I am a pastor of a local church, and one of my interests is Christian worship or Christian liturgy, the history of Christian liturgy. The praise and worship movement placed a big emphasis on music being the primary thing in worship that mediates the presence of God. In fact, when people today ask the question, “what's the worship like at your church?” one of the reasons you know that they're probably referring to the worship band, or what kind of music is played—the style of the music—is because this movement placed such an emphasis on worship being equated with music in the liturgy or in the context of the service.
When Did Music Become Such an Important Part of Worship?
The verse that was often appealed to by this movement was Psalm 22:3, which says that God inhabits the praises of his people: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.” Praise and worship music came to be seen as the vehicle that mediated the presence of God to the church. This emphasis on music resulted, as you can imagine, in prolonged times of congregational singing and the repetition of choruses until God's presence could really be felt by the worshiper. This is all starting to heat up post World War II in more charismatic churches, but by the ’90s, many churches and denominations had adopted this style of worship with its emphasis on music. Now, if the praise and worship movement was about attracting the presence of God through our singing, the contemporary worship movement—which is a different thing but related in many respects—was about attracting people to the church through the liturgy. This is sort of the perennial issue right now: How do we get people interested in church?
There was a real concern that many people were no longer going to church, no longer interested in church. And so the church needed to change its service in order to make worship appealing again. Now, before you criticize that or before we criticize that too heavily. We should at least acknowledge that the underlying desire here is to see people connect with Jesus. For the contemporary worship movement, mission was key, and the church slowly became about how to reach non-Christians. You can trace this all the way back to Charles Finney and his New Measures. Finney lived in the 1800s, and essentially, he believed that God hadn't established any rules for how to worship. Each generation has to discover its own new ways of worship that would stir the contemporary non-believers, the people around them.
There was a real zeal to reach the lost, whatever it took, and in time, that gave birth to seeker sensitivity and the sort of precision marketing that led to the church growth movement and megachurches in the 1980s.
What Is the Role of the Worship Leader?
Now, in all of this, where does the worship leader fit in? Well, the book I mentioned earlier talks about a few of the widespread practices that became commonplace in the praise and worship movement. The first of them was having a musical worship leader—not a minister of the word of God or of the sacraments, that is, a pastor—perform the central role in directing a congregation's liturgical activity. This musician, the worship leader, was normally assisted by a team of vocalists as well as by other instrumentalists. These musicians had the responsibility to guide and direct the congregation's liturgical participation. The historical novelty of this practice has been the displacement of the minister responsible for the word, whether preacher, pastor, elder, presbyter, or bishop, as the main leader of a congregation's worship. Younger Christians may not recognize this praise and worship practice as a novelty, since it became widespread so quickly that they may never have seen the older practice. The elevation of musicians, literally in terms of the liturgical space and metaphorically in terms of their central role as liturgical leaders, was a natural outgrowth of the theologizing taking place in the praise and worship.
In other words, even though many, if not most churches throughout the United States today have a worship band or a worship leader, that's actually something that's really new. Prior to the 1940s, you didn't have this kind of thing in the same way.
Now, that's not to say that it's bad, but we need to grapple with the fact that in the 20th century, the worship leader, at least as we know it, was a new church ministry or office that dropped out of the sky, and the worship leader's job was to lead people into the presence of God through song selections and prolonged times of praise and worship. And you may not realize this, but that's a very priestly role. In the Old Testament, it was the priests who mediated God's presence through the rites of divine worship that Moses had received. As music came to be seen as the primary way we experience God's presence, in the 20th century, worship leaders became a new kind of priesthood to serve the church—and, really, no one seemed to notice.
Reconsidering How We Are Led in Worship
Now, does that mean that worship leaders aren't biblical? I want to be really careful here. You, of course, had song leaders in the Old Testament, and certainly in the New Testament church. There was the singing of psalms and hymns to Christ. The focus here was never on a performance or a show, but congregational singing for the benefit of the whole body. Practically speaking, someone has to lead the singing. And ordinarily, in the history of Christian liturgy, that was the person who was presiding over the liturgy, the minister or the priest. So maybe you're wrestling through this question: is a worship leader biblical? Maybe you're a worship leader and you've stumbled across this video and you're wondering, what should I do? You need to understand that historically, ordering the liturgy, these songs that were chosen, this was something that typically fell into the hands of the minister—someone who had been ordained by the church, set apart to this particular office, had studied theology and Scripture, and so forth.
I think one warning, one danger, is that oftentimes we can put people in positions of leadership or before the congregation who have a kind of teaching or priestly function that shouldn't be in that position. And I'm not saying that's you, but I think it's something to take very seriously. As we're thinking about guiding the congregation in worship and what's taking place. We also need to get away from this idea that music is the primary way we get to feel God's presence or experience God's presence. The whole liturgy is God meeting with us through his word and promises, and especially in the preaching of the Word and in the Lord's Supper that we partake of as Jesus instituted it. This is where we experience the presence of God together with our singing and worshiping of the Lord. These are some of the things I think we really need to recover as we move forward.
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This is a transcription of Sola Media’s video: “A Brief History of the 'Worship Leader. '” You can watch the whole episode here.
