all White Office staff with salaries over $100,000 because of the economic situation. OK, so people earning $100,000 are unlikely to be facing starvation, but it at least draws a line in the sand.

On the same day it is announced that Northern Rock employees in the UK (effectively civil servants) were to get big bonuses.

Unite, the trade union, defended the payments. “Staff at the bank have worked exceptionally hard in extremely difficult circumstances. They have experienced the loss of friends and colleagues through compulsory redundancy yet have continued working solidly,” it said.

How unusual. People having to work hard in difficult circumstances. Perish the thought. No wonder the unions are up in arms.

(Unite is the trade union who’s bosses were said to be enjoying big salaries whilst their members were on minimum wages: According to figures obtained by The Times, Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, received £89,035 in benefits on top of his £105,217 salary in 2007 – giving him the largest package of any general secretary. His total pay and perks, including pension, housing benefit, employers’ national insurance and car benefit, worked out at £194,252)

As a UK tax payer, I suppose I was hoping that the £20k or so the current bailout is costing me and my family would prompt a response that has more obvious integrity than using some of it to pay bonuses to bankers, who arguably caused the problem in the first place.

Some people may say there is spiritual void in this nation, and there probably is. But it seems that there is a huge leadership void too.

My friend Tim Goodwright, together with his friend Steve Evans, performs ‘Can I be Frank?’ at Trinity Cheltenham in a few weeks. I have seen the show, and I can honestly say that it is in my top five for the most funny things I have ever seen.

This is first class, high quality theatre. No cheese. Nothing amateur. Just pure excellence.

And by the way, the design is mine. And yes, it is genius (I could be humble and say it wasn’t, but if you look at it, clearly I would be lying). But such genius is only fitting for the quality of the production.

Just recently, my friend and co-worship leader at Trinity did an interview for cross rhythms. We were in two minds whether David should do it, as both of us tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to anything that could be viewed as celebrity status. I’m glad it was done in the end, as I think David expresses a voice that needs to be heard.

You can read the article on the cross rhythms website. The transcript is given below.

Good one, Dave.

A lot has changed for worship leader and songwriter for David Gate since Cross Rhythms last spoke to him in 2006. Back then he was leading worship at a church in Belfast and had recently had his album ‘Unapproachable Light’ released by Kingsway. Now David is one of the worship leaders at Trinity Church in Cheltenham and his powerful new album ‘Nothing To Fear’ is released independently. David spoke about his move away from Kingsway. “I loved working with them but I had this sense maybe 18 months ago that the Lord was moving me on and I started to question the way worship was put out and everything that was around it and surrounded it. The guys at Survivor and Kingsway are some of the most God loving people and I loved working with them but I just felt that what God was doing at Trinity was where he wanted me to be and what he wanted me to do. Fortunately the church have the resources to get behind the songwriters and had the resources to do the record.”

For anybody making music professionally it can easily become a treadmill, no matter what type of music you’re making. There’s a cycle of record and then promote the album and then write more songs ready to record the next album. Gate observed, “I think that’s a very natural thing in the promotion of music and the making of music but I think it does become more complicated when you talk about worship and the Church. These songs are resources for the Church and they are being birthed in the Church and maybe out of the will of the Holy Spirit and it’s just a lot more complicated. I felt I needed to be really careful and I needed to steward the songs and everything the Lord gave me. I needed to look after the songs and my church and their model was the best way of doing that. The songs are published by Trinity Publishing, our own little publishing company but they’re still administered by Kingsway. It just means we distribute them ourselves. It just means that they don’t end up on dubious compilation albums with dubious titles and it may end up being in a few places where perhaps I wouldn’t want them to be.”

