The Worship Pastor's Motivation (Part 1) Fallen Motivations

Different things motivate different responses. For diehard sports fans, a goal, point, a basket accomplished by a favorite team sometimes causes people to suddenly forget their context and scream at their televisions or jump up and shout, spilling their beer and popcorn. For the man who is sitting in the waiting room hearing from the doctor that his wife’s surgery was a success, that news motivates his emotional response, breaking down and crying for joy feeling like that thread he was holding onto turned into a tree trunk.

You can look at a random sampling of churches all over America and see plenty of extremely different results to different motivations by their leadership. The sheep follow the shepherd. Walk with me, if you will down a humorous, but serious, over generalized stereotype of motivations that we see in American churches. My purpose for this exercise is not to get people angry about calling out any specific church or type of person, but show, using an argument called “reductio ad absurdum,” how different motivations can facilitate different responses and results. Put on your humble cap with me and think in your own context if you relate to any of these.

Music:

If the motivation is music, the result will be a worship pastor who is technically far superior with more chops than a Japanese sushi master. These churches will have an extremely high-grade musical experience and will probably feature different musicians for solo spots during a song. They will most likely incorporate hired musicians who are in a union and held to an extremely high standard, Christian or not. The end game is not good but GREAT music that needs to say at least some Christian things. They may even incorporate some secular music in their service to appeal to a younger more musically tasteful crowd. A musical motivation for a worship pastor will result in a culture that is very in tune with the new latest and greatest worship song that has the best melody and instrumentation. This worship culture will push, demand and support the music business. The worship pastor will find his time spent on trying to fulfill the demands of his congregation wanting more and more of “his music.” He will be charged with putting out at least one new original worship album a year with a Christmas album every other year. He will struggle with the greed of growing fame, and will rarely allow anyone else to have leading platform during the worship set or planning. The worship pastor might see the measure of his worship experience based on how similar the crowd looks in his congregation to that of a U2 concert if he is simply motivated by music.

Emotionalism:

Say the motivation was not music, but emotions. An emotion driven worship pastor is one that will most likely cry at least once a week for seeing a sappy commercial or from visiting an animal rescue shelter. They will be very in tune with style and culture and have an insatiable longing for people to experience how hard life is but how great God is in always forgiving. Their services will probably start out slow and ramp up to a slow ending with songs that speak of God being so amazing for not leaving while they are depressed. The end game is not good music, but an emotional response of the congregation. The worship leader, if not seeing emotional responses from the congregation may interrupt the worship set with a time of intense reflection on the suffering or injustice in the world. They may lift their hands because they are “reaching out to God” or be crying and swaying because God has “done so much for them.” The emotionally driven worship pastor, when leading a worship set, will probably never open his eyes so as to model how to create a comfortable context for people to cry without other people looking at them. The worship pastor might see the measure of success by how many people are visibly displaying their emotions. How is sin dealt with in an emotionally driven church? Is it? Or is it unfortunately covered up and covered up and covered up?

Again, not calling out any specific movement or churches, just throwing out some gross stereotypes. But since we’re having fun, let’s do one more.

Inclusivity: 

If the motivation isn’t music or emotions, what if it is inclusivity? A worship pastor driven by inclusivity will not be focused on good music, but making sure that Tammy, who plays the penny whistle, is incorporated somehow into their worship service. They are typically very accepting of people, and of EVERYTHING. In a worship band setting, they look more like Arcade Fire or another eccentric hodgepodge band, but sound close to horrible! In relation to the congregation the worship pastor has an immense fear of man and becomes the direct avenue to the senior pastor for a strong willed congregant to get platform or move his own agenda. The inclusivity motivation will lead this worship pastor to not only be a participant to the worship style wars, but will inadvertently be fueling the fire of it in his congregation. Churches led with this motivation will have multiple services with smaller separate congregations in each of them that vary in style, time of day, and varieties of coffee. In the end, success in the worship culture of this church is measured by how few complaints about volume, style, service elements or song choices are received per week.