7 Reasons Why Your Music Stand Sucks (the Life Out of Your Worship), Part 1
By Jon Nicol
Being on vacation this past week, I was able to be led by a different worship team. One thing has been bothering me about my own team, and I saw it clearly with this other team: music stands are killing our worship.
In fact, I want to go so far to say music stands are the bane of worshipful platform presence.
Here are seven reasons music stands suck the life out of our worship:*
1. It’s a visual barrier between you and those you’re leading.
Most musician's plant the stand firmly between themselves and the congregation they’re supposed to be leading. The higher the stand, the more it disconnects.
Solution: Memorize your music or use stage display/confidence monitors.
Partial solution: Push your stand low and move it to your side. This is fairly easy if you’re a vocalist or a non-singing instrumentalist. If you’re a singing instrumentalist tied to a boom stand, you might need to consider outright memorization.
2. You’re giving it more attention than you are the congregation.
and...
3. You’re giving it more attention than you are God.
Or at least it looks that way to the congregation.
Maybe for God, too. But I won’t speak for Him.
So besides the visual barrier between you and the congregation, now you have a relational barrier. You’re apparently enraptured by whatever that black piece of tilting steel is displaying.
Are we really meaning to spoon our music stand while excluding God and congregation?
No. It’s just that #4 is so true. But, unfortunately, you'll have to wait till tomorrow to find out what #4 is. As well as #5, #6 and #7.
Between now and then, let me know what you think:
Music stands...thumbs up?...thumbs down?
Are they a necessary evil or a tyrant to overthrow? If the former, how do you avoid the "stand zombie" effect. If the latter, how have you conquered the foe?
Here are a few other articles that you might like to read on this subject:
- Fright Reading - One of the 11 Deadly Sins of the Worship Team. It'll teach you how to spot and kill Stand Zombies.
- Kick Your Charts to the Curb, Part 1 and Part 2. A two-part article on memorization I wrote for WorshipMinistry.com.
- Learning Versus Knowing a Song. Go one step beyond 'learning'...
*Just a brief note so I don’t come off sounding “judge-y”. I direct this blog to you – but know that this you is one of those 360° you’s. It’s universally swinging full circle to kick my tail, too.
June 11, 2012
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