The Worship Committee
With the exception of the altar guild, the worship committee is the most powerful group in the church, and usually more visibly so than the altar guild, since they do their business during the public assemblies of the congregation. In the denomination to which I belong, the worship committee can usually be read: “choir.” This is not really how it should be, but often is anyway. Worship is always greater than the choir. There are many more components to it, no matter the particular spin your church puts on worship (formal, informal, “high church,” free-spirited, etc.). The choir is there only to facilitate everyone’s singing by either leading them or drowning them out, as well as to enhance everyone’s overall worship experience. But a lot of choirs have lost sight of that. Their perceived role in the worship experience is to lift the souls of the congregation in stirring flights of rapturous musical delight… which in effect amounts to nothing more than a glorified—and perhaps glorious—performance. That is not the duty of the choir. Nor is it the objective of the worship committee. The worship experience is for paying attention to God: it provides a time for the people of God to focus their collective attention on God’s majesty and providence. It is a time for re-tuning, returning, and recommitment. Worship is not intended to be something that is evaluated in terms of “What did I get out of it?” Regrettably, that little fine point is lost in many worship committee’s deliberations.
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