I write books about chaos, freedom and right-brain bursts, so it is probably no surprise that the church worship group I lead is not exactly run like a “tight ship”. Our team is full of young musicians who passionately love God and his Kingdom but also refuse to be confined to the oppressive prevailing winds of polished church perfection. While it’s a no-brainer to want excellence and skill, we get off the boat when anyone tries to guide us into becoming more produced or slick, fearing that the end of that road is something utterly sterile and unreal. Each Sunday morning as we leaf through our pages of Chris Tomlin, Tim Hughes, Delirious and now Jesus Culture songs, we are clearly far more intent on following our hearts than we are the current version of the rules of engagement between worship teams and audiences. The only requirement we universally honor is that of having our hearts on board to serve the people by helping them rise up on wings of fresh, raw, real worship each week.
And, may I say that it is working? Each one of us almost every Sunday stand amazed at the synergistic thing that comes forth from our platform. Musical bridges regularly become prophetic moments in which an instrument or a voice brings out something unplanned bearing the now word from heaven for the morning. We all seem to be discovering the Holy Spirit as the primary member of our team and we honestly (and I don’t say this proudly, but rather full of humble gratitude…) seem to have left the days of dry worship so far behind that we honestly can’t even remember them. No one gives big speeches or pep talks and we hardly ever even pray together before the service (I know I just severely shocked some readers), but we have created a culture in which God is primary and both freedom and servanthood are balanced in support of each other. Something is just going quite right. People are finding a safe harbor in our worship and lives are being effected—both Christian and pre-Christian! Our ground rule has been: always, like God, look at the heart of every person or situation.
Because of this momentum, we are generating a buzz and now many people who are new to our team are coming on board this loosely run ship of freedom. And so, we are facing for the first time a new challenge: defining who we are and what we are doing to people new to our worship team culture so as to make room for them and yet preserve the precious thing that has emerged among us. And that need is what landed a few leaders around my dining room table late last evening for a discussion we have never needed to have before. One leader in particular had particularly been asking himself the important questions before he came to the discussion. He had been thinking back over his formative years as a musician, especially remembering the years he suffered through endless requirements for conformity and tense interpretations of “submitting to worship team authority” (it was another era then). He realized that he had no desire to return to such a performance-oriented and creativity-squelching culture, but he also feared a future that looked like a free-for-all. If you truly say, “Come one, come all…be free and worship…” and there is no cohesive vision AND no hearts wrapped around it through relational connections, then disintegration could quickly ensue. This leader stood at the crossroads that all honest leaders eventually discover: the desire for freedom balanced by the honest—and holy—fear of anarchy.
As we talked, even though we are all intelligent people and I especially have volumes of words to say about the subject of leadership and culture (emergence as a scientific reality always informs me in every issue), words didn’t come easy and there was a sense that we were dealing with one of those age-old paradoxes. Without verbalizing it, we all agreed that “only in God is the coincidence of opposites.” Every time we are faced with a paradox, we are driven back to the Spirit realm and the need for a God who can actually lean into two “opposing” truths at once. Freedom and conservatism….acceptance of each other just as we are but acknowledging we are being summoned to a higher level….complete openness to people but complete impenetrability to their “extra” ideas…constant change coexisting with the eternal unchanging absolutes….all of these things that I can’t reconcile especially when I try with my limited mind….all of these things are at peace in Him. All I really need is a look at God in the real-time moment to know how to proceed, trusting Him that in the next moment if the situation changes, he will communicate then, too.
The word “structure” had been thrown around throughout the discussion, as if the most notable characteristic of our worship team had been the lack thereof. So, it was an obvious thought that perhaps the missing element was just some structure--a loose one, but still a structure—rules, guidelines and procedures—anything on paper that would protect the DNA as we grew. Suddenly, the same leader I described above said, “The word structure is not really right…” And when he said it, I heard myself answer: “No—we need SYSTEMS! What we need are workable SYSTEMS for helping new people fit into the flow.” The corporate air seemed to clear as we together realized that the times of greatest success in our history were not when we followed what little rules we do have to a “t”, but rather when we succeeded relationally at connecting with new people and imparting to them who we are. We didn’t need to create a structure when none existed. We needed instead to define the SYSTEMS that were already working, often unconsciously.
This may sound like semantics to some, but I assure you the implications of it are very real. Structure is scaffolding in the hopes of life-flow while systems are the paths that life-flow has already taken. Our structures can exist without God while systems are the very tracings of where He has walked among us. Structures give us confidence in the flesh (I am the leader—you obey the rules) while systems give us confidence in the unseen realm and the incredible orchestration employed by a God who owns it all. Structures hope for effectiveness while systems generate it. It’s a big deal. What are the rules and requirements for being on a worship team? If those are heart issues more than outward conformity, how can those be anything but systems?
In a structure, I can demand that your physical body be at a certain number of practices but I have no jurisdiction over your heart. In a system, I can expect you to be in relationship with a team leader throughout the week, communicating your status, good or bad and being loved no matter what. If you don’t show up for practice, you will be contacted by someone who wants to call you back to worship rather than someone who wants to exclude you because you didn’t follow the rules. For a living organism—like the church—systems are a higher level of function than structure. A child needs structure—an adult needs systems. Children can only comply with a simple command, but an adult can hear the subtleties of intention and give a whole-life response.
So, our mission is clear. It is not to put a structure on an amazing dynamic life-flow of worship and by doing so risk lessening its energy. Our mission is instead to learn to articulate and communicate the systems of God’s hidden order that lie just underneath the surface of our successful function. We know some of the hallmarks of those systems already: relationship; authenticity; being more impressed with heart than natural abilities; being completely unimpressed with position or political clout; humility; honesty; preferring one another; whole-life worship; finding God in the unexpected moments; being open always to His prophetic whisperings; treating every meeting like a clean slate….In the end, I think we now realize that SYSTEMS of life will both demand more trust AS WELL AS provide more rewards than comforting structures that generate immediate data and direction and give us the illusion we’ve got it all figured out.
So, I’ll let you know how it goes. It’s an emergent phenomenon. As Michael Buble sings like Frank Sinatra before him, “The best is yet to come….” We are simply participating with what wants to manifest and it’s great to be along for the ride.
