Okay. Look out. Five things worship leaders should stop doing right now on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast, brought to you by by the Malphurs Group team, where each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu. Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu.
Hey. You already got me you already got me worshiping over here. I'm already I'm ready. Mhmm. A little bit, little bit of background info for those of you who are newer to the podcast who maybe don't know, me very well. I'm I'm an oversharer, so you know a lot about my Is there anybody that doesn't know you at this point? I don't know. But Okay. If they've only listened to a few episodes or if this if this is your first time listening to the podcast,
welcome to the podcast. Yeah. Because of that, the title of this episode, perhaps. Yeah. Could be. You never know. But I'm a I'm a former worship leader. Now it was never really my thing. I, was a second cheerleader in planting a church in Tennessee. And when you're planting a church, you gotta everybody's gotta wear lots of hats. One of the hats that I wore was worship leading, and, I I discarded that hat as I as quickly as I could because it's not really my favorite thing to
do. I got a guitar in the background. I don't know if you can see it or not. But Are you, you consider yourself a former worship leader or a recovering worship leader? Mhmm. I can, maybe a once in future once in future worship leader. Meaning, if you called on me to do it in a pinch, I'd help you out. Okay. Or for a large sum of money? I no. Less inclined for the money, but if you needed help, I'd help you. How
about that? And I have no credentials whatsoever on the topic other than being a highly opinionated worshiper Consultant.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I give that though, as background because, I'm gonna say some hard things to worship leaders today that you really need to hear, but they are all things that someone should have told me and maybe even tried to tell me back when I was leading worship on a regular basis because I would say I'm guilty of at least three of these, and would have argued with me about them, like why I am now currently wrong, why I was right to do these things previously.
But I can tell you after a decade of church consulting experience working with dozens and dozens and dozens of churches around the globe, I was doing some things wrong, and and I see these bad habits today, and you should stop doing them. And if you're a senior pastor, you can, like, send an anonymous email with this podcast linked into it, you know, if you don't wanna start a fight. I would say our list is greater than 50% to the objective and
and lesser to the subjective. Yeah. But yeah. We have a couple of things that could be subjective, but I think we're I think we're over half in the objective range on good versus bad ideas. Yeah. We're engaged. I think we've primed the pump well enough. Before we, before we start revealing these five things, though, I do wanna mention, go to healthychurchestoolkit.com and
register for a free seven day trial. Lots of good stuff in there on how to be a better leader in general, boost your leadership skills, streamline ministry, make life easier for you. Go to healthychurchestoolkit.com. Get seven days free. K. Do that for a problem. I'm gonna I'm gonna let you Thanks for your enthusiasm. I'm looking at our list. I'm turning on you for any sales there, AJ. I'm super
focused on our list now, on our topic. Okay. I'm gonna I wanna let normally, we Volley, you know, We have kind of a rhythm. You know? AJ says it. AJ gives his 2¢. Scott comes in after. I want you to I want you to hit these on the at the top. Yeah. You you take us through this. I'm gonna jump in with my thoughts as we go. Alright. Okay. Number one, stop singing in keys that are too high. I know I know that they sing it in b in the recording. You got that capo four,
and you're really happy about it. And you've worked really hard, and you can hit the notes. But you know who can't hit them? Most people. Most of the guys who are sitting there in the service, they're not hitting those notes. And, and the the thing is it's not working for the ladies either because when you sing in those keys, it's kind of too low for them to sing in their regular octave, but it then it becomes way too high for them if they sing the the octave up. So
it's not a good key for anybody. Stop doing it. Just it doesn't need to be the same key as the recording. Take it down a half step or a step so that it's more singable. And then you go, but hold on a minute. Then I can't sing the melody line because these songs often will start low, and then it's the bridge or the chorus that's way high. Fine. Have the lady have have someone else who's up there with you. They can sing the part that to you would then be kind of
low, but they can sing it. So, you know, just get a little creative, but the goal is to get people singing. And when the key is too high, people will not sing along. So what's from a professional standpoint in in song decision making arrangements and keys and all that stuff, is a worship leader more so just choosing a key that's just good for for his or her vocal range? I think so. Or try to get there. Overestimate their vocal range. Yeah. There are a lot of guys who are like, I can get there.
