originally posted on my personal site ericcorpus.com
For the past 10 years, I’ve traveled the country and overseas doing the worship-leading thing. From tiny churches to cavernous auditoriums, portable 3-piece sound systems to production rigs hauled in a convoy of trucks – I feel like I’ve seen and done a lot.
With all those years and songs under my belt, sometimes I have a hard time focusing on God during the musical worship portion of events. During church, I find my mind dwelling on what’s happening onstage instead of what’s happening in front of God’s throne. It can be the music or the performance or the production. It doesn’t take a lot to dislodge my attention.
Fortunately, I can confess my wandering thoughts here. The first of what I’m sure will be many things that distract me during worship:
ONSCREEN LYRIC MISSPELLINGS
Misspellings drive me a bit batty. Almost any major software application comes with spell check. After some quick Googling, I found that popular programs like Powerpoint, Keynote, MediaShout, and SundayPlus all have it. (not sure about EasyWorship)
My personality has several facets that cause misspellings to take my eyes off of the King:
- I’m a geek who knows how easy it is to spell check a document.
- I’ve seen hundreds of presentations with perfect spelling. They all figured it out, why can’t everyone?
- I was the 8th grade spelling champion of my county, which had one whole middle school.
So when the screen prompts me to sing about the “Amazng Grace” of God, or how Christ is my “righteousnes,” or lifting up the name of “Jeezus” (ok, maybe not that bad), I get sidetracked.
How often do you see misspellings in the onscreen lyrics during worship?
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ok. that mock slide is hilarious!!!
it drives me nuts too. worse than that…missing words. THAT makes me nutty!
missing words, hehe. it’s like partial praise!
That is so true, and one of the reasons that the media team is such an integral part of the worship team. Spelling errors are so distracting (and seriously is spell check that hard?)
Media team = invaluable for sure
Makes me crazy too. I used to work for a newspaper, and one of my jobs was proofreading. I like the weeks I’m on the worship team so I see the slides ahead of time. And I’ve been known to go tell the computer person after a service about a typo so they can fix it for the last service. Because I’m “helpful” like that (I’m using the term “helpful” somewhat loosely here).
Good for you for taking action against poor spelling!
Amen and Amen!
P.S. I was the county spelling bee champ in 6th grade. And I don’t think that makes either one of us cool.
yeah, the chicks were not swarming to my masterful spelling of ‘demonstrate’ to win the 6th Grade crown.
Okay, just checked out your other blog. And I LOVE the resume page. As an experienced job hopper, I consider myself qualified to declare it AWESOME!
Seriously. I like it a lot. And I’ve written and seen a LOT of resumes in my day.
Thanks
I agree. I’m a journalist and an editor, so the little things drive me nuts.
I thought of you guys today, as I am in NYC visiting a friend. It’s been really fun! I’m meeting up with a bunch of folks to head to Uganda for a missions trip from JFK this week, so I thought I’d come check out New York since I needed to be here anyhow.
Hope you guys are well. I dig the new (well, new to me) site layout!
Cool! How long will you be here?
yes this annoys me too…but the most distracting thing during worship is the performance. As a singer, it’s hard for me to concentrate when the vocalists are terribly off key. flat or sharp or bad harmony…
if we ever go to church together, you won’t want to stand me next to me
oops, that was actually me trying to leave a comment, but CM was logged in.
Sorry, CM! This isn’t my sneaky way of commenting on your beautiful singing, I promise.
Yup, the spelling thing gets me every time. Awfully distracting. Another thing that gets on my nerves (and I’m really not a goody-two-shoes, I swear. Well, OK, maybe just a little) are some of the clothing choices of the worship team members. I mean, I’m not saying they have to wear choir robes by any means, but sometimes I see someone up there wearing something that looks like it would be more suited to the bar scene than the worship team…just not a good idea, in my opinion…I guess that’s another whole can of worms, though.
Great point, Sue! I don’t think that’s a goody-two-shoes question at all. The responsibilities of a worship leader are great. There’s always the risk of distracting from the audience’s focus on God.
I get quite animated when I play guitar, especially during upbeat songs. It’s honestly just my form of worship. I love to dance, and it’s just me channeling David a little (with clothes on, of course). However, I certainly don’t want to draw attention to myself. I guess I’ve failed several, if not many, times in that regard, because people would come up saying that they loved watching me play. On the other hand, most would also say that it brought them joy and got them in a more ‘praiseworthy mood’ to see it. It’s a tough call – I need to just always check my intentions.
Reading that last paragraph make me think, “We Christians are weird.” And I’m totally cool with that.
ROTFL! I haven’t experienced any bad spelling on prompters at church, but now, I’ll be keeping an eagle eye out for errors during music worship! Sunday will never be the same! Ack!