Q&A: Worship Team Standards, Auto-Tuned Vocals, Teaching New Songs

David Zimmer: Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast. My name is David Zimmer.

Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.

DZ: And it is great to be together, Bob.

BK: As it always is, David.

[laughter]

DZ: This morning we are talking about a bunch of different topics. We have a Q&A podcast.

BK: We do.

DZ: As you have seen from the title, and we love receiving your questions. They have fueled so many great conversations that we’ve had in past seasons. If you want to submit a question to us, there will be a link in the bio of this podcast, or you can send it into Sound Plus Doctrine, spell out the plus, at sovereigngrace.com.

BK: Yep. We love to hear your questions. So these were three questions we got. We didn’t think we could do it a whole podcast to, but we thought we could answer them together.

DZ: Great.

BK: So the first is this question we received. How should a worship team leader handle a worship team member with a Pornography addiction who is not taking their recovery very seriously? That is, who has shared their struggle with you but is not regularly checking in after asking them to do so. I recognize and firmly believe that the blood of Christ covers all our sin and that God is able to completely transform our hearts. But it feels like there is an implicit approval of a person when they are platformed on the music team. They seem to be taking their recovery somewhat seriously, somewhat seriously but I don’t want to platform someone who is living in consistent habitual sin. First, thank you for caring about who’s leading in your church. It does make a difference when those who are in a public form of service aren’t living in a way that reflects not only the forgiveness of the gospel, but the power of the gospel. And I think that’s what the person who sent in the question is drawing the distinction between… I believe the blood of Christ covers all our sin and God is able to completely transform our hearts.

DZ: Yeah, I love his clarity of the gospel just right there.

BK: Yes.

DZ: Even in the question.

BK: Yes, and it’s true, and we need to be mindful of that, that in talking about this issue or issues like it, ’cause it could be anger, it could be dishonesty. It could be a number of things. The blood of Christ does cover our sins. It’s not like you want people to feel like they have to jump through hoops in order to serve on the music team. But having said that, when people are in front of the church serving in some way, they’re not living a perfect life, but they are to be living a commendable life. Different verses came to mind, 1st Peter 2:5, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, holy meaning set apart for God to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I’m never to get to the place, we’re never to get to the place as leaders where we think, this is acceptable because of how well I’ve lived my life this week.

DZ: Right.

BK: It’s acceptable through Jesus Christ. But we are a holy priesthood. And then when Peter, when he’s talking about how everything is going to be… We’re gonna have a new heavens and a new earth, he says in 2 Peter 3:11. “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sorts of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?” Now, these aren’t even addressing leaders per se, those who are in front of the church, these are just Christians in general. But then Paul addresses those who want to serve in 2 Timothy 2:21, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.” So there he ties who we are really as people in our daily lives to the Lord using us.

BK: There is this connection. The person who asked the question talked about recovery. I think a more helpful word might be repentance. Recovery just has a lot of connections, associations, implications. It’s not very clear, recovery. No, repentance is a change of heart from a change of mind resulting in a change of life, a change of action. So if that person is struggling with Pornography and they have repented, that means they have confessed it and they are taking steps in their life… I should say, confessed it to those who need to know, and they have taken steps in their life to guard against that sin. So they are drawing the line of temptation, not a foot out from them, but like 100 yards out from them. And so they’re not looking at their computer at night or alone or that they’ve put…

BK: You can put things like Covenant Eyes on your computer. They can be helpful, but I think ultimately, you have to have a change of heart. You don’t even want that. So they’re asking for accountability, but they’re making themselves accountable by talking to people about what’s going on. So there is a repentance. If they’re married, they are giving more attention and love and affection towards their spouse and… That’s repentance. And it may be that that person is pursuing those things. But you may want to say, you know what? For your spiritual health, not even just for the example, but just for your spiritual health, we’re gonna ask you to take a break right now. We’ve done that. Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, done that through the years. It’s not punishment. It’s not punitive. It is, we wanna give you time where you’re not in front of people, where you can, one, recognize the seriousness of what this sin is, but then two, so you can cultivate affections for the Lord, affections for your spouse, pursue godly living, those kinds of things. It can be helpful to be out of the public eye.

