My Church Gig

 I’m mourning the end of Battlestar Galactica.  We used to hang out Friday nights so tonight feels especially empty.

So who’s the guy in the tub?  That’s Anders in a scene that was especially meaningful to me.  For the monologue, not the tub.  Anders has a flashback to an interview when he was a sports star.  Lady asks if he’d consider his career incomplete if his team never won a championship.  Dude replies in stunning clarity why he’s not in it for the win.

Here’s a clip.

Some of the script loosely transcribed:

Look, you wanna know the truth?  I don’t really care about the stats or the cup or the trophy or anything like that … in fact the game’s not that important to me, not really.  What matters to me is the perfect throw, okay? Making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block.  It’s perfection. That’s what it’s about.  It’s about those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation, the beauty of physics, the wonder of mathematics, you know?  The, the elation of action and reaction, and that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to.

Do you feel this way about anything you do?  I feel it in just about everything I get involved in.  I notice that most people don’t.  That doesn’t make anyone better than anyone else; just differently gifted.  A lot of my friends share the same sentiment and passion in their jobs and artistic endeavors.

There is a certain perfection, beauty, and wonder that can be found in anything we do; sports, visual art, music, programming, design… mixing worship.  People might see your passion, mistake it for perfectionism then get confused when you don’t nit-pick the details.  What you’re looking for are moments of elation; addictive moments when you feel connected to something deeper, greater, and invisible that has nothing and everything to do with you’re doing all at the same time.  I crave those moments of Godly Zen when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There have been many moments at Cornerstone when the chemistry on stage was perfect, the faders seemed to have moved themselves under my fingers, and the payoff of a chorus or bridge sounded so good I wanted to pee my pants.  Even more stunning are those same kinds of moments when the congregation sings out, the music and voices blend in the air, you swear you hear angels in the overtones, and you feel the presence of God himself.  That’s usually when I want to crap my pants.

Really spiritual types love to point out that those moments have nothing to do with the band, the worship leader, the sound system, the mix… because they are spiritual and transcendent.  On one hand you’re right to think so.  On the other hand you’re really, really wrong too.  The worship leader, the guitar player, the guy behind the console, the visuals on the screens – they can all absolutely ruin those moments or prevent them from ever happening.  If you’re using any sort of technology for worship it [darned] well does have something to do with the spiritual quality of the worship experience no matter how transcendent some moments are.

If you hang around a Cornerstone Thursday evening rehearsal you might think we’re all obsessed with perfection.  Band members practice songs for hours before rehearsals, rehearsals can even get nit-picky, and we spend the whole time dialing in the mix even to the point of asking players to change tones in sections.  After all that we remind everyone what kind of clothes work for video and what doesn’t.  And that’s just the band!  I won’t go into how hard the camera crew trains on Thursdays.  It’s ridiculous.  A fly on the wall might even consider our rehearsals to lack any real spiritual value.  Well, especially when said wall is pulsating with 105dB of 35Hz subsonic love.  Come on a Sunday and you’ll see the spiritual rewards of mundane, hard work.

With all of that said, I love the chemistry I have with the people I work with.  I often get to feel moments like Anders described.

The challenge I’m gonna put out there is this:  what habits, personal preferences, notions, style… what, if anything at all, do you have that prevents synergistic moments of worship happen in your situation?  Remember, great moments of worship want to happen.  If they’re not happening then something is preventing it.  It’s not about what you can add, like a bigger sound system; it’s about what obstacles you can remove.  Be brave enough to ask a brave friend what they think.  If you can think of anything like say, “my guitar tone is so frign awesome, I point my AC60 at the congregation so the sound guy can’t mess it up,” then cut it out.  Get with the Godly Zen and contribute to something greater than yourself.