My friend Jake is a worship leader here in omaha. He is a phenomenal guitar player and a great source of insight and quiet wisdom. While chatting about church worship over coffee he brought up a phrase that has been in my head the last couple weeks. He said that the worship ministry at his church is writing more original worship songs and moving away from covering everyone else’s tunes.

This idea of being a “church cover band” is an interesting thought and probably worth considering. I think that as creative worshippers in the church we should be singing more new songs in a pursuit of creative expression in worship. (psalm 33:3, 40:3, 96:1, 98:1, etc) So often we (me included) listen to the newest worship record or top ccli song and learn all the same guitar parts and arrangements that they play. We “cover” the song without bringing our own creativity to it.

I guess there is nothing inherently wrong with that. That’s why those songs are written; to be played and sung in corporate worship. I just think that covering the songs someone else wrote and playing the arrangements someone else played is the beginning and not the end of creativity in worship. There are new words to be written and new songs to be sung. Maybe there’s a new way to play an old song. Or a new way to play hillsong (without the dotted eighth note delay)???

What do you think?