DZ: Oh, definitely.

BK: To have time to just work on those things and make that very clear to the person. You know, this isn’t a punishment, this isn’t discipline, this is we wanna see you prospering in the Lord, living in the good of the gospel. But because you seem unwilling to really come to grips with this sin, we’re gonna give you a break from this. Would you add anything to that?

DZ: I would say that it also speaks volumes. Your congregation might not even know, but I think it speaks volumes to just even the standard that you wanna have of someone who’s leading, or a pastor who’s leading, or elders who are, or deacons who are on your team, that we don’t live duplicitously.

BK: Yes, duplicitously.

DZ: Duplicitously, thank you. We want to be the same on stage, on a platform, as we are off. And, but also coming back to something you originally said, that this is an opportunity to acknowledge and really, really glory in the gospel, the goodness of the gospel. That we don’t cut people off at the knees, we are caring for people, you know? And it could be, when you see the sin this way, it could be the same as these bad attitudes that are on Sundays, or this ego and arrogance that we’re seeing. It’s like, we wanna raise the bar, not lower the bar. So that’s why I really appreciate him even sending in this question of going, I want there to be a standard. I mean, even today, there’s so many rock star worship leaders, so many rock star pastors. It’s like, there is no standard. There is nothing.

BK: Whatever they do is fine.

DZ: Yeah, yeah.

BK: As long as the people are coming.

DZ: Right, right, right. And we don’t wanna have even an ounce of that in our gatherings.

BK: No. Well, we’re serving the Lord Jesus, and all our gifts we’re using for his glory, and not our own. It talks about in 1st Peter 4, about how whatever gifts you have, do everything that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever. If we’re doing God’s work in a way that dishonors him, while living a life that dishonors him, well, the prophets spoke very clearly to that. Jesus spoke very clearly to that. That’s not what God’s after. So, we’re not just proclaiming in front of people, Jesus saves, Jesus saves, and then not living like it. The whole podcast series we did on music is great, Jesus is great, speaks to that. And we want there to be integrity in what we do. One thing I wanted to mention, too, is if, as you add people to the team, we have a Google doc, Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, called Guidelines for Musicians at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. And everybody who’s added to planning center gets a copy of this.

BK: They’re sent to this link, and they read it. And the last thing on it is, it’s your responsibility to let Bob know if there’s any reason you should take a break from serving as a musician, seasonal, moral, changing priorities, et cetera. So, it is helpful up front, or even regularly, to remind your musicians, if you haven’t done this, have a meeting with them and say, hey, you know what? This is who we are. This is what we’re called to. We’re not called to perfection, ’cause no one’s perfect, but we are called to live lives of example, exemplary lives. And so, if there is an ongoing sin in your life, it could be marital discord, it could be sometimes it’s a wayward teen, or a disorganized, mismanaged household, where your children are just kind of, they’re disrespectful, they’re deceitful, they’re… And you say, whoa, time out, I love that you have these musical guests, but we need to take time to just focus on these things.

DZ: Yeah, I mean, your soul’s at stake. It’s like your soul is more important than your platform.

BK: Absolutely, absolutely. Which leads us into the second question. And I hope that’s helpful. And if not, feel free to send us another question. Thank you for caring.

DZ: Yeah, or all the things that you didn’t like about what we said.

BK: Yes, that’d be fine.

DZ: Include those in the comments. That’d be fine.

BK: Bottom line, I think that if someone has an ongoing battle with pornography, they should not be serving publicly. That sin, and any unrepentant sin, is too serious to set up that disconnect, where you say, hey, I’m living like I wanna glorify Jesus. But you’re not. Second question, should churches use pitch correction autotune on their vocalists? I love these technology questions. On the one hand, I think that it can help minimize distractions that might hinder congregational participation in worship. On the other, I know some people who think of the tools as cheating, inauthentic, or pursuing a culture of perfection. Now, David, we only autotune your voice on Sundays, ’cause you’ve asked us to.

DZ: Whoa, shots fired.