And they can. And, I mean, again, I this is one of the three for sure I was guilty of. And when I was singing a lot and singing all the time, and my voice was, you know, stronger, and your your, you know, your voice is a muscle, so when I when I was practiced a lot, I could I could sing, my natural voice went higher, because I could, and I could hit higher notes when I
was singing and playing all the time. But now that I've been out of it for more than a decade, I I can't hit those notes anymore, comfortably. And, so I can I can commiserate with the other men standing there? And, again, my voice is already naturally higher, so the guys who don't have a voice as high as mine, they're they're they're really, like they're just standing there. Like, I don't know if you know this. They're standing there, hands in pockets,
maybe swaying or rocking. They are not singing. It that can app yeah. I mean, I tend to want to sing lower. Like, if if I can hit, like, maybe an octave, go down down the octave where I'm more naturally wanting to vocalize anyway, I suppose. You know, I mean, this definitely is an area that has some subjectivity to it because, you know, every song is different, and it the song itself might have a a large swing. Perfect magic
that every song listening. Yeah. Right. So but I guess it's, you know, part of maybe what your what your expertise is supposed to be is to just consider. Consider the song, try to try to use your expertise to to determine what's gonna be the more closely broadly able to sing key. Yeah. This is, like, maybe a subpoint and not related to key, and this is not on our list. But, you know, I guess a similar vein to this would be, like, if there's a song that's just weird you're it's just
weird to play because it has a weird rhythm to it. That that song praise that's really popular now, the Brandon Lake song. It's like there's a it starts off, like, let everything that has breath. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Elevation. Brandon Lake can get up there with the all those guys, and they can do the clapping, and they can do the the the chanting. And when you're in your room of a 20 people, they're not people are not going to do that. Yeah. Some weird syncopation.
Weird. With the chant what? You all didn't catch the upbeat after, you know Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna have quarter notes of rest. It's kind of a weird a weird drum part. Most drummers church drummers are not that good. Yeah. I'm just being honest. Like, just quit. Just stop. That's true. Don't do it. There are some on the radio. Yeah. There are some weird song choices that that get made for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. I think that fits in here for this one here. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Oh, yeah. I'm leaving these. Number two, stop giving us long explanations about songs, especially the ones when they're when you're doing a new song. I got two two points. Two reasons for this. The first one is to a new person, you're immediately calling out to them what's new to them. Like, to them, all the songs are probably new. And so when you go, well, we're gonna do a new song, you're immediately kind
of everybody. There are people in the room who go, well, these are all new to me. And it's further reinforcing that you're an outsider. I should know. The one that we just did that I didn't know, I should know. Now this is one that maybe I guess we all don't know it because it's new for all of us. It just makes that part weird. Also, I don't know. It's maybe this is this is subjective. It's just a pet peeve of mine. I'm like, I don't need to know why you picked this song, probably because
you liked it. Probably you heard it on the radio or on Spotify, or the new Elevation album came out and you thought it was catchy. That's the real reason. You don't need to give me some hyper spiritualized the holy spirit came to you in a dream and told you we need to sing this new Elevation song. Doubter you are, Scott. Golly. I hate all that. Can we stop? Just sing it. You wanna add a new song. You can say, this one's new for us, but you'll catch on and sing
along. That's okay. That's maybe okay. But then lead it well. Don't, like if you know it's new, deinstrumentize a little bit so that people can hear the chorus really well. Any new song, you wanna make sure that people learn the chorus clearly. So maybe start with the chorus and you run an acoustic, and then you then you drop out, and then you and then you hop into the, like, the the fuller instrumentation. But just I don't need I don't need the long
talk. It's just I don't need a TED talk about the song. I don't just sing it. Yeah. Yeah. Please. I don't feel as strongly about this as you, but I am I am supportive of little less talk, little more playing. Your job is to sing. Not I mean, if we it's not your Sunday to preach, and so I don't need an extra sermon. I don't need to know I I don't need to know all about your devotional life. I was sitting this week by the river, and the Lord was saying to me, and
you're playing soft chords. I don't think you're that. You're taking a song. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Now I wouldn't mind, hey, you know, in in Galatians two, we read blah, blah, and this song where I think really speaks it well. That to me, that's an appropriate amount of interest. Talking about that. I'm talking about I'm talking about the three minute Personalization. Yeah. I don't know. I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna know. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I would say of the of the
five things we're going over, I was least guilty of this. I would speak, but only if it was in the thing for me to speak, like I had to give announcements or I was doing a community meditation, but I was not one to I'm just someone who knows me. He's probably gonna listen be like, no no no, But I don't think that this was me because it this is something that has always kind of annoyed me, so I tried my best not to do this. I think it's distracting. I think we're
we're not focusing on the moment. Too much can be distracting for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If it is too much, if it's your own personal therapy session, that's right. You're oversharing. Yeah. Exactly. Get a podcast. You wanna overshare. You do it here. This is where we overshare. Okay? There are no captive audiences here, though. Nobody knows if you're expecting something else. That's right. You at least have the option to
tune out if you don't wanna hear it. I gotta I gotta sit there at the pew, like, knowing I got three more of these songs coming up, or we're gonna talk in front of all of them. Good gosh. Alright. Okay. Let's go. Okay. Number three. I'm so used to not being the one starting these. Okay. Number three, stop being distracting when you're giving direction to the band. Some of you are really
bad at this. Like, you don't need to turn and do this number, you know, if you're not watching on YouTube, like, it's like the vamp kind of signal, like, or repeat do it again. Or if something weird happens, you break a string or you can't hear in your monitor very well and doing this. You know, I you know, if the microphone isn't working, probably the people in the back know that. You don't need to tap on it and point at it. Like, they're they're they're on it. They're working on it.
