I experience God and the world through music. As a child, I can remember days when I would come home after a rough day at school and bang out my frustration on the piano. As a teenager, I learned that singing was a way to feel connected to other human beings and to create something beautiful together. A hymn or chant can literally fill my soul to overflowing. When I have had moments in my life that I didn’t have the words to pray, music was able to tap into the deepest and truest places in my heart where I needed to experience God’s healing love. A melody will linger in my head long after even a well-preached sermon may depart. I write all of this to say that I have incredible respect, love and appreciation for musicians, especially those whose craft enables meaningful, transcendent worship.
But… and you knew there was a “but” coming… it is also no secret that musicians can be as difficult to work with as pastors. Musicians are egotistical perfectionists whose creative energies can’t be rushed but whose passion, when channeled into their craft, results in nothing short of an encounter with the divine. Then again, the exact same thing can be said about pastors. And therein lies the rub.
At the Montreat “Church in Purple” conference recently, Nathan Proctor and I led a conversation about strengthening pastor-musician relationships for worship leadership. Nathan serves as the associate director of music at White Memorial Presbyterian in Raleigh, but I appreciate him most as the music volunteer for contemplative worship with the Presbyterian Campus Ministry at Duke. He and I have cultivated a meaningful working relationship, but we’ve both seen some of the good, bad and ugly of pastor-musician relationships turned sour. We launched the workshop with a prayer of confession and thanksgiving. I share it now with the hopes that perhaps this prayer might be a way for church musicians and pastors to engage one another professionally and prayerfully.
A Prayer for Pastors and Musicians
Musician: Lord, we pray for the times we’re on widely different planning schedules than the pastor and their schedule doesn’t allow adequate practice time for us or for the choir.
Pastor: Lord, we pray for the times we’re on wildly different planning schedules than the musicians who want us to have everything figured out months in advance and don’t leave room for the changing tides of the week.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Musician: We pray for the times when the pastor fails to share the sermon text and direction for worship and then diminishes our work by making offhand comments that the music didn’t fit the scripture.
Pastor: We pray for the times when the musicians only comment on the music from Sunday, making it clear the sermon was a forgettable experience.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Musician: We lift up moments when pastors fail to trust musicians when a hymn (even if it is somewhat new) would work well and simply default to Amazing Grace.
Pastor: We lift up moments when a hymn is selected for being musically beautiful while not noticing that the theology is problematic. (Onward Christian Soldiers, anyone?)
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Musician: We turn over those moments when the pastor whispers at the organ bench, “Can you keep playing for a few minutes? I’m not quite ready,” even after the prelude has finished.
Pastor: And the times when the choir rehearses right up until the moment worship begins, dismissing the opportunity to pray together in favor of extra rehearsal time.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Musician: We confess the despair we feel when the pastor announces after the anthem and before the sermon, “Whew! That was a close one!”
Pastor: We confess our frustrations when the musicians flip through music and shuffle papers during the sermon, making it abundantly clear that they’re paying no attention.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Musician: We turn over our frustration when pastors dismiss our pastoral and theological reflections or when no space to share is made.
Pastor: We lift up our dismay when worship is considered a performance and the congregation is treated as the audience.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Musician: But O Lord, we rejoice when pastors interpret Scripture in new and interesting ways and we are transformed! Our choirs sing differently after listening to spirited proclamation!
Pastor: And Holy God, we celebrate when music enhances our experience of the holy, ethereal and spiritual in worship, when the words and music sink into our soul!
Lord in thanksgiving, hear our prayer.
Musician: We celebrate when we are gathered with choir and elders to pray before worship and we are all acknowledged as worship leaders.
Pastor: We rejoice when you play music that matches the tone and Scripture of a particular service—triumphal when joy should be evoked, contemplative when reflective space is needed—and all the parts of worship combine to bring us closer to God.
Lord in thanksgiving, hear our prayer.
Musician: We are changed when you write beautiful, articulate, heartfelt prayers and liturgy so that the service flows effortlessly together.
Pastor: Our hearts are moved when there are clear links in tone and content between the verbal and musical proclamation in worship and we are partners in proclaiming God’s good news.
Lord in thanksgiving, hear our prayer.
Musician: We give thanks when you can see all of our imperfections and even our own musical limitations that terrify us and love us still.
Pastor: We give thanks when you can see all of our imperfections and even our own pastoral limitations that terrify us and love us still.
Lord in thanksgiving, hear our prayer.
Musician: We rejoice when we can be trusted colleagues and friends…
Pastor: …whose partnership between word and song, liturgy and melody can invite the whole body of Christ to encounter and glorify God each and every week.
Lord in thanksgiving, hear our prayer.
Thank you to Nathan Proctor who co-wrote the prayer.
KATIE Owen serves as the Presbyterian Campus Minister at Duke University in Durham, NC. Katie is a graduate of Duke University (2006) and Columbia Theological Seminary (MDiv 2011). She has a passion for preaching, creative worship, teaching, and working with college students. In her spare time, she enjoys singing, baking cookies, reading novels, and watching college basketball (Go Blue Devils!). She originally hails from Topeka, KS, has never met Dorothy, but has seen a tornado. You can read more about Duke PCM here.
