Technical vs Spiritual?

I haven't been thinking about this thing for a long time...today, while talking to YH, I had a revelation.

Technical vs Spiritual. For as long as I can remember and as far as the people I know of that're in worship ministry in churches, people have always been putting 'Musician level' and 'able to lead people into worship' together. Which.....I think it's not exactly wrong...but....not exactly right at the same time......

To be a good worship team, you need to be able to work together to lead the congregation to worship... that's the main aim of the team I suppose....and that's what people term as, 'spirituality'. However, there's another school of thought which proposes the team to be technically good as well...therefore, 'technical'. I mean, nobody wants to worship to shitty music right?

Tonight I realised it's actually 2 different issues altogether....the spirituality of the worship team itself...and the technical prowess of the individual musicians in the team.


The spirituality of the whole team is very important in the worship ministry as it's their job to bring people into God's presence. Therefore, everyone has be united and be strong spiritually and whatever whatever. I mean, the musicians themselves can play like shit and make it sound nice, fine with me, as long as people get worship quality music.

It is actually okie for a worship team to be moderately proficient with their instruments and able to lead people into the Presence...but...why would they stop there? I mean, wouldn't the individual musicians want to improve and make the whole worship experience better? Nobody said technicality and spirituality are mutually exclusive anyway... However...from my previous experience with TPMC, I realised most people are kinda resistant to improving themselves. Why? I wouldn't know...maybe their afraid they'll become too technical? Are they lazy? Are they just serving for the sake of serving? Looking cool? Afraid they'll be branded as worshipping their instruments? (Like I did - Yes, I was branded as worshipping my instrument. Behind my back.)

What are the individual musicians thinking? Just knowing how to play a few chords, bringing decent music to the masses is good enough? Think about it...would you think you're actually doing what God has intended for you to do? (If you're supposed to be in the worship ministry as a musician in the first place) Are you sure He wants you to just be able to play a few chords here and there and sound decent? C'mon man, God loves to see flashy display of His gifts to you man...He wants people to KNOW THAT YOU ARE PLAYING FOR GOD AND YOUR GIFT IS FROM HIM man...do you want people to think that , 'wow, he's playing for God and God has only given him these pathetic skills to fool around with' or 'man, what's he doing with God's gift for him? His God must be a lousy one to give him such sucky skills'. I'm pretty sure when God wants you to play something, He wants it to be so amazing that people know that it must be from Him.
If musicians of the secular can be so good...why not God's musicians? Is our God so weak that He can only produce sucky musicians to be in his worship ministries? Is our God so weak that His followers don't give a hoot about His gifts to them?

You must be thinking I'm bein' very technical here...but no, I never said to neglect the spiritual side of worshipping... Think about this way...if you only know G C D chords, God can only work thru you with those 3 pathetic chords. However, if you know a hellotta chords, God can have more fun with your worship cuz you know alot more stuff...makes sense? Makes sense doesn't it? If your mastery of your instrument is there, God can definitely do more wonderful stuff through you, don't you think?

But then again, if not all the individual musicians in the team think that way, there'll definitely be problems...about people not wanting to learn parts, not wanting to explore new ways of playing old songs and blah blah, thus causing tension and strife and watever negative thing you can think of. That's why I say, if you think the team is not for you, just leave. Don't spoil the whole worship experience for other people just because the team isn't united at all.

Enough of ranting I suppose....It's all individual, if people are content with just goin' thru the motions, looking cool, and slacking away and wasting God's gift...so be it. I'll just continue to honor God by honouring His gift to me. Who knows? Maybe next time I can reach out to people through my wonderful guitar playing :)



Man...long post....2.39am in the morning. Time to sleep. I miss my baby.