Rent A Worship Band

Gary had a good post about their decision to not pay musicians for their worship band. You can read it here. I am torn on the issue and have gone back and forth for the past several years at Seacoast. I think ultimately, it comes down to each Pastor's preference and what God tells him to do.

There is, however, one trend in church plants that kind of bothers me right now . It seems to be the thing to hire an entire band to come in and do your music until hopefully, you can raise up your own people. I understand this from the excellence stand point, but I have a couple of problems with it:

1. I feel that worship music should be something that comes out of the life of your church. It's always pretty obvious if the guys on stage are not sold out on the vision. Worship should be an overflow of what God is doing in that community.

2. Transitioning to your own people will be rough - at best. A tight touring band is going to be hard to follow for awhile. I would much prefer to have guys that are sold out to the church - grow together as a team from the start. That doesn't mean that the music won't be excellent from the beginning, but there is a chemistry that has to mature with a worship team. Leading people into worship is not your typical gig.

Just my thoughts.