There seems to be a growing questioning of the method of some record labels in the way that they package and re-package worship songs for the Christian consumer. The record labels appear to sell the same song a number of different ways but surely they would argue that they’re just trying to give David Gate songs more exposure and get people singing them in church. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that is there? Gate responded, “I can see that argument and certainly it was good for me to do that in some ways. But one of my songs was then on an album called something like ‘The Best Worship Songs Ever’ and I was wondering who decides these songs? Has God revealed that, are they his favourites? And then are we judging them by which songs are top of the CCLI charts? And is that the value of a song? How many churches it’s sung in or how many conferences it’s sung at or how many albums it’s on? It gets really complicated and I just felt like I wanted to keep a closer eye on my songs and what they were doing.”

It sounds like Gate became uncomfortable with the process. “A litte yeah,” he admitted. “It was really difficult for me because relationally, I love working with them and they continue to do great things and they’ve really stewarded great songs so well so I was caught in two minds. I had been uncomfortable for a while, but really the Lord started to impress on my heart that I needed to take a risk and do it myself. Financially I haven’t had as much money to spend on the album and I won’t receive much money back so it’s been a cost to us but I feel like it’s the best way forward for the church to own it.”

The trend today with worship leaders seems to be that a lot of songwriters are trying to write worldwide hits. They’re hoping that each album has got a big song on it that will get in the CCLI charts but there is a danger that such thinking leads to diluted songs that don’t really say anything. Rather than reflecting what God might be doing in a local community, there’s a desire to write songs that can be sung on any continent and this can lead to a dumbing down. Gate pondered for a second and then responded, “Certainly everyone seems to be trying to paint these songs with broad brush strokes. I’ve got this theory that you can walk in to a church in Thailand or Canada or Scandanavia or Stoke and you can hear the same songs sung in the same way. One part of me thinks that can be good for some reasons but ultimately I think that it makes me a bit sad that we are doing the same thing everywhere.”

Is it possible that church worship has become too much like a McDonalds where you get the same food wherever you go and it looks the same, tastes the same and the vibe feels the same when you go inside? Gate agreed, “It’s franchised almost and Mc-worship is the term I’ve used on more than one occasion before. I think the way the songs have been put out and the way the writers are encouraged and all the palaver that goes around all of that, it does encourage that result. My real desire is for songwriters to write from where they are, to express what’s going on in their church and their situation and that obedience will be honoured. There will always be songs that will get picked up and be transferred and will get through culture and language and so forth but I don’t think that’s what we should sit down to write. I think ultimately when I sit down to write I’m thinking about the thousand people in our church and how they can worship and meet the Lord and that’s what’s in my mind.”

In reality, every church is going through its own individual journey at any given time and certain things are being taught. Worship is a part of that journey in that there ought to be songs that come out of that specific journey. “Absolutely,” said Gate, “and we’ve found in our church in the last two or three years that the songs that we are writing often are key songs in the life of the church and they do two things. They either reflect something God’s done or something God is going to do and they plug into that and they feed that and the church have a real ownership in the worship and they feel like they’re singing their songs. If it comes from my heart and my lips it feels like it’s coming from their heart and their lips whereas if you’re just picking songs off the latest compilation CD it often doesn’t have that same resonance.”

But isn’t there a problem that not every church has a gifted songwriter and worship leader like David Gate in their congregation? “No and that’s why worship albums are still worth making and worth having in some places where churches can go and find songs. But whether that resembles music industry that’s another matter and I would say not. I think God’s used that over the last 20 years perhaps and so many things have come out of that but with anything we set up, it can eventually become a millstone around your neck. I feel like parts of that Christian music industry model for handling worship songs have become that to some degree.”

For the moment David Gate has the ‘Nothing To Fear’ album out independently full of songs written for his church in Cheltenham and enjoyed at this year’s New Wine conference where he led worship. “As a church, we’re heavily involved in the New Wine conference. Our church helps to run the central and south west conference which meets in the summer in Shepton Mallet and we lead worship in the summer and a lot of people hear our songs. The songs do get picked up and to be honest I’m happy with it being like that where somebody is interested in what I’m doing and picks it up. But I have no desire to go out and hawk my songs.”

