Anybody Listening?

This is from a book called The Heart of the Artist, by Rory Noland:

One topic I should address, because it comes up at nearly all my seminars, is the policy some churches have of paying their volunteer musicians regularly. I'll address the issue as it pertains to musicians, because that fits my experience, and you can make further applications to other areas of the arts.

If your church is trying to build a team of committed artists, I would strongly recommend that you not get into the habit of regularly paying musicians for their services. It undermines your efforts to build a team. First of all, if you're teaching that every role on your team is important and that all members need to pull their own weight for the common good, yet you pay some people but not all people, that's a contradiction. Secondly, it clouds motivation. Am I serving on this team because this is where God is calling me and wants to use me or because I am paid well? Thirdly, it hurts team morale. It can be demoralizing for team members to make the sacrifice needed for the team, only to find out that someone else is getting paid to make the same kind of sacrifice. While there is a precedence in Scripture for paying a church music staff (1 Chron. 9:33), there is no precedence for paying volunteers. Besides, in the new priesthood of believers everybody does the work of ministry, not just a chosen few.

I wish I could share with you one example of a church that regularly pays volunteers and is successfully building a team of committed artists, but I can't, because the two work against each other. I have yet to meet a church music director who's paying his or her volunteers and feels good about it. Instead, what I get most often are phone calls from music directors who have inherited ministries in which the practice of paying volunteers regularly has been in place for years, and now they're experiencing all sorts of conflicts as they try to expand their ministries and take their musicians to that next level of commitment. Paying people doesn't increase commitment. Knowing that God is calling one to ministry makes one more committed. The days of the church-hopping, gigging musician are over. It may have been nice money on the side, but it doesn't serve the musician well at all. It prevents the person from participating fully at any one church because he or she is spread among several. You can't serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). You can't reap the full benefits of serving in community if you're not committed to one church home.

At Willow Creek we might hire some extra string players for Christmas and Easter services, and I've been known to send gas money or baby-sitting money to someone who's putting in time way above and beyond what is expected, but I would never get into the habit of paying volunteers to play. Besides, my vision for our ministry is that we'd see hundreds more artists serving the Lord with their gifts. It would get too expensive to pay all the musicians I believe God wants to bring to our team. In other words, Willow Creek can't afford to pay for the kind of music ministry I think God wants us to have. If you're paying musicians, your music ministry will be only as large as you can afford it to be. I don't want the number of musicians involved in our ministry to be limited by money. I want the Lord to be free to bring to our ministry the number of musicians He wants.

Because we often think of volunteer as an unpaid position by definition, I want to clarify Noland's terminology a bit. By volunteer, he means someone who is a member of a worship band or other musical/artistic group – someone who shows up for rehearsals and participates in worship services – but does not make a vocation out of it. A staff person who is leading a team of musicians has many more responsibilities than this in areas of planning, coordinating, communicating, administration, and discipleship. Here are some further reasons why paying musicians to worship God is a bad idea:

Rory Noland mentioned that it will limit the growth of your ministry team, but it will stunt the growth of your church community as well. Imagine a drummer visiting a church for the first time. He walks in and sees that the band already has a drummer, so he figures his gifts aren't needed there and doesn't come back. Little does he know that the drummer he saw is a paid musician who isn't even a Christian! If you camouflage a need, it will never be met because those who can fill it don't know it's there.

It also hurts the church community at large because the musicians are not a part of the community. If your unbelieving drummer comes in, puts on a good performance, goes outside to make a few calls during the sermon, and never talks to anybody, what's the point? Whom does that serve? If your musicians only show up when they are supposed to be playing and don't participate in other aspects of community, then they are not a part of the worshipping community and are neither fit nor able to lead others into worship.

Noland mentioned mixed motives for paid volunteers, but there is also the issue of flat-out wrong motives. Musicians are called to worship God by playing skillfully to the Lord. If a musician is not a Christian, or is not playing for God, that person is not worshipping with his/her instrument and should not be leading in worship because that is just plain dishonest, and dishonoring to God. Talk about a mockery! Furthermore, if the focus of leadership is more on the quality of the music than the state of the musicians' hearts, that vibe will spill over into the attitude of the congregation. This encourages idolatry and increases the likelihood that people will be coming to worship the music instead of worshipping God.

Lastly, having some people paid and others not confuses the issue of authority. The worship leader asks his band to play for a special service, and the paid members don't want to because they won't be getting paid any extra. Who is really in charge? The worship leader, or the one determining the pay scale? Or the pianist is really the worship leader, but a choir soloist with classical training is paid also – does she have more of a say in decisions than the other choir members? Is that because of her training, or her paycheck?

This is ridiculous, friends. It is outrageous. It is sad. And while I'm not saying anything directly about our particular church, I have to say that I am SO proud of my husband for the way he handles himself in our current context. He continually finds ways to express himself, to communicate God's truth to the congregation, and to humbly and graciously confront the leadership when they need it. When I want to throw up my hands and bail on this place, Colin seizes the opportunity to confront people in genuine love and invite them into repentance and deeper intimacy with Christ.