Home Worship & Creative Leaders Articles for Worship & Creative An Open Letter to Restless Worship Leaders

An Open Letter to Restless Worship Leaders

An Open Letter to Restless Worship Leaders

Dear Restless Worship Leader,

I have had hundreds of conversations with worship leaders about wanting, needing or having to relocate. It’s been my observation that a couple of common threads are contributing to this restless desire and/or mandate to find another ministry position. Ironically, neither of those root causes are musical or stylistic issues.

My first observation is there is often confusion between calling and convenience. The primary question you must ask is, “Am I called to do this…not just here, but anywhere?” A calling is a personal invitation from God to carry out a unique task. It is a strong inner impulse prompted by conviction of divine influence and it’s not always convenient.

So what is compelling you to do what you do? Convenience responds with, “This is what I was trained to do.” Calling responds with, “This is what I was created to do.” If you are leading worship just because you love to play and sing; because you need to supplement your income; because you enjoy being up-front or because you are not trained to do anything else, then your compulsion might be out of convenience instead of calling.

If, however, you are divinely called to lead worship and believe God also called you to your present place of ministry, then a secondary question you must ask before considering a move is, “Has God released me from my call here?” Even when another place of ministry seems more convenient, appealing, challenging, fulfilling and rewarding you must be reminded that God did not promise you’d always be happy, revered, loved, appreciated or followed. So, until God releases you to go…stay.

My second observation is that musical talent and platform presence may help you secure a worship leader position but developing leadership skills will help you keep it. In fact, the root cause of forced termination is often relational and rarely musical. And yet, where are you spending most of your worship leadership preparation time? You’ll never be able to teach enough new songs to make up for relationship and leadership failures.

Leading music doesn’t necessarily equate to leading people. Meaningful relationships develop as you place more focus on the people than the project. Don’t leave relationships in your wake as you move toward the end result since the process with people is just as important as the end result. What will your congregants remember most about your worship leadership…how you led them musically on the platform or how you treated them on the way to and from the platform?

It may indeed be time for you to consider a new place of ministry. But that change of venue alone might not settle your restlessness. Until you consider the previous observations and others, you may again experience the same discontent after a couple of years in that new place of ministry.

This article originally appeared here.