A lot of worship musicians are scared of the word “performance.” They’ll say something like this: “playing in a worship band is not a performance – we’re worshipping God with our voices and instruments! Make sure you’re playing for The One!” … or something like that.

However, I have some news for anyone who has ever stood on a stage and sung or played worship music: it’s totally a performance.

Let’s start this discussion by defining what I mean by “performance.” Here’s a Dictionary.com definition of the word Performance:

• a musical, dramatic, or other entertainment presented before an audience.
• the act of performing a ceremony, play, piece of music, etc.

By that definition, when we lead worship … we’re standing on a stage, playing for others. We’re mic’d up and plugged in. We practiced and rehearsed.

Guess what? Our worship time at a church is very definitely a performance.

So now that we’ve cleared that up… let’s toss in a small caveat. Yes, it’s a performance. But the performance is not the end goal.

And that’s the HUGE difference between a concert and a worship time at church. With a concert, the end goal is the music – playing it well, hoping attendees enjoy it. But during a worship set, the music plays a role in the end goal … but it’s very definitely NOT the focus of the worship time. The real end goal is to worship God.

Here’s a better way to say it: the end goal is not the performance; it’s the participation. Our goal is to get people to engage with God. It’s performance, but with a separate, very focused, purpose.

Our goal as worship musicians is to make the songs that we play easily singable! It’s why worship music isn’t usually all that difficult to play – there aren’t many weird musical leaps in the songs. The words tend to have a single focal point … and we project the words on huge screens on the wall so people can easily see them.

Why? Because our goal is to lead a large group of people in musically-focused worship. Our performance elements should all point to the end goal of engaging the congregation in worship, and in pointing them to God. 

Don’t let the performance get in the way of worship. Yes, we need to nail the song. But if the worship leader feels that we need to hang for a moment, to get quiet, to re-sing a chorus. Even if it’s different than the original… that’s great. Because our goal is isn’t to nail the song exactly as written. It’s to worship.

One other side of this to think about – too much personal worship vs leading worship:

I love this quote from Paul Baloche: “But, it’s important to realize that when we’re leading worship we’re more like a waiter. It’s not our turn to sit down and eat our dinner. We may worship, but we actually have a role at that moment, and our job is to wait on others—to serve others at that point. We have to be willing to give up a little bit of our overwhelming connection with God and connect with Him through serving of His people.”

So again – when we play in a worship band on a Sunday morning … it is very definitely a performance. But it’s a performance with a purpose: to help lead the congregation in corporate worship (not personal worship).

Hope this helps someone struggling with that weird word … performance!