And finally after years of trying, Gate confessed he’s happy to have an album out without his face on the cover. He’s always felt uncomfortable about that. “With all the other albums I’ve tried it and failed but now I’m finally doing it all myself, I’ve managed it.

One of the things that I value most in the people I work with these days is an ability to walk this road of ministry with a steady pace of passion. There are plenty of people – good people, gifted people – whom I have worked with over the 25 years I have been in worship ministry who have burst forward on a tide of enthusiasm for some project or another, only to give up and fade away very quickly. We love such people, of course, and we value their periodical contributions to church life. But it’s very hard to build anything of significance with them.

It seems to me that it is quite rare to find people who understand that most ministry is built on the ability to walk – day to day, month to month, year to year, with passion in their heart – passion to serve and passion to lead and passion to constantly explore the new things that God is asking us to pursue. Such people are like gold dust in the kingdom of God. We can build church with them. And that, after all, is what we are here on earth to do.

The other week I was in church, clearing up the stage again, struggling to get the correct monitor leads into their correct place, fighting my way through a seemingly incomprehensible web of leads. I remember thinking “After 15 years in this church, which now has a staff of many, including various technical people and other paid worship leaders, I still find myself here early on a Sunday morning dealing with this stuff. Surely by now this should be someone else’s job!!”

It seems that however long I go on in this ministry (it is some 25 years now) and however much our church grows, and however much I find myself leading worship at bigger events, I still end up doing these crappy jobs. I still have to put back together worship folders that the bass players have left in a mess. I still have to stand in for the pa operator who doesn’t realise he is on the rota on a Sunday morning (and Oh how I hate that 8.15am call that lets me know this!). And I still have to deal with those wretched monitor leads that seem to unplug themselves from the correct place and plug themselves back in to some completely random socket all by themselves.

Bad management. Well maybe.
Other people not doing their job properly. Well possibly.

But actually, this is what ministry is really like. I will probably be clearing up files, plugging in leads, and turning up at a silly hour of the morning to cover someone’s pa slot until the day I finally hang up my worship leading boots for the last time.

Charles Wesley is quite rightly a hero of most worship leaders. He was a great hymn writer, and many of those hymns have survived – in one form or another – since they were written nearly 300 years ago. Most of us worship leaders and songwriters would probably love to know that even a small proportion of what we give ourselves to in the year 2009 would still be serving the church in 2309. What an awesome thought.

But what we probably don’t know so much about was the fact that Charles walked his life with a steady pace of passion. He travelled many thousands of miles preaching throughout the country during his 60 years of ministry. He wrote over 5000 hymns (some say far more than this). That means he was probably writing some 100 hymns every year – around 2 every week – consistently for nearly 60 years. As someone who manages to write only around 2 a year, that is incredible. And as we know, some of these survive today in the worship lives of our churches. And apparently, near the end of his life, when he was around 70 years old, he was frustrated by his own increasing desire to stay in bed until 5.30 in the morning.

In 2 Samuel David is bringing back the ark to Jerusalem. It was an event that had a wonderful, carnival atmosphere. Musicians, singers, dancers all accompanied the journey. But every six steps they stopped and made an animal sacrifice. The whole journey must have taken a huge amount of time. But David himself danced his way through it all. He danced his way through a long journey full of stops and starts. He had got it. He understood the need to walk through life with a steady pace of passion.

I don’t know how you are feeling about worship leading ministry at this current time. Maybe you are going though one of those testing times, where everything feels like a bit of a drag. You are tired by the routine of leading worship again, and again, and again. You may look down your song-list as you come to prepare for worship and your heart sinks – all these songs seem so dry and overused. Maybe you are constantly being disappointed by the consistency (or lack of it) in the people around you.  Well maybe this is a help: the true mark of your passion for ministry is not that you fly when things are going really well – but that you keep walking steadily when things are proving to be tough.

The greatest legacy we can leave for the next generation is the fruit of our obedience to God.