Church Value Pt. 2: How Much is Your Praise Team Worth?

At a time where many church boards and staffs are holding or have held their year end meetings, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at what the value of a church is in the local and global community.  For the sake of the next few pieces, when I say church, I'm not referring to the Church as described in 1 Corinthians 12:27,  Colossians 1:18, and other places.  I'm referring to the business of church, which would include the sale of what's known as Christianity.  To guide this, I've identified four areas where we can look at various regulation and data to get solid opinions about the church; the value of a pastor, the value of the music department, and the value of the worker, and the value of the congregant or consumer.  Let's take a look at the music department.

I used to always wonder why male musicians...especially drummers, guitarists, pianists, and signers...no matter how they looked physically, would get the most beautiful women.  In many ways that curiosity made me start rapping in high school.  After my experience I figured out why; it's the mix of art (or the passion behind it) and confidence.  In my mind, music artists are right at the top of the list of people whose confidence is an arrogant, narcissistic mess.  In the American Church industry, this confidence is multiplied by 3,000.  And in most situations the desire to get paid for "using their gift as unto the Lord" is as equally as strong as any senior pastor.  But how is a praise team or worship band any different from say, an usher or a greeter?  What is music really worth to the church?

First, let's investigate the importance of music to Christianity, and then the church industry.  We can assume that the Lord God greatly appreciates not only music that praises and worships Him, but also music that engages Him, seeks Him, reveals human emotion about Him, points to the truths and intent of Him, or anything that will provoke Him to reveal His magnificent power and love.  For me, this assumption is verified by the over 150 works in the Books of Psalms and Song of Solomon, as well as various songs throughout the Bible.  God obviously likes it...but how does that translate into compensation?

Well, and I know many senior pastors might shy away from this truth, but the music is definitely the second reason that people are buying, and in many cases the first.  Music drives it all...and I mean all.  It's the difference between a Potter's House (mega American church outlet), with no significant worship band and a Hillsong (global church outlet), with arguably the most significant worship band of all time.  It's the emotional narcotic your church provides to serve a huge emotionally dependent population, that's dying to give away money.  It's why pastors are putting their sermons over instrumentals.  And these are just the carnal reasons...we won't even discuss the spiritual side.  But in a nutshell, the huge majority worships the Lord with their musically sensitive ear...so it's really everything.

But there's value-reducing challenges, too.  As stated earlier, I believe generally musicians have interesting personalities...and that gets more interesting when Jesus is "the reason."  But Christian artists, and again speaking generally here, are quite possibly the laziest artists to ever do it.  They don't write anything and cover everything, they release an album once every four years...if ever, and some call a tour a three-church stop in an 100 mile radius.  From all that, they have the nerve to have riders and stipulations when performing....I mean, worshiping.  I don't know what's more ridiculous, the fact that some of these guys ask thousands of dollars a week or that ministries actually pay that.  At the end of the day, Christian bands of every race and style sell relatively very little units....even the popular ones.  This translates into no real staying power for the average Christian artist; only good for a few church services, some conferences, and a couple weddings.

Unfortunately, the value is usually as long as the time the worship set is.  In fact, the African-American church outlet largely is unconcerned about the praise team on Sunday; as culturally the preached word is the more important part of the show.  That being said, if a praise and worship team believes that attendance will be dramatically altered because of them, they're absolutely clueless.  As implied earlier, the spirit of musician is what makes a musician great.  No one likes the artist that's just doing it just for the money, and with Christian music it's much worse.  Maybe the answer is there is a dollar value, but it's the church musician that's ignorantly driving it way too high.

To wrap it all up, pay the piano player, but if the piano player wants big bucks...then that piano player needs to get their anointed self in the studio and make a hit.  Otherwise, take this $250 that the house band usually pulls in and worship with all your heart.