Louder Than The Music

Our latest guest blog comes from Chaos Curb's Dave Griffiths (formerly of the British band Bosh), who looks at the role of the Worship Leader...

Are Worship Leaders The New High Priests?

What I am about to put forward may not be comfortable ideas. Including for myself, as I am a regular worship leader. However, these questions have been stirring for a while, and I thought I should write them down. I hope they stimulate your own thoughts.

So...

Have worship leaders become our modern-day high priests? Are they the ‘special ones’ who go through the veil into the holy of holies for us? Are they the ones to encounter God in the most intimate way, and relay the experience, second-hand, back to the congregation?

Sometimes I feel that this has become the case. Not just from regular leading in congregations varying from 20-odd to thousands of people, but from watching church culture with a beady-eye.

Let me explain further...

Most of us churchy-types are familiar with the Old Testament High Priests. These are the guys who looked after the temple of God for the rest of the Hebrew population. They served God and man by overseeing the offerings given by the people to atone for sins, and to worship God. This was the only way the nation of Israel had to access God and his presence. The Holy of Holies was where the Ark of the Covenant was kept (during the days of the ‘first temple’ or ‘Solomon's Temple’ and the ‘third temple’), and this symbolised God’s very presence and holiness. Only the most extremely prepared Priest of the temple could enter that room where the Ark was, and that could only happen once a year on the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. The High Priests presided over all the religious activity and beliefs for the people, they were the ones that called the shots and people didn’t think they could even have access to God without them.

What I am wanting to draw is the parallels between the priestly functions in that time, and the priestly function we may have come to put on worship leaders today.

When Jesus gave up his spirit whilst bleeding on a cross on THE Day of Atonement - the day we call Good Friday - the veil to Holy of Holies in Jerusalem’s temple was torn in two. It was effectively ripped up by God the Father because the old covenant that the priests served under was completely fulfilled and therefore nullified in Jesus’ death. A new covenant had been made. Because the blood of Jesus was the final blood offering sprinkled on the mercy seat (which was symbolised on the Ark) before God, all who claim that blood could now enter the Holy of Holies. Because Jesus was perfectly clean and sinless before God, his offering was enough, once and for all, to grant access to God for all who trust in Jesus. All of this is laid out wonderfully in Hebrews 9 verses 1 - 28.

So, when we read in the New Testament about the church being a ‘royal priesthood’ (1 Peter 2 v 9), and that we are all granted access to the Father through Jesus, how should that affect out worship as His church?

I think the answer is in this truth that we are a ‘priesthood of all believers’. When Paul talks to the church in Ephesus he says ‘Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks...’. I am struck by the phrase ‘speaking to one another’. How often do we make our worship as church together that communal? How often is the ‘high priest’ at the front the only voice you can distinctively hear?

Have we got on our hands a reflection of our celebrity obsessed society in church culture? I am worried that we make celebrities out of worship leaders. We put them, either consciously or sub-consciously, on a higher spiritual plain than ourselves. We wait for them to get into ‘the zone’ and ‘the anointing’ whilst not searching for intimacy with God in our own hearts. We lap up their encounters rather than looking for our own. In the worst cases, we let them be the ones sprinkled by Jesus’ blood, and then claim their salvation as if it were ours. We sing their songs of freedom and intimacy instead of letting our own songs rise from our own love for the Lord.

Am I guilty of these things? Yes, I have been. I am on a journey with this myself.

It’s interesting to note that High Priests of old came from ‘priestly families’. I think in this country (the UK), we have two or three priestly families. These days they are record labels. If you aren’t connected to the priestly family, then you can’t seriously call yourself a priest, or worship leader. We have let an aspirational culture creep in where younger people in particular are desperate to achieve this ‘priestly’ status. What’s feeding this - in part - is all the well meaning schools of worship, which, whilst doing a good job of training, have become feeders into the record labels. Unless you are born into, or move into, the vicinity of a ‘priestly’ family, or pay for their courses and lap up their merchandise, you are doomed to not achieve the status that you shouldn’t even feel you have to achieve.

It’s all so tied up with Christian consumerism (see previous blog). We so often lose our own unique sense of identity and calling in the shadow of the almighty ‘priests’. We put them up there, so we may as well let them get on with it rather than realise that the veil was just as much torn for us. How long would we survive as individuals and church families without the merchandise, the CDs, and song-books? The festivals to go to, and the market places we find there? Have we lost the art of seeking the presence of God for ourselves and then sharing our own ‘psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’ as well as those found in scripture? I pray for a revelation and release of our own special, unique, valuable, beautiful expression of worship, in all the intimacy that Jesus has bought for us.

I am challenging myself, both as a worshiper of God, and as a songwriter, to not look at worship leaders as high priests. They are not holier than me. I am not holier than you. There is really no ‘us and them’ no matter how the room is arranged or high the stage. There is only a veil that has been shredded, and one high priest who holds the door open for all to come and be with the Father who loves us. Let’s just stop right here, and worship him right now.

Dave Griffiths, Chaos Curb