I was tired of feeling second class. I grew up the son of an Evangelical pastor. I was at church constantly. I won awards in Bible drills. I even started leading the church in worship at age sixteen. And I felt inadequate. It seemed to me that no matter how much I wanted to learn, or aspired to know God, “real” theology was reserved for the accredited few, not for commoners like me. This was an elite subject reserved for men in ivory towers who had degrees on their wall, wore Amish beards, and wore old suits with patches on the elbows.
I don’t hold a degree from a seminary that would impress you and prove me instantly reputable. I don’t even hold a degree. I don’t walk closely with people who are members of academia. I don’t smoke a pipe or wear old suits. But I am a worship leader called to pastor the people of God in the worship of God. I am a theologian. So are you.
The word theologian literally translates as someone who is pursuing the “study of God”. If you are a worship leader, my plea with you is to immerse yourself in the study of God. As worship leaders, we should be ferociously studying God: His attributes, His character, His ways, His Word. We are first disciples of Jesus before we are leaders in the church he died to redeem. Before we are people who lead, we must first be a people who are led.
The writer of Hebrews points us to the fruit of the New Covenant and calls us be men and women who study God, and invite God to write on our hearts and minds his perfect law. Hebrews 10:16-17 says, “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” What this means is that as people who have been brought from death to life, we have access to the living God. We have no need for any mediator, other than Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest. There is a form of Gnosticism that subtly tells us that some people are privy to things in God that the rest of us are not. This is simply not the case. In the completed work of Christ, each of us have full access to the Father, through the Son by the Holy Spirit. The ground is level.
As I have been speaking at worship conferences this year I have plead with worship leaders, like me, to stop viewing themselves as second class citizens who weren’t gifted enough to be “real pastors”. The more I have talked about this, the more I realize how many of us walk with this weight. I have literally had groups of worship leaders verbalize, many for the first time, “I am a theologian.” It’s true. We should rest in our unique priesthood and calling. We should walk with the understanding that the call to lead worship in the church today should be approached with gravity and sobriety.
My prayer for us is that we not buy into the vacuous view that worship leaders are rock stars or singer/songwriters the church can exalt. That is an invitation to smallness. Rather, may we view our role as theologians helping to shepherd and shape peoples ideas and experiences of God.
living worship 