BK: And actually, you’re probably one of the only… Well, I shouldn’t say that. There are a few vocalists who don’t need it. I would not be one of them. However, let’s talk about this. I think it brings up some questions.

DZ: Oh my goodness.

BK: The first would be… First, thanks for asking the question. That’s a good question. It would have been asked 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

DZ: Right. That is a crazy…

BK: Five years ago? I’m not sure.

DZ: But that is a crazy reality, that even just in our world, that wasn’t a thing for…

BK: No.

DZ: Forever. It’s like…

BK: Well, you listen to old albums, and you think, man, they did not have autotune. But it’s great.

DZ: Right.

BK: Most of the time.

DZ: No, it is. It is great. It is. So, it’s interesting. It’s like how much of the world, again, have we dragged into our churches? Like what… When he says at the end, a culture of perfection, I feel like that speaks louder than hindering congregational participation.

BK: Yes.

DZ: Man, on Sundays, I feel like if I’m in the congregation, I can barely hear the lead vocal.

BK: Yeah. Well, although that’s not always the case in every church.

DZ: True. But we don’t have 6,000 people. I mean, we have, like, maybe 400, but which is large. I totally get it. But, again, are the people who are thinking about this question, are they in churches of 300? Are they in churches of 20,000?

BK: Yeah. So that’s a good question. What’s your context?

DZ: Yeah.

BK: At least it’s a question worth asking.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: Not to say that the answer would be any different, but, I think an important question is always what is your aim? Like, what are we seeking to do? Is this what we’re doing up here on the platform? Are we seeking to present something without flaw? You know, and some people would say, well, of course, you give God your best, you know. What is your best though? You have to define that. You do think what’s excellence. Okay. Yeah. What is excellence? Excellence is authentic. I mean, when Paul was talking to the Corinthians about his preaching, he says… In Paul’s day it was the issue of the orators, those who knew how to speak. They made a living out of speaking in a professional way, and they were paid for it, and they had followers and…

DZ: I mean, yeah.

BK: He says, when I came to you brothers, this is, 1st Corinthians 2. I did, I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testament of God with lofty speech or wisdom. So that lofty speech, I think, would fit into the category of perfectly tuned vocals. I would make that connection. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit of power. Now that doesn’t mean that Paul wasn’t persuasive. Doesn’t mean that Paul wasn’t an effective preacher, but it does mean that he didn’t rely on those things…

DZ: Totally.

BK: To make him effective. So what is your aim? Is it to make it look like you don’t need anything. How do you make Jesus look like a great savior when it doesn’t look like you even need any saving? My voice is always perfect. Or is my aim to have people hear my voice the entire time? Like I know when I’m leading, if I get the song started, I’m not gonna be hugging the mic the entire time. And I’ll say this to some of our leaders. You don’t need to be right up there on the mic the entire time. Back off some inches. You know, you don’t, you want them to sing.

DZ: Yeah. It’s not the most important voice.

BK: You want the congregation to be heard. So the idea that I have to have my voice heard perfectly in tune. You know, people say, well, yeah, I got a livestream going and we need to have it perfectly in tune. Oh, okay. Well there’s could be questions raised about a livestream.

DZ: Well, and who’s the livestream for?

BK: Who’s the livestream for? What are you seeking to accomplish? Is it to present a beautifully sounding beautiful sounding technologically perfect image, or is it to have the people of God gather? When the people of God gathered, we gather with our flaws. We gather with our imperfections. We gather with our in our weakness so that Jesus looks like the great savior that he is.

DZ: Yeah. And I’ve heard people who were atheists and come to church or…

BK: Because the vocal sounded so good?

DZ: No. No. No.

BK: I didn’t think so.

DZ: I’m saying that I have heard from people who are atheists and have gone to a church where it’s a production, and they say, oh, it just looks like it’s like a bad version of what everyone else is doing.

BK: What’s in the world.

DZ: What’s in the world. And I’ve heard people who have walked away from the faith and go to a church and go and what is this? What are they doing? And I think, yeah. I just think it doesn’t mean that we need to be, like, frumpy and bad at what we do.

BK: No.

DZ: Like, there’s still integrity…

BK: That’s not our aim.

