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What's more God-honoring? Planning or Spontaneity? Which one is more important in a Worship Service?
Questions meant to provoke contemplation, and encourage discussion with your team, all in less than 10 minutes. For worship leaders, production directors and anyone involved in making Sunday services happen.
(00:03):
Welcome to volunteer friendly episode four planning versus spontaneity. My name is will Doggett. Thanks so much for joining me. Uh, the volunteer friendly show is all about questions, uh, thoughts that we can contemplate on our own discuss with our team, uh, that will make us go, is this something we should start doing? Stop doing? Why did we do this in the first place? And if you're a worship leader, production person involved in making a Sunday service happen, then this show is for you. Now the past few episodes, uh, I felt the heat, even personally, for me, as I'm talking about them, I'm going do your best will to not express your personal opinion, cuz this show is not about a platform for me to share my own personal ministry philosophy, but it's all about providing a thought provoking question or, or thing, uh, to get you contemplating on your own and discussing with your team.
(00:53):
Uh, but the past few episodes have been pretty it's it's heated up. Right? Um, and so, uh, today's episode I think is gonna continue in that vein, but maybe not as, as heated. Um, but as I always say, uh, at the end of this, I'll provide some processing questions for you and if you want those in PDF form, then you can go to volunteer friendly.com search for episode four, cuz this is episode four. Uh, and you can find those questions, processing questions as a PDF to help you contemplate and help you with your team. And, and the other thing, I don't think I've done a great job of mentioning this in previous episodes so far, uh, but you can head to volunteer friendly and on each one of those individual episode pages, uh, you can comment comment publicly. Uh, you don't have to be a from studio to stage subscriber to do that, but you can comment publicly and have a discussion publicly about what you feel and how you feel about that is I often say at the end of the show, uh, or try to remember to say at the end of the show, I'm not after you presenting your opinion as gospel truth, but you just saying, here's what this stirred up in me.
(01:54):
Here's what I'm thinking about that. So now let's get to it today. We're talking about planning versus spontaneity. Now I, uh, sit kind of in the middle of us and that comes from both my experiences, being a worship leader, being out front, being a musician who, uh, values improvisation over playing the chart from top to bottom, uh, and also being a production person who has programmed lights, who has created lyrics and pro presenter, uh, who has sync shows together using Ableton, uh, and uh, in situations where I value planning and preparation and working with people who value spontaneity. So what I wanna do in this, um, particular episode is I wanna just kind of talk through that planning versus spontaneity. What's more important to you, um, are you in a situation and what, what I love, um, what I'm so grateful and thankful to God for is I've had experiences and churches that are small churches that are big churches, that highly value spontaneity and following, uh, what they feel is the spirit, prompting them to do a particular song, to repeat a particular part of a song, but I've also worked with, and in churches that, um, planning is, is Trump's spontaneity preparation and having a plan and sticking to that plan, Trump's spontaneity.
(03:05):
And they feel as if that honors God, you know, uh, above spontaneously, uh, going somewhere, uh, I've been in places where, uh, they have felt that, uh, worship that is spontaneous is more authentic than worship that is planned. And listen to this, you, you hear me say that or watching this, if you're watching on YouTube or from studio H TV, you may be going, um, well I'm in that camp, you know, uh, worship, that's an acoustic guitar. That's completely spontaneous is way more authentic, way more honoring to God than pre playing worship. That's synced and automated and using Ableton to control lights and lyrics and video and all those sorts of things. You, you may be in a situation where you hear that and you go, yeah, but will spontaneous for people that are just crazy. You know, they they're just like, Hey, whatever I wanna do, I'm gonna do there.
(03:47):
Um, maybe they're lazy, they haven't prepared. And so in that moment, they're choosing spontaneity over remembering what the lyric is, cuz they forgot what it is. Right. And I'm not saying either of those things are true and I'm not saying either of those things just presenting them as experiences I've had. I'm presenting them as, as conversations I've had. And again, I've worked in churches where again, spontaneity is a super high value and I've worked in churches. We're planning in preparation as a super high value. Um, I think for most of us, uh, whether you see this now or whether you believe this now, I think for most of us, we probably feel like both of these are super important. Right? Um, I don't know a lot of people that just step on stage on Sunday morning without a song list, without some sort of preparation, uh, and just wing it right.
(04:30):
And just go for it because the reality is most of us step on stage, even as a solo worship leader, we're still interfacing with, um, with other people we're interfacing with a pro presenter person, we're interfacing with a lighting person maybe, or interfacing with a pastor that has a message that has a theme. Uh, and so we can't, most of us can't just get up and just kind of, uh, go rogue and do whatever we want to. And again, I'm not trying to present that as right or wrong. So if you're watching this, listening to this and that's what you do again, I'm not trying to say you're wrong in that. I'm just saying most of us are in that situation. But, um, what I've seen more often than not is this general tendency. And I wrote this down to make sure I communicated this because again, I have experience, you can see right over there.
