Being the best is all about us. How we are better than others, How we were able to do it based on our own strength.
Being excellent is all about others. How effective we are in leading them in worship; how efficient and good we were at serving them.
Being the Best is about me. Being Excellence is about them.
I believe worship teams, worship leaders and music ministries shouldn't compete. Worship was never a competition. The metric we are called to be isn't how better we are over other people, but rather how capable, effective and efficient we are at serving others.
Yes we rehearse, study, improve our skill & arrange. But we are greatly misled if we do this to show to other teams, churches or people that we are better than them; that we can execute the harder songs cleaner; that we have better equipment and that we can read notes on the fly; Or that we can play a passage after listening to it just once. It begs the question, what is your motivation to improve?
We improve to serve the King of kings better. We improve because after you encounter the love of God, how can you not give your all? In the same way that when you've met the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you find yourself improving what you do and how you look; you find yourself upping your game so to speak. Not because that was asked of you. It is because you believe the person deserves a better you.
Besides, God doesn't deserve something half baked.
We improve because we want to show even better usher other people into the presence of God and point them much more clearly towards Christ and not to us. It is true that when we play poorly, it can and does distract people from worship. I mean, c'mon, let's face it, worshipping with an out of tune singer can be very challenging and distracting. We aim to excel so that others may worship and focus on the Lord more.
Being the best points towards me and the team, on how good we pulled it off. Being Excellent points towards God and you, on how good we were able to serve you. How effective and efficient have we been at executing our craft well so that you can focus on the Lord.
Maybe some would disagree with how I define Best and Excellence. Im not here to tell you that you should embrace my definitions. All Im saying is that, in the team I lead at least, we differentiate our motivation of action this way. It gives us a clear and defined word to use as a guide post.
But let us not forget that at the end of the day, the main posture of the worship team should always be a position of humility based on the truth of Christ & the Cross. This is a fundamental truth that can get lost or buried as a team keeps going on Sunday after Sunday without a proper venue for rest, and reconnection with the Lord.
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This is an expanded repost from one FB status I wrote before and posted on my wall. :)