Like, there are all kinds of things in direction that you're giving that's distracting. So there are some ways to remediate this, from high-tech to low tech. High-tech solution, obviously, is gonna be using in ear monitors with click tracks. That's gonna give direction on what's next in the song. I've I've never played with that. I don't wouldn't like it because it's
to me, it would be distracting to hear the the click. But you could have, in ear monitors with with talkback bikes and have someone who's not the main worship leader in the back being a music director and giving giving verbal cues both to tech and to the people in the back. That would be fine, and that's relatively I'd say that's mid tech. You gotta have the in ear system Mhmm. Which we had that even as a church plant, but
just using a headphone amp. We didn't have a fancy in ear monitor system. We were just using a headphone amp in the back and a running cable. So, that was cheap. And, the the low tech is just getting better, like, run really good rehearsals and get better at giving subtle clues that are not distracting. Yeah. The you know, this one taken to extremes just demonstrates the lack of prep and rehearsal. Yeah. The on the one of the most examples that I've seen of this, I think.
Stuff happens that you can't predict, like, technical things. Yeah. But the set if this stuff is happening consistently, I think the issue is rehearsal time. Totally. Yeah. And, like, if you break a string, don't make a big deal about it. Like, sometimes guys make a big deal. Just I know it's surprising and you feel like you gotta make a show of it, but just keep playing. And then when when the song's over, I know now your whole guitar is out of tune, so don't try to keep playing it.
Just set it down. And if you've got someone else playing keys or something, just just roll with it. Like, let them play keys. And if you're fortunate enough to have a backup guitar on hand, grab the backup. That doesn't always happen. Not everybody's got that. It's okay. But don't make it big. You're like, ho ho. I gotta. Now I gotta tune. Ding, ding, nah. We don't I don't
we don't need we don't need all that. Move on. There are there's elements in this even as I mean, the some of this for some people that have never even noticed it, they're so, you know, the things that you know, the there somebody might say, oh, yeah. Golly. It was shocking when they, you know, they did this. And and other people would be like, oh, I didn't even see that. But sometimes it's almost
feels performative. You know? I mean I think it's just social awkwardness, like, not knowing I don't know what to do with my hands, you know, kind of a thing, so they don't know what to do. So you feel like you gotta say something. And and I I can relate to this. I've I've broken I've broken a string and, like, needed to tune in the middle, and you just don't know what to do. So hard. Oh, man. Yeah. I'm just into it. Or just not doing good maintenance and changing my strings as
often as I should have. That crusty that crusty old string. So yeah. Again, I'm saying this from a place of love and experience. You know, we don't need to see all that. Okay. Alright. Three down. Two to go. 3 down. Oh, goodness. Okay. Number 4? Number 4. Number four, stop singing weird songs at Christmas time. Let alright. Let's let's get into it. Let's get into it. I I believe we've I've made this statement before in an earlier episode, but I hate when people say, why don't you
just play songs that everyone knows? That's that I I stand by that being the most annoying feedback to get as a worship leader because I stand by the fact that there's no such thing as songs that everyone knows. Even if you talk about hymns, different traditions grew up with different hymn books, and so, that's not even a fair thing to say. Except except at Christmas. This is the one time it's the closest you get to everyone
already knowing all of the words. And sometimes it seems like you wanna make sure we don't know the song anymore that we just do. You're like, you know what? I'm gonna go out of my way to not sing a song that people know, and I'm gonna even make you think you know the song, and then I'm going to change the melody. I don't get it. Christmas Eve is not the time to debut your indie folk EDM arrangement of Oh, Come Oh, Come Emmanuel. Like, I
don't need to hear it. Just Joy to the World was just fine for decades. Oh my god. It never needed anything else. It needed it didn't need unspeakable joy. We were speaking the joy. The joy was to the world. We were speaking it. Stop speaking other non joy bringing things within the song. You're bringing now you're bringing me down. Now you're singing some other random song, but you're adding Gloria in it somewhere, and now it's a Christmas song. You've you no. It doesn't work that
way. It's my cynical Scott says the new Christmas songs are just a scam be because of for these Christian music warehouses to make money because all all of the Christmas songs are in the public domain. Maybe so. I don't know. You can't make money you can't make money off of joy to the world unless you add a chorus, then you can. This is this is church's greatest hits. Everybody's there for the hits. Play it like we do it. I don't mind if you mess with the arrangement a little bit.