DZ: And there’s still stewardship. That’s not our aim. But if we’re trying to look at the world, we’re never going to match it.

BK: No.

DZ: I mean, it will never hit it on the head.

BK: And we shouldn’t.

DZ: Because the message we have, the true gospel message is quite offensive.

BK: It is.

DZ: It’s not palatable with a tuned vocal. You know?

BK: I mean, you can have a tuned vocal, but that’s not what’s gonna be offensive. What’s gonna be defensive is the message you’re singing. And, yeah, I think that’s a great point that we think it has something to do with the tuning of our vocals. No. It has everything to do with the clarity with which we present the gospel of Jesus Christ.

DZ: Totally.

BK: So Paul in 2nd Corinthians 4:7, we have this treasure in jars of clay. No how do you communicate that you’re a jar of clay if no one ever knows you sing a little flat or a little sharp? I mean, really. Just be honest here. We’ve been trained to think that perfection is normal when perfection doesn’t exist outside of Jesus Christ. We have this treasure in jars of clay. Why? To show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. So you might be in a church 10, 15, 20,000, I don’t know, 5,000, 3,000, whatever. And think, well, no, we’ve got to make it sound a certain way. We would say, we think that God wants us to sound like who we are, and let Jesus be the savior. Let him be the glorious one.

BK: And it’s not our singing that everybody is supposed to be listening to. Why not if you’re gonna do a live stream, if there’s some kind of online version of what you do, why not have the sound of the congregation be what’s, so what’s the focus is. And why not… We don’t have a live stream, so that’s not an issue for us. But why not put mics in the congregation that capture that sound? Because that’s what you’re hearing on a Sunday morning, hopefully. And not just what’s coming from the stage. So I think the question itself, they’re asking, Hey, what should it be? Can it hinder congregational participation, worship? I don’t think so.

DZ: No.

BK: And un-tuned vocal. Now, if you have someone who’s way out front and they’re singing really off key. Yes…

DZ: Yes. That’s distracting.

BK: That’s distracting. But I would say don’t put that person on mic.

DZ: Yeah. That’s what I would say too.

[chuckle]

BK: And sometimes we have people kind of demand lovingly that they sing. I’ve got this gift, I’ve gotta use it. And or we inherit it where someone’s a vocalist and they don’t sing that well and that just requires an honest conversation.

DZ: Totally.

BK: With the pastor, with them, with… That’s, you can’t feature people’s gifts when they don’t have them.

DZ: Right. But it still takes so much longer to tune a vocal live or to make sure that the key’s right or whatever. So it doesn’t end up like one of those just horrific auto tune fails that we see.

BK: Oh my gosh.

DZ: Where it sounds like it’s like the person singing, but then it sounds like the voice of Satan behind him is like wobbling.

BK: Because they pitched it in D and the song is an E flat.

DZ: Right. Something like that. But so yeah. It takes so much longer to tune a vocal than to just tell a person, Hey, sing the first couple words and we’ll take it from here.

BK: Yes.

DZ: I’ve heard pastors that don’t have a worship leader that will start the song. Put the mic down. So I think that would be much easier.

BK: Yeah. And it’s an emphasis on I think externals and their importance versus what the word of God is meant to do in our hearts. What the spirit of God does in our hearts. It’s not dependent on the perfect tuned-ness of our vocal, especially live in a congregation. But I would say as well, on a live stream get the sound of your congregation up. So yeah. Is it a sin? No, it’s not a sin, but I think it does betray what we value, what our aim is, who we’re doing this for, and a lack of awareness for, of the effect of what it does. It trains us to think that, oh, this is the most important thing. Alright. Number three.

DZ: Last question.

BK: Good evening. In your recent episode plan… How did they know it was evening? It’s not evening for us it’s morning right now. I don’t know. I just find that very interesting, good evening.

DZ: There you go.

BK: In a recent episode, Planning the Sunday Service, there was a brief comment about a song you were discussing. It said you had not yet taught the congregation that specific song. I’ve recently taken over as our youth band music director, and I can easily understand the idea of teaching a band a song, a band song. But how do you go about teaching a congregation a specific song? I love this question. I’m gonna ask you to add your thoughts, but we typically just do the song. And this is why, we try to do songs that people can sing fairly easily. I think recently I did say, Hey, listen to the first verse and then we’ll come back and sing it again.

