Sound Check

How Worship Teams Can Pursue Authenticity, Excellence, and Purpose

Kurtis Parks

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781434710529
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Rituales cristianos y práctica

Author Kurtis Parks understands the realities of being a worship leader. In Sound Check he offers insights about:

• What it means to worship with authenticity
• How to cast a vision of excellence for a worship team
• Ways to rely on the Holy Spirit in leading worship
• Practical approaches to spiritual disciplines
• What to do about the ongoing struggle of separating performance and worship
• How seeking God's presence leads to hearing His voice

Parks's powerful message is that when worship leaders cultivate a private life of worship, God will prepare them to lead from the stage.

1

Check Yourself

“You’re going to Hollywood!”

Along with more than a hundred thousand other American Idol hopefuls who auditioned that year, I wanted to hear that phrase directed at me, just as I’d seen it directed at other musicians on TV many times. That day I was handed a yellow slip of paper, and with one sentence the trajectory of my life changed. For better or worse, I was heading down the path to stardom, or so I thought, and oftentimes that path is a parallel lane with Pride Road. It didn’t start with American Idol.

I played in bands all throughout my high school years. My first group was a boy band called Dream Come True, which I started in the ninth grade with my two best friends. We thought we were destined to become the next Backstreet Boys, but our band pretty much started and ended with a cassette tape recording of what might be the worst song ever written. I can’t even remember the title, but we mostly just harmonized to “ooh” and “yeah, baby” over and over. And I’m positive a Casio keyboard was involved at some point. This was before the Casio keyboard drum machines were considered “vintage cool.”

My next band, a little more serious, won our high school talent show. After that victory, I decided I wanted to sing and write music for a living. It’s another world when you’re on stage, all eyes on you, and if you happen to have a talent, people will praise you. All of us want to be entertained, and for those of us who have the performer gene, we want to be the ones doing the entertaining. In college, that fire was fueled even more when I started a rock band called Temple. We played every local dive, frat party, and coffeehouse that would give us a gig.

At this point, it might be important to mention that during all of these “rock star” ambitions—from my early teenage years till my audition with American Idol—I was also leading worship every Sunday in a local church. Talk about an identity crisis. Trust me, you can’t separate the two walks of life. You’ll carry a little bit of church when you play a gig in a bar, and you’ll carry a piece of the “rock star” mentality when you’re leading people in worship. The more I led worship and the more I played rock band gigs, the more those two roles grew and became increasingly confused. And when you have one foot in each of those worlds, you end up going in circles.

It all led to my brother, Nate, daring me to audition for America’s favorite singing competition the summer after I graduated from college. I didn’t have much to lose, so I thought, Why not? In all honesty, I didn’t expect to make it. I knew I could sing in tune, and I definitely didn’t lack in the confidence department. I’d sung solos in choir and was the lead singer of some pretty awesome Creed cover bands in high school (I wish I was joking about that one).

But the moment I walked into the DC Convention Center and laid eyes on the twenty-two thousand “Idol” hopefuls, I didn’t feel so confident. Trust me, there were far more talented singers in that room than me. But wherever my vocals might’ve failed, my crazy personality must have shined through, and somehow I found myself making it through to Hollywood. That led to one of the craziest weeks of my life, complete with cameras in my face 24-7. By the end of “Hollywood week,” I had made it into the top fifty finalists. However, following the last solo audition round, my journey was cut short when the judges gave me the news that I wouldn’t be going on any further. Don’t try to Google it—you won’t find anything. This was in the era before YouTube, thank God.

I thought I had blown it. I had ruined my big chance to be somebody. Of course, I told everyone in my life that I thought this was the platform God was giving me to spread His message, when all along I used that rationale to disguise the real story—that I wanted to be a famous singer praised by millions of adoring fans everywhere. I remember having a very real conversation with my dad on the night I was dismissed from the show. He said, “Kurtis, if this isn’t what God has for you, just wait and see what He does have for you.”

So I boarded a plane back to Virginia with a renewed sense of hope … and a new plan for how to make it big. I wish I could say this was the moment when I went into a season of prayer and seeking God’s face, to discover His plan for my life. But I can’t.

I started my next band, originally named The Kurtis Parks Band, and played as many shows as I could book, squeezing every ounce of exposure out of my short-lived TV experience. This is also the point where I stopped leading worship in the local church to give 100 percent of my efforts toward becoming the next big thing in the pop-rock music universe. I look back on this time of my life and realize that’s when pride really started to take ownership of my heart.

“You’re going to Hollywood.”

That yellow sheet of paper might as well have been the pink slip to my purpose. And I nearly let it slip away.

Check Your Pride

We all want to be real. We want to be the best and most accurate versions of ourselves that God created us to be—authentic, purpose-driven world changers. We weren’t placed here by accident, and the gifts we all possess are not design flaws. My prayer and hope in writing this book and sharing my story is to show that we are all in process. As long as we’re on this side of eternity, none of us will make it to complete perfection. The good news is, that’s not the goal. Where we’re going in life isn’t nearly as important as who we’re becoming.

In my own journey, I’ve tried so hard to be perfect and project an image that I have it all together, all the time. From the stage, that burden just magnifies over time, until we hit the point of collapse. My week was filled with six days and twenty-one hours of struggle, hardship, and battles I was fighting—and losing. Then for three hours on a Sunday morning, I put that all aside and picked up a guitar to lead a congregation in songs I wasn’t sure I believed myself. I know so many worship leaders and musicians who feel the same pressure. I was a fraud. Instead of being vulnerable and bringing all of my burdens to the foot of the cross, and leading worship out of a genuine heart, I had compartmentalized my life into what I thought people wanted to see.