(05:13):
There's my degree from Liberty university as a, or my diploma, I guess what you call it, uh, for worship music, uh, ministry degree. And I spent, uh, five year years of my life, if, if not more, definitely more before college, but about five after leading worship, being the person out front with an acoustic guitar. And again, as I mentioned, um, as a just musician, just guitar player, I highly value improvisation over playing, you know, the song as written. And I think in my experience, and I'd be interested sitting know if you feel the same way and you can go to volunteer friendly.com comment on again, episode four. That's what we're on comment on the post there. But I tend to think, uh, worship leaders, musicians tend to value spontaneity over planning. Now that's not everyone that doesn't mean you don't plan. I have just found in my experience both as a worship leader, both as worship, but working with worship leaders that tends to be that worship leaders value spontaneity, uh, as a super high thing.
(06:14):
Now, again, it depends on your denomination on, uh, what church you're a part of what movement you're a part of where spontaneity may be super valuable and then somewhere it's not super valuable. It may not even be allowed. I've been in churches where it's like, this is the plan, stick to it. Anything other than that, we excommunicate. It's not that far, but you know what I mean? But it, it tends to be worship leaders, uh, highly value spontaneity. And here's the reverse side of this because I, so you know, now I'm a production, uh, person. I do broadcast, uh, broadcast director at my church here in Austin, um, was a creative director in Florida. Tech, uh, director in Florida led the, the production track at oceans edge school worship. I've done a lot of production. I've done a lot of leading, um, and music as worship.
(06:54):
Well, that's a whole nother subject. We'll come to an later episode, but, um, production and tech folks tend to value planning. And I actually wrote, and I should mark this out because that, um, that shows my opinion. I said, they tend to overvalue planning and preparation because here's what I've seen. And this is why I wanna present this. And this is, this is why the show is not worship and tech and it's not worship leaders and production people. And it's not just for production people. And it's not just for worship people because we have to work together, right? There's, there's no scenario where we walk into church and we just, as a worship leader, do our thing and it has no impact on production. And there's no scenario where production team walks in and drives the whole experience. And it has no impact on people that are, uh, on stage leading worship, looking towards the kind congregation, right?
(07:39):
Uh, I believe it was Carlos Whitaker that used to always say that the worship leader leads looking towards the congregation, you know, the lead from the stage out and the production person leads worship from, you know, the back of the room towards the stage, right? That's kind of how they're leading worship. Both. They're leading worship again, another topic for another day, but I tend to see again, that worship leaders tend to vice spontaneity production. People tend to value, uh, planning and preparation. And I've seen the corruption of those. I've seen to where worship leaders value spontaneity so much that it, it breaks down their relationship with production. And I've seen where production, uh, uh, values. And I would say even overvalue planning and preparation so much that disrupts their relationship with worship leaders. I don't wanna a solution here. I want to keep living in that tension and provide us as we wrap up here, three processing questions that you can one contemplate on your own and discuss with your team.
(08:29):
Again, if you want a PDF download of these, go to volunteer, friendly.com, search your episode four, and you can find these and download for you to contemplate on your own and discuss with your team. So here we go. Number one is worship that is spontaneous, more honoring to God than worship that is planned. And I know though the term worship is ambiguous will dig into that maybe in a later episode, but I'm talking particular about a worship service. The thing that happens on Sunday or Wednesday or Saturday corporate worship service is worship in that sense, that is spontaneous, more honoring, more authentic. If you wanna throw that in, um, to God than worship, that is planned. Okay. Number two, does planning worship and sticking to the plan quench the spirit. Number two does planning worship again, talking about worship service, corporate worship service does planning a corporate worship service and sticking to the plan, quench the spirit.
(09:20):
That's gonna be a touchy one for some churches, some people, number three, are we pursuing here's, here's one. That's gonna ring home for a lot of folks and we're gonna have to deal with, are we pursuing planning or spontaneity more out of comfort or conviction? Are we that valuing and pursuing and, and preaching, uh, planning or preaching value and spontaneity more out of our own comfort than we are conviction. So if you want those three questions, again, head to volunteer, friendly.com search for episode four, you can download that PDF to share amongst you and your team. You can share it freely once you get it. Um, and if you want, want to then head to volunteer friendly search for episode, uh, four to join in the conversation and chat in the comments. Thanks for joining me this week for this week's episode. I hope you enjoy living in that tension, working through this together, uh, cause I'm doing the same thing and it's fun and it's challenging, but I'll see you next week. Have a great week. We'll see you next week, Thursday at 10:00 AM central take buddy.