You know what I mean? Like, the instrumentation, like, like, you know, just don't get it. Maybe. Not too weird. Maybe? Yeah. It doesn't need to be orchestral. I don't need a bluegrass I don't need a choir in the back. It's okay if you're playing it acoustic or you're you know, whatever. That's fine. But it it doesn't need an extra weird chorus. You know? And I get it. I was
100% guilty of this. If anybody who's listening to this podcast knows me, you know I have sung Unspeakable Joy on the stage, and I have and I have lobbied hard for Christmas songs that are nontraditional, thinking that it was good. And I'm just here to tell you I repent, and it wasn't good. It was never good. It was always a bad idea. Yeah, man. You know, I I, in my younger years, went to a pretty traditional
mainline denomination church. And, you know, I mean, we were literally, like, the couple of times a year in church family. And so, I actually have, like, a, you know, like, an attachment to these songs, these traditional Christmas songs sung in church that I've almost not been able to recapture anywhere in adulthood because you never hear them just plainly done anymore. You know where you can hear them? On the radio. I am on YouTube music where I can
ask for anything I want. You know, at Christmas time, if you go to Epcot, they do Speaking of They do the They do the Please. Hey. You can repent some more. They they do the candlelight processional, and a celebrity comes and reads the Christmas story out of Luke. Because that's what we need. And they sing traditional Christmas songs arranged. Disney can stick with, with something traditional, you can too. Kinda my point,
which is actually why I wanted to bring it up. Be like, if Disney if Disney recognizes this is one of their most they bring it back every year even though they hate Christianity pretty much. But this is so popular that they're reading the Christmas story and singing traditional Christian Christmas hymns. Like, not not let it snow, let it snow, but, like, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. They're singing that at Epcot. If they're doing it at Epcot, you should do it at your church. Yeah.
We should just made this a whole episode by itself. Let's start by this one. Alright. Okay. Anything else? Anything else? Maybe we will, like, Christmas time. We'll bring it back. Have we gotten it all out of our system? We got it out of my system. Yeah. Alright. Thank you. Alright. We got one more. Number five. And this is maybe the maybe this is the capstone and really kind of the root thing of all of it. I would say you need to stop caring about how cool it sounds.
I I get this one. Again, this I put this in the category of things that I've experienced and been guilty of. Especially if you're a full time worship leader, you wanna be like, I I need to kinda prove that I'm doing something, you know, like, proof of work, proof that my job is valuable. And so there's a temptation to just be like, you want people to come up to you after the service and go, wow. The music was really great today. Like, that's what
you want. You're kinda chasing people saying, you're a really good worship leader, or you're a great musician, or I the band sounded so tight today, or that was a great set. Those are the things you're kind of chasing, maybe even on a subconscious level. And I would just encourage you to stop caring about that. Now don't hear me say the music shouldn't be good or excellent. It I think it should be both good. It should be excellent.
But the goal is congregational singing, that the people in the room are singing along with you. That's the win. If you look around the room, one, if it's so dark in there you can't even see whether or not people are singing, which is Yep. You're blinded by them anymore. By the white hot spotlight. Yeah. If the lights are all on you, you can't see who's in the room. You don't know if anybody is singing. You can't hear if they're
singing, especially if you got in ears in. In ear. If your person hears you, then you don't know if you're winning. And and the goal has got to be I won't I won't put the pressure on you and say the goal is worship because worship is so much more than just singing as you know. But the goal would be congregational singing. Let's put the goalpost there. And you can become so distracted by is this creative enough? Is this cool enough? Is this on the cutting edge enough?
