Home Worship & Creative Leaders Articles for Worship & Creative Why Worship Leaders Are Not Rock Stars

Why Worship Leaders Are Not Rock Stars

Rock stars are sexy. They stand on massive stages backed by incredible light shows while performing for people screaming out in worshipful adoration. They make great money, wear hip clothes, have rad tattoos, and get the best-looking women—all this for being able to write and perform music people enjoy.

This is the picture in many people’s minds when they set out to be worship leaders as a result of the emotionally driven celebrity culture we have created and modeled for them in the Western church. When a leader is talented and charismatic, we tend to blur the line between admiration and worship, between imitating them as they imitate Christ and substituting them for Christ. With music, this is all the more dangerous because we are dealing with a naturally emotional medium.

But emotions are not bad in and of themselves. They are quite useful in engaging us holistically in worship. Consider how Jonathan Edwards, the great theologian and pastor, put it:

I don’t think ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection and their affections are not raised beyond the proportion to their importance or worthiness of affection. I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.

It is the job of worship leaders to raise the affections of the people we lead to the highest possible height with the truth of the worthiness of God in our songs. And yet, while emotions are helpful handmaids of worship, the emotional and even sensual nature of music can make it difficult to know whether we are raising the affection of our hearers with the truth or simply the thrill of the song. We may go for the emotional jugular and completely fail to exalt the character, holiness, and majesty of God. The music becomes self-serving.

Prideful Platform

Perhaps the more common and deadly practice, however, is to use even the deepest truths of God to serve our own prideful pursuit of platform and prominence. Because we are in a culture that makes “Idols” out of men and women who can sing, people naturally put talented worship leaders in the rock-star limelight. This is a very tempting place to be as a worship leader, as that sort of public appreciation can be intoxicating.