dean.roberts
From St Paul's, Newport
Yes, I have trawled the internet to find an answer, but alas! There isn't one.
I'm fine with Worship Pastor personally:
The name *can* be misleading, though I think that most people do get what a worship pastor is and they know that worship isn't JUST music. If they don't know that, then I think that those people should learn through the worshipful life of the Worship Pastor!
What do you lot think? Would be interested to know...
I think it's not necessarily the "leader" "pastor" bit that people get touchy about - it's more the "worship" bit of the title I think!
Hi Dean,
Depends how you phrase your question. If you ask "what should a person who leads worship be called?" the inevitable answer will be worship leader. If you ask, "what do call a person that heads up a band and leads congregation singing?" you might get a different answer...
I don't like the term worship leader, though I'm kind of resigned to its use being inevitable. The danger with the term is that it can lead to an overemphasis on music being equated with worship (neglecting things like preaching, prayer, liturgy, etc); on gathered worship being elevated over "life-style worship" (who leads worship where you work, or at home?); or on who it is that really enables us to worship (Jesus, not the guy/girl with the guitar).
Paul
I'm not sure it really matters what they're called. It's what they do and how they lead that matters. The church does get hung up with titles, sometimes!
If you lead worship on Sunday, it's always just been a worship leader for most churches.
If you oversee the ministry as a whole, sometimes worship or musical director. If you have pastoral oversight for the teams as well as oversight of the ministry, then worship pastor. The title pastor implies you are employed by the church, or work for them on a voluntary basis on something more than a Sunday.
I think that's a fairly common definition...
I'd agree those seem the common definitions, although for me, the title "worship pastor" just implies that you have pastoral oversight for the team, and doesn't necessarily correlate to any employment status. I was a worship pastor for ten years on a voluntary basis. But as I've said, a title doesn't really amount to a great deal of any importance...
My post was intended to look more on this question:
SHOULD we have the title "Worship" leader/director/pastor etc etc.
A recent article by Vicky Beeching on this provoked this question. I'm ok with it myself, but when we think of the actual meaning of Worship, does it convey a wrong message?
These job titles may well convey our inadequate descriptions, and perhaps even a hint of our inadequate understandings of what worship is. They might even help to reinforce wrong assumptions about what worship is within churches. But I honestly think that God is more interested in what we do with our talents than what we call them. And if churches are teaching and discipling regularly on worship, then I'm not sure it matters too much what we call ourselves!
There was a bit of trend a few years back to switch things around and call 'worship leaders' 'lead worshippers' instead. I can kind of see what people were aiming for, but 'lead worshippers' does tend to dilute the strong leadership aspect of worship leading. Not only that, but the very discussion about it became a bit of a distraction in my view!
I completely understand where you're coming from. However, I think Vicky Beeching can put it better than I can!
http://vickybeeching.com/blog/worship-what-do-we-call-it/
Not sure Vicky actually says a whole lot there! But here would be my answers:
> “Worship” is such a time-worn and easy term to describing the act of singing to God. But it’s also quite misleading, and maybe not the best choice. Does it imply that we are only worshiping WHEN we sing?
No. I think that assumption has come about not because we call singing worship, but becasue we don't really encourage the decscription of anything else as worship.
> What about when we aren’t singing? Isn’t that worship too? (Yes – Romans 12)
Yes. See above.
> But we all know and use the phrase “Worship leader” and it’s tricky to find an alternative.
Like I say, it's a perfectly adequate description and we shouldn't get too hung up about it! Corporate sung worship is indeed worship (or at least, an opportunity to do so) so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of finding new terms for corporate singing and those who lead it, maybe we should start calling other activities that aren't singing 'worship', and perhaps even the people who lead them 'worship leaders'!
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we call it worship leader.