Is it excellent enough? Is it all of those things enough that you lose track of are people singing with me? And that that to me needs to be sort of the baseline measurement of success. And and I, again, I'm I'm saying I'll admit to my faults. I think number one, singing songs were too high. Definitely guilty of that. I worked hard on not not being distracting to the band. We didn't have talk backs and stuff, so I had to do give signals, and I tried
to do that as discreetly as possible. But so, but number four, guilty of singing weird songs at Christmas, and care and number five, caring about it sounding cool or creative, definitely guilty of that. So three out of five, that's an f. I think I'm failing. So this is not me judging you. I don't know. I'm judging you a little bit, but lumping myself in
the judgment and going, I'm as guilty as the rest of it. I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt that most of this, if somebody is doing this, it's not with any intentional thing that I think most strong majority of people leading worship are they care about it as their ministry, their calling. Yeah. Of course. And sometimes it end up maybe misguided or just, you know, make bad choices, have bad ideas. Things don't play out the way maybe they thought it
would in their mind. Yeah. You're just swimming in it. Like, it's the pool that you're swimming in and and, like, especially anymore with social media, your algorithm's just blowing up with people who are killing it in in worship, and they're doing things that are really cool. And I get it. You start going, I mean, could I do that thing? Could I incorporate that thing? Yeah. You just start chasing that, and you're getting away from what the
point is. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, being aware of what everybody else in the world is doing can I mean, it's a double edged sword? It can be, you know, it can be good for for ideas or, you know, to experience things. But, yeah, on the other hand, you're like, oh, wow. You know, sometimes what other people are doing isn't helpful or beneficial either. You don't need to mimic them or try it. Yeah. So Yeah. Exactly. So, that's it. I'll recap. Number one, stop singing songs that are too
high. Number two, stop giving us long explanations about things or just talking. Stop stop talking, start singing, or just less of it. Just minimize it. Yeah. Exactly. And some of it we don't need to know at all. You should just never share. Three, stop being distracting when giving direction to the band. There's different solutions to that. Some of that is just skill. You learn it over time and will improve. Four, stop singing weird songs at Christmas time. Yep. Please. And, stop caring how
cool it sounds. Maybe a bonus thing I would say, maybe this is a start, not a stop, just to kind of wrap this up, is your job up there is you're the leader? I think there are some guys and gals, who get up there, you know, and they're concerned, like, am I in it? You know, they're like, I gotta be up there and I'm I'm really into it. And, I don't think that's the job. I think the job is you are leading others in worship. You should be fully present. I think you need to kind of have eyes open.
I'm not saying you can never have your eyes closed or whatever, but keep your eyes open. Watch what's happening because what difference does it make if you're you're a % in it and you're vibing and no one else is? Like, you That's not the job. Yeah. You are a worship leader. Mhmm. You are leading the singing of the songs. Yeah. I think I
I I think I, I'm picking up what you're putting down there. Yeah. Yeah. That if you can get if you're if you're so experientially departed into the space of the song in the worship yourself, that for some reason that makes everybody else be there with you, and that's not always the case. Yeah. I think there are some guys who are like, and I got to be really feeling it. I'm like, you don't, though. Like, that's not the job. Feel it when you're when you're on your own. You know, that's fine.
But when you're a leader, your job is to lead. And how does it can be true if you don't have the, you know, the yeah. You can be you can appear very disconnected. But as a professional, that shouldn't ever be evident. Yeah. I mean, I I guess you should you need to be worshiping. I I guess my point is know what your role is. Your role is not to be up there sort of, like, people watching you worship, and then hopefully they'll mimic you. Yeah. That's not what it is. Yeah. Your job is to
bring people along with you, and it and I know that's hard. You and I were having conversation pre roll about what does that look like? What is what is leading look like? And and and a lot of it is is not it's it's you know, I can't I can't point to a technique or but it's a soft skill that you develop in kind of reading a room. And it's not altogether different from in some
to some degree, like, what theater is. Like, being you know when you're bombing, like, when's when the audience isn't with you and having to present yourself in a particular way so that people catch on with what's happening. And and it's that same preaching's the same way. Are people connecting? Are are people dozing? Or the what am I you know, all of it these are leadership skills. Some of them spiritual, some of them
practical. And you Mhmm. And I would just encourage worship leaders to care more about the leadership side of the worship and not just the musical side of it. Like, have an awareness of are we leading these people. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's I think that's good. I think it's a good way of of trying to put this into an understandable perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There you go. That's it. There you go. More than ten years removed from the role. These are
my reflections, and thank you for letting me get this off my chest. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Love it or hate it. Might have some extreme reactions to this, but you know what? It's all beneficial to us on YouTube whether, you're angry or you're excited. The the algorithm loves your engagement. So you can you can let us know either way. Smash that button, bell, and liking, and share this with a worship leader you know. To to make them also angry if you were. So, yeah, you
can throw us into the bus. That's that's okay. That's, yeah. Okay. We can take that every now and then. Alright. Hey. Thanks for joining us on the Church Revitalization podcast. Whether you are listening on your favorite podcast app or watching over on YouTube. We'll be back in those same places again next week, bringing you, hopefully, something engaging, challenging, like it or not. It's really weekend. Thanks, everybody. See you next week.