9 Ways Spiritual Direction Helps Worship Leaders
I once accepted a position at a church, and immediately walked into a situation where a worship leader burned himself out, and as a result, made some poor decisions in his personal life. There was a lot to clean up in the wake. I’ve spent nearly all my life in white, Evangelical, and Protestant circles where the music in weekly worship service is a really big deal. Because of this, I believe spiritual direction is a tremendous benefit to worship leaders.
Every Christian needs a spiritual director. If you happen to receive a paycheck from a church, doubly so. There are so many layers of expectations and assumptions when you work at a church. Hurt feelings, inflated egos, and spiritual abuse all happen in churches. Worship leaders need spiritual directors.
Robert Mulholland says, “Our religious false self may be rigorous in religiosity, devoted in discipleship and sacrificial in service—without being in loving union with God.” Here are several ways in a which spiritual direction can help remind you that the point is loving union with God.
1. Fund your imagination for worship
I frequently find myself in settings where the word “worship” is equated with the time of singing and music in a corporate service. “Let’s begin our worship” or “Now that worship is over, let’s move to the next part of our service.” But this isn’t how Scripture talks about worship.
I begin every session with a directee with the lectionary psalm reading. It’s a regular reminder that worship is far more than our tension between hymns versus praise choruses or guitar versus organ. Worship is our daily pledged allegiance to the Creator.
2. Accountability in your inner work
If you’ve learned any musical instrument, you know the profound value of paying for lessons with a teacher. Sure, you can be self taught as a musician. There’s also a much deeper place you can go with your skills when you submit to someone who has gone further than you.
Musicianship is a profound metaphor for the life of discipleship with Jesus. Practicing scales is a great picture for the spiritual disciplines. We all need help in our inner work, and a spiritual director can help wrestle with the question: Who are you when you’re not on stage?
3. Learn to be a worship theologian
Every Christian is a theologian. Theology isn’t just for academics. It’s all about how we think and talk about God. Because you stand behind a microphone, you are shaping what people believe about God and how they talk about God. When you pray at a microphone, you’re teaching others how to pray.
The book of James warns, “Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly.” In this podcast, worship leader Ryan Flanigan suggests there is deep wisdom in leaning on the experience of our elders. While many worship leaders I know have not yet had the experience of seminary, a spiritual director can lead you to deep resources about worship like Robert Webber, Alexander Schmemann, Simon Chan, and James K.A. Smith.
4. Discerning Sabbath when you work Sunday
How do you practice a rhythm of Sabbath? Own your part in shaping a culture of healthy self-care among your staff and congregation. As a leader, people are watching you. If you’re burning the candle at both ends and constantly sacrifice your margin space, those around you notice, probably even before you do.
When you take a paycheck from a church, you desperately need to take the initiative to take care of yourself. Your Sabbath rhythm of “6 plus 1” may be an ongoing conversation with your spiritual director as you navigate the reality of feeling like Sunday is a workday for you.
5. A safe place for you questions
The first time my kids threw up it was a huge mess. They didn’t know what to do or where to go when their tummy hurt. Something similar happens to our souls when we’ve neglected wholesome habits. We all need an appropriate and safe place when we have a “spiritual tummy ache.”
From the stage on a Sunday morning is not a healthy place to verbalize your oncoming faith crisis. All of us wrestle with questions and doubts on our spiritual journey. A spiritual director is a safe place to bring those. When you need an outlet to vent frustrations and disappointments with God and the Church, a spiritual director is a holy presence with you.
6. Keeping your ego in check
I’ve heard Ruth Haley Barton say, “A really horrifying moment in ministry is when you realize that you were probably hired for your false self.” When we find ourselves, week in and week out, on a platform behind a microphone, the desire to be a performer is real. But this work is not about you.
The temptation to perform, to put on a costume that covers our true selves, is a normal part of being human. Giving in to it can be costly, and cleaning up the wreckage to your own self and others can be painful. A spiritual director can help you peel back the layers your true self may be covered up in through your own sense of expectations or ambitions.
7. Holding your emotions in perspective
We are all human beings with hearts that feel, minds that think, and bodies that move in the world. Most of us default to major in one of these three, minor in a second, and forget we have the third. In my experience, most people drawn to leading worship are feeling types.
Our feelings are valid pieces of our human experience, but they are not the only one. A spiritual director can be a regular reminder that our feelings are not facts, and while they are genuine and need to be acknowledge, they need to be held in balance with our minds and our bodies.
8. Own your gifts
You are not your gifts. You are a gift. Each of us has something profound to offer our community. For some of us, those gifts are musical talents, and this is a good thing. In God’s economy, our gifts are not about our own self-expression. They are rather to be used as a blessing to others, to make the whole community better.
A spiritual director can help regularly remind you that you are indeed a gift to your community when you feel lost and unseen. They may also lovingly correct you when you use your musical talents out of a selfish desire to be seen.
9. Cultivating a listening ear
Music is powerful. It’s also intensely personal. I find that even the most casual listener has strong personal opinions when it comes to music. Paul urges us all, “Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.”Your work as a leader involves humbly walking alongside others and connecting with them rather than trying to cajole and convince them to like what you like.
A spiritual director can model to you what listening looks like. Just as a director listens to the rhythms and movements of God at work in you, you can begin to spot them in the people around you that you lead, then, into lifestyles of worship. Have eyes to see and ears to hear your context.
Henri Nouwen says, “We are all very susceptible to self-deception and are not always able to detect our own fearful games or blind spots.” If you’re a worship leader, you want to run your race well. You want to be faithful to the work and to the gifts God has given you. A spiritual director can be lovingally and partner with you in this work.
If you’d like to find a spiritual director in your area, visit Spiritual Directors international, and reach out to one. Or you can send me a note, and we can talk about what spiritual direction might look like for you.