I was reading a thread on the Telecaster Forums about the debate of skill vs. passion. It got me thinking about how I might answer that question, or if I could come down on just one side of that debate. At some level, skill and passion go hand-in-hand, one without the other certainly wouldn't serve our goals and worship players and leaders. But lets open this topic up a bit more and see how this shakes out.
Guitar Skills - It's always important isn't it? At a minimum, the ability one has (or a band has) to bring the music together in a way that at least doesn't detract from worship is important. You don't want to play badly enough that participants and listeners are distracted from the message during worship. But our goals are much, much higher than avoiding a bad worship experience.
I look at it this way. You want at least a little bit more skill than the music you are playing demands. That's the bare minimum. You need that reserve, that extra headroom. And the more headroom, the better. If you aren't there, then it gives you some new goals to work on. If you are at or below the skill your worship music requires, you might pull it of (barely) but some bad stuff could squish out or the overall quality might suffer enough that it brings down the worship experience. Lets explore this concept of headroom as it applies to our guitar playing skills.
Ever notice how many guitar solos on recorded music aren't really that hard or complicated. When you break it down and really listen to what they're doing, it's pretty simple sounding. Maybe they're doing some double stops, octaves, but underneath all that, the playing or solo has some simple concept it's built upon. Sure, there are face melting solos too, and really amazing tasty stuff, but a lot of really good music isn't that complicated when you actually listen to it and understand what's being played. If you really think about it, what's on the recording isn't at the top of the range of the recording artist. That's because the best always make things look simple. If you tried to record yourself playing the same thing, it might not come out sounding nearly as well done as the recording artist. They've got that headroom, that extra capacity to create something beautiful that brings what's needed to the song, not what's needed to feed their look at me ego. So while the notes might be simple, the tone, the finesse, technique, and quality of what's played really shows the skill and the capacity of the player.
I guess what I'm saying is, get your playing at a level above what your music requires, or simplify the music, or do other music so it gives you and the band that headroom. Then you have more capacity to produce sweet tones. A simplified version of Lincoln Brewster's All To You glorifies God much more than a botched attempt at sounding like the record. And, work on your skills offline so you are constantly increasing your skills to play current and new music. What challenges you today could be easy to play tomorrow. A friend of mine used to say, "everything's easy when you know how". Well, worship is through playing the guitar is easy when you don't have to think so much about playing it. Now you can concentrate on worshiping.
God deserves our best, our very best, that we can offer him during worship. Our music is our offering to the God, and just as God offered up His very best to the world, and even though our offering far pales in comparison, we must offer up our very best and most authentic worship to Him. That very best doesn't mean barely best, it's what we can do to serve Jesus with our best. Leading a congregation that's is a powerful place of worship is much more of what we are about, than seeing if we can pull off something that could bring down the worship experience.
In my next post on this topic, I'll talk about the passion side of the equation.