BK: But a lot of people may have heard that song already. I’m not sure. New people certainly hadn’t. People who weren’t… It was a Sovereign Grace song. People who don’t know Sovereign Grace’s music wouldn’t know it. So we’d say, Hey, you’re basically giving permission. It’s okay to not sing this first time ’cause really nobody knows it. But the other thing I would encourage a church to do would be to point, not just say that’s a new song, but to point to why you’re doing this new song. Point to the content. What that does over time is tell people, this is why we do new songs here. So you might say something like, as we always do, we want to do songs that are derived from God’s word and this song says this from God’s word. And so that’s pretty much what we do. We might, if it’s a song that… Yeah. We never start a meeting with a new song. Because we want everybody to just kind of join in. So what else would you say?

DZ: And we don’t end meetings with a new song.

BK: Yes. ’cause you want people engaged.

DZ: So if there’s a sermon right after the sermon, even if there’s a song…

BK: A song after the sermon, you said a sermon after the sermon.

DZ: Oh, thank you for correcting me.

BK: We don’t do that, sorry. [laughter]

DZ: A song after the sermon. Even if there’s a song that perfectly matches the sermon, but it’s brand new. It feels like you can sing it. You don’t have the full faith to kind of apply. So we’ll find a different song.

BK: Yeah. Or we’ll teach it before the message. We’ve done that. Where it’s a new song. We sing it before the message…

DZ: Yes and then you repeat it again.

BK: That we do at the end.

DZ: I got you. Yeah. But also, I do think there are resources out there available to you if you, I know some of my friends who are worship leaders at their church, they have like a Apple Music or Spotify playlist.

BK: We do at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. On our app.

DZ: There you go. I don’t know if it’s always updated.

BK: Yes. Well, there was a little problem a few weeks ago, but don’t hold it against the people who are trying to do it faithfully. Yeah. We had a few things going on, but yeah. There’s a Spotify playlist.

DZ: So, hey, these are the songs we’re doing on Sunday. And people can listen to those and they can kinda like marinate in them. Which is good. ‘Cause we wanna take away all the distractions on a Sunday morning. And that can be a big one.

BK: You can also post it on your website.

DZ: Yeah. Post on your website.

BK: You can post YouTube links. So all those ways that we can help serve the church by making what we do as the gathered church easier, more effective, more fruitful, more edifying, which makes it in the end, more glorifying to Jesus. That’s what we wanna do.

DZ: Yes, absolutely. Definitely. And the aim is not to always be introducing the newest thing.

BK: Oh, that’s true.

DZ: It would be more rare for us, even though we’re a music organization and we publish and write songs.

BK: We do.

DZ: For the church, it would be more on the rare side for us to introduce a new song than it would be for us to just continue singing the songs that we are singing.

BK: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. If we do two new songs a month, that’s pretty rare. We’ll, do I think between eight to 12 new songs a year, somewhere around there. Which some people go, wow. But I mean, your album has like 14 songs. Yeah. We don’t do all the songs on our albums. We do other people’s songs, [chuckle], it’s not we. Some people are surprised by that. You guys just do Sovereign Grace songs? No, some Sundays we don’t do any Sovereign Grace songs. And that’s fine. Some Sundays we do all Sovereign Grace songs. Because we do write our songs intentionally to say certain things. So that’s why we’ll go to those songs often because they’re themes that we want to sing about. But there’s no an awareness, there’s no… When we’re planning, then awareness is like, is this a Sovereign Grace song or not? We’re thinking, did the people know it?

DZ: Does it match exactly what we’re trying to say?

BK: Is it part of the progression? Is the gospel being presented clearly throughout the song? So all those things.

DZ: Yep. Well, thank you so much for submitting these questions. These are awesome, and that’s all I have to say.

BK: Well keep doing it. Keep sending questions in and hope you’ve enjoyed this. Look forward to the next time.

DZ: Yeah, thanks.