God & Music
The War Department: Music In The Black Church
The Burger King Syndrome
The schism begins with these devilish contracts churches draw
up. A church offering you a contract--for any ministerial
purpose--is in sin, period. It is not conducting itself
biblically, as contracts between Christians are not biblically
enforceable [I Cor 6]. I do not sign legal contracts with churches.
It is pointless because, by biblical command, I am restrained
from suing a believer. I may sign a covenant which could
be submitted to binding Christian arbitration, and I’ve seen
that done in some churches, but would not employ the powers of
the secular state to make it a legal document. I know of black
pastors who agree lawsuits between Christians is biblically
wrong, but I personally know of no black pastors who do not have
a legal contract with their churches. A church that fails to
honor its covenant is no church at all. Dragging the state into
it, to collect money from an apostate, backslidden and
blasphemous corpse of an abomination to God, makes me just as
big a hypocrite as they. Such an action forces me to deny the
very God I claim to serve. It is these contracts, between
churches and music ministers, that institutionalize the demonic
infestation that routinely takes residence. The relationship
becomes all but exclusively about money, with ministers of music
remaining in ungodly churches because they need the money or
churches putting up with unbiblical behavior from ministers of
music because they can’t afford to pay out the contract and boot
the guy. Both situations are wrong. Both make all parties
concerned liars. Additionally, ministers of music who knowingly
sign up with churches they know, for a fact, are run by
unspiritual “boards” or pastors with demonstrable ego problems,
who are obviously out of fellowship with God, have only
themselves to blame for the subsequent hell they find themselves
in. If you are a minister, if you are truly called of God, have
the courage to wait on your ministry [Romans 12:7]. Get a job in a
hardware store or drive a bus or something, and serve instead
with a pastor who may not be able to afford you but whose
investment is obviously in Jesus Christ and, therefore, in you.
By making the ministry about money, you limit your horizons,
forced to continually gravitate toward these apostate egomaniacs
as it is only these large and often ungodly “churches” who can
afford full-time help.
God’s man typically won’t spend a lot of time negotiating
salary, but will instead put on his best poker face, looking the
pastor in the eye and telling him, soberly, that he’d accept,
“Whatever’s in the envelope.” This is a litmus test many of our
churches fail: the integrity test. Churches know what the guy is
worth. They also know what they can prayerfully afford. The
minister knows what he needs to exist, has some idea of what the
church can afford. Negotiation over these points is not
biblical; there is no biblical model for it. Abraham told Lot to
take whatever he wanted [Gen 13]. By faith, tell the church
to do what it prayerfully can. You will know, in *very* short
order, whether the church is being an honest broker or whether
they are ripping you off. If the pastor is earning $100,000 and
the church pays the minister of music $30 thousand, there’s
something intrinsically wrong about that. As often as not, an
anointed, gifted, spiritually empowered minister of music puts
butts in seats and, therefore, makes the pastor’s fat salary
possible. A pastor earning such big bucks should consider
voluntarily dropping his own salary ten grand or so in order to
more appropriately honor God’s man who, battling on the front
lines, is actually as responsible if not more responsible for
the church’s income than the pastor is. The minister of music is
usually leading the ministry responsible for the greatest
portion of the church’s income, for which the church then
rewards the pastor while forcing the musician to exhaust himself
working side jobs. This is not just bad ministry, it is bad
business, the business plan of chimpanzees Any businessman
knows, you got a guy earning money for you, you lock him in. You
reward him. You engage with him, you empower him. This is not
what we do. The biblical model is that the anointed minister is
to be housed and supported by the church, that he is to have no
other duties or jobs but to focus, day and night, on the
ministry of music.
Churches treat the pastor as the star of the show, which,
again, is biblically wrong. The star of the show is Jesus. The church
calls the pastor, not the other way around. The pastor is the
undershepheard, providing vision and leadership, but he is not
to be worshipped or idolized. Churches treating pastors like
CEO’s are led by people who are undereducated in biblical
leadership. A pastor is no greater and no lesser than the
congregation he leads. He puts his socks on one at a time like
everybody else. A church’s minister of music invests long hours
every week finding songs, learning how to play them, learning
all the instrumental and vocal parts of every song, and then
teaching those parts, individually, to each musician and singer.
