What do worship leaders do most of the day was the question from last week and one of the items I mentioned was memorizing music. I’ve always been a firm believer of the importance of memorizing music to move us to be less distracting during worship (not having our faces buried in our music stand and being able to smile, etc.) but had forgotten about the flip side of actually becoming a distraction if we’ve attempted to memorize the music but haven’t been thorough about it.
Worship leader and songwriter Dan Cogan has posted two articles in a series on leading worship without music over at Worship Ministry that I think are definitely worth checking out. He mentions how his pastor wanted to make sure that the congregation came first in the situation:
His focus was the same as mine: removing as many distractions as possible. That goal has a twin–not BECOMING a distraction! And if I got too far ahead of myself with the memorization project I could quickly become just the thing I’m trying to remove: a distraction.
This seems obvious to me now, but I had never thought about it that way! I’d definitely recommend reading the rest of both of his articles; some good insight to be found there.
What have you done, with the intention of minimizing distraction, that has actually become a distraction?
(photo by billaday)