In this book, I’ll talk about the roadblocks to authenticity and those things that so often stand between us and the destiny we have in Christ. We’ll explore how wrong motives, big egos, and a hard heart can be enemies of integrity, excellence, and purpose.

I pray that we would desire above all else to live out a walk of authentic love with Jesus. This whole world cries out for authenticity. It’s such a rare thing to find these days. We have movies that are put together with more computer-generated graphics than actual physical objects. We have plastic surgery performed countless times each week. We have more quick-fix, self-help books on the shelves than ever before, mostly showing us how to solve permanent problems with temporary solutions. Every time we turn on the news, we can see another scandal coming to light, and people we thought were the real deal are exposed by the truth of a harsh reality. Lord, help us live authentic lives of worship that would show this world a better way of living. As worship leaders, I pray we will lead the way to authenticity. I pray that the songs we sing are the prayers of our hearts. I pray that we could take off every mask we’ve made for ourselves, by turning our pride into praise.

It’s the battle every believer goes through. Whether it’s blatantly obvious or completely hidden, we all deal with the monstrous dragon.

Pride. She’ll creep up on you and consume your thoughts. The moment you think you’ve got her beat is the moment she’s already claimed you. The root of all insecurity is a pride issue.

For a time, I led worship at a church whose motto was “Go where you’re celebrated, not tolerated.” While the intent was to show people they were appreciated, this was a dangerous statement because it told people (especially artists) they needed celebration. Celebration is closely related to glory, and we’re in trouble when we take any amount of glory away from the Lord. Considering that all of us were created to worship, it can be dangerously easy to turn praise into pride. In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we read, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” That can’t happen when we’re slaves to our own pride.

Egotism and overconfidence aren’t the only forms of pride we must be concerned about. False humility is a slightly less obvious form of pride, and it clothes itself in the same robes that the Pharisees and Sadducees wore in Jesus’s day. It is the kind that says, “Oh, praise God, it’s all about Him,” but inside you shout, “Thank you for finally recognizing my amazing talents!” Let’s not pretend to be more humble than we really are. Take the compliment. It’s okay. Know that every good gift comes from our heavenly Father and every ounce of glory belongs to Him. We can honor God with our gifts while still being real with people.

Walking with humility is no easy task. In fact, it’s counterintuitive to everything this world screams at us. That’s how most things tend to work in the kingdom of God, though. Matthew 20:16 tells us, “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” And in Luke 14, Jesus says that “those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” But perhaps the verse that should give us the biggest need for a sound check on pride is James 4:6. It teaches us that God opposes the proud and shows favor to the humble. One thing I know is that I want everything I do to have God’s hand, His favor, on it. And that just doesn’t happen with a prideful person.

Think about someone in your life right now who you would say has a pride problem. Are you rooting for that person? Would you want him or her on your team, in your circle, or on your staff? Probably not. Funny thing is, this same principle even works in non-Christian culture. More often than not, we see people in the spotlight who help others and put the needs of the less fortunate above their own. I’m a huge pro football fan, and I always look forward to those halftime stories of players bettering their communities and serving those around them. They even have a “Man of the Year” award for it! Not too shabby, NFL.

If you want to have God’s favor in your life, walk humbly. If you want God on your side, walk humbly. As followers of Jesus, there are so many things that we can think we’re doing for God and for His glory, but in reality we are puffing ourselves up in pride and doing things for our own accolades. When praise says “for His glory,” pride says “for my glory.”

Every musician, whether a believer or not, deals with pride. As a worship leader, you always hope that it’s something you’ve conquered, but pride can rear its ugly head and take over every time someone tells you, “Awesome service today” or “Great new song!”

Take a look at the life of David—quite possibly the quintessential standard for worship leaders, right? We see him wrestle with the same thing. Pride is a force that fights against the spirit of humility that Christ calls us all to walk in. We know we have to die to pride, so why is it so hard to conquer? It’s hardest to overcome when we are finding our affirmation in the words of man instead of the words of God. We long for words to build our esteem. We get a high off it, but the feeling wears off. Proverbs 16 says pride leads to destruction, and that’s exactly what happens with so many leaders and musicians when they let it get out of hand. When we crave the shouts of an audience over the whisper of the Holy Spirit, we’re missing it. The applause of man lasts a moment, but the love of God lasts a lifetime.

The book of James tells us, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (4:10). That’s a tough lesson to learn. I know, because I’ve tried dozens of times to lift myself up and build things for my own good, only to see those things crumble. Every success comes from God’s goodness and grace, but we lose our way when we take our eyes off Christ and focus on success. When we walk in humility and let God do the heavy lifting, things tend to go much smoother. With our eyes on Him, He often pours out His blessing, because it’s not the blessing we’re seeking; it’s Him. Seek His face, and He will open His hands.

We call the things of the Spirit “supernatural” because they are beyond our natural way of understanding and seeing things. After reading and taking the test in Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages, I recognized that the language right at the top for me—next to physical touch (I’m a hugger)—was words of affirmation. God has an amazing sense of humor and paired me up with my wife, Sarah, who has the exact reverse order of love languages as mine. I guess Paula Abdul had it right when she sang “opposites attract.” I’ve since come to realize that an unhealthy need for words of affirmation is closely related to a problem with pride.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the need for affirmation. In fact, God designed us with that very desire, because it can only be fulfilled in Him. Until we find complete affirmation in who God says we are in Christ Jesus, we’ll never truly walk in the identity He’s given us. Whether I was leading worship in a church or playing a gig with my band, I needed that affirmation. The applause after every song, the lines of people waiting for an autograph, the college girls waiting to talk to me—it was never enough. And when I was leading worship, I knew I was in a dangerous place when I directly correlated people raising their hands in worship to my leading the songs well enough. I started to aim for an emotional response ...