The minister of music invests many hours away from the church
preparing for his time at the church. Adding an extra burden of
frivolous “office hours” just to justify this guy’s typically
meager salary is simply not biblical. The biblical model, from
Chronicles, is musicians were set aside and ordained for their
ministry like the rest of the priests. They were
full-time workers. 1 Chronicles 9:33 states: “Now these are the
singers, the heads of father’s houses of Levites, dwelling in
the chambers of the temple free from other service, for they
were on duty day and night.”
The Holy Desk: Fewer anointed musicians with each successive generation.
The Seesaw
Musicians: don’t sign any contracts, but in love, speak again to
the pastor and share your concern that you’re being open and
spiritually available to the ministry while the ministry is
bargain hunting. Your investment is in that church. You should
expect that church to invest in you--without your having to play
negotiating games. You should never, ever, have to ask for a
raise. The wise pastor, the Spirit-led pastor, will recognize
your value, will see a return on the church’s investment. A
smart secular businessman will lock in his key talent by
rewarding performance. It is only in the our tradition where we
routinely try and get over on people--key, talented, gifted,
anointed, inspired people absolutely vital to the ministry--by
low-balling them while stuffing the pastor’s pockets with cash.
This is what we do. Which is why we are where we are, and why so
many of our churches have this revolving door out front. Pastor:
lock your people in. make them financially secure and thus less
vulnerable to financial attacks from the enemy or financial
lures from other churches, Make them feel wanted and appreciated
and welcomed and loved. Stop running your church like it’s a
Burger King. If your church was your business, the wise
businessman takes his cut *last--*after all of his key employees
have been rewarded and taken care of. The wise business owner
never takes profit out of his business until that business is
secure. Only in our churches do we see, routinely through budget
reporting, the pastor taking his cut while continuing to lowball
key personnel who make that pastor’s fat bonus possible. This is
unbiblical and un-Christlike behavior. It’s not even smart
business. But it’s what we do.
It’s also why so many of our churches remain on the seesaw: up
for a few years, struggling the next. Because they are being run
by idiots, by people not plugged into God in any meaningful way.
Making your music minister take a night job as a janitor or run
around giving piano lessons and other stupid stuff distracts him
from his most vital work: the rehearsal process. It is through
the repetition of rehearsal that God’s truth becomes deeply
embedded in the hearts and minds of the performers, as they sing
God’s truth over and over, as they play it, as they learn it,
live it. This, even more than Sunday morning, is the true value
of your music minister: to reinforce and embed God’s truth in
the congregation. Yet our churches routinely lowball these
people and/or insist on them working useless and pointless
“office hours,” because our mentality is rooted in the hourly
wage model of factory work as opposed to God’s value-based
system. The worst web designer you can find is still worth $65
hour, while a counter gal at Burger King is worth minimum wage.
You don’t ask the web guy to come in and sit, doing nothing,
just to justify his salary. He has specific skills which have a
specific market value.
Applying the Burger King hourly wage mentality to your minister
of music is simply ignorant. The anointed and gifted music
minister has specific and proven skills which have a market
value which is easy to assess. I am aware of no churches who do
this, but the better business model would be to open the
church’s books and look at the numbers before this musician was
hired and those after a year. Whatever percentage of increase or
decrease in the church’s income should become the annual
adjustment for that musician’s salary. No church will admit its
income has doubled since this talented man of God arrived. They
will, instead, cling to their unbiblical contract, paying the
musician maybe a 4% annual raise when the church’s income has
increased by at least 35-60% since his arrival.
They know this man is making a huge difference in the overall financial health of the church, but keep that a secret, refusing to acknowledge his contribution or allow him to participate in that increase as biblically mandated [I Cor 9]. Many churches do, however, reward the *pastor* for such overall income increases while routinely nickel-and-dimming the persons actually responsible for the increase. These churches are liars. They call themselves churches but are run like bad businesses. The minister of music can see, with his own eyes, and know the church is growing. He should not have to ask for a reasonable bonus or timely and reasonable increases. Likewise, if the church is shrinking, the anointed minster should volunteer to have his salary reduced or even eliminated if that helps keep the doors open. This is biblical accountability. I have only rarely seen this go on.
