Nobody Paid to Come See You | What the Team Cannot See E3

You are not a rock star at church. Nobody paid to come see you. And the most gifted person on your team is the one who most needs to hear that. Sometimes that person plays in your band. Sometimes that person mixes your front of house like it is their personal showcase. And sometimes, this is the episode where I have to say it, that person is you.

Our church used to host a volleyball league. Serious players. Referees. And every summer at the church retreat, somebody would say, let's play. Everybody in. Nobody worrying about the rules. It turned into a family thing. And then one of the league players would spike the ball into a sixty-five-year-old grandmother's face, and when we said, whoa, what are you doing, the answer was, I'm not dumbing down this game.

That sand pit is exactly what happens on worship teams. The moment your skill stops serving the room and starts performing at it, you have switched games. The room came to sing together in the sand. You are spiking at grandma.

Peter's instruction in 1 Peter 5:5 is stranger and better than be humble. He says clothe yourselves with humility. The Greek word is egkomboomai, to tie something on, the way a servant tied on an apron before kneeling to work. Peter watched Jesus do exactly that with a towel, the night he washed feet. So this is not humility as a feeling. It is a garment you put on, on purpose, before you pick up the instrument. You tie it on at the console. You tie it on at the center mic. And notice who Peter says it is for. Subject yourselves to one another. The gifted to the ungifted. The seasoned to the new. The platform to the booth.

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Resists is a military word. It means God sets himself in array against. So the most dangerous place a gifted musician can stand is at the top of their own game, opposed by the God they are singing about. The grace flows somewhere else. It flows downhill, to the player who simplified the part so the new bassist could lock in. To the vocalist who came off the melody so the room could carry it.

A question to sit with today: is my skill making it easier for the room to sing, or harder.

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