I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole idea of “emotional manipulation” in church music. Â Your thoughts might help me as I finish writing this post for later in the week.
Caleb Delamont
for young worship leaders, creatives, and musicians desiring to grow
Hey Caleb,
I’m really interested in how you tackle this topic! Emotional manipulation is sometimes so subtle and it seems like there is fine line between emotional awakening and manipulation. It’s good to set a mood, a tone, an atmosphere, it’s good for people to be aware of their emotions but we do have to be careful. I wonder if it’s more about that attitude in the heart of the worship leader/team? I’ve often wondered why at some services I feel myself resisting entering the emotion and at other times, am happy to participate fully? Is it something about worship leaders/teams trying too hard to elicit one specific emotional response instead of leaving room for multiple emotional responses?
Also, as a sidenote – while emotional manipulation is maybe more common – could you say there are attempts at mental or intellectual manipulation that we also need to be aware of? Emotions aren’t the only things that can be manipulated and sometimes I think Christians try to write emotions off as a weak link in the chain. We’re told so often that “love isn’t an emotion, it’s a choice” that I wonder if we start to dull our emotional responsiveness to God because we fear our emotions? Just seems like Emotion gets more of a bad rap than it should.
Which reminds me of this review by Andy Crouch of The Social Animal by David Brooks in Christianity Today where he writes that, “And emotion, far from distorting reason, is actually a resource for reasoning, because emotion turns out to be an extraordinarily effective way to integrate and respond to complexity.” I thought that was a really interesting perspective to chew on. The rest of the article is here if you want to get the full context: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=92837
Anyway – just some thoughts. Looking forward to reading your post.
tash
Hey Tash
I like that term “emotional awakening”. Really good points about emotional responsiveness to God too. Obviously this is something worth wrestling with.
I think emotional manipulation in terms of music sounds worse than it really us. The word “manipulation” has a bad reputation. The first definition of manipulate on Merriam Webster says, “To move, arrange, operate, or control by the hands or by mechanical means, especially in a skillful manner.”
When a service is developed around a theme or a tone, I suppose you can call that manipulation. And that’s not a bad thing. When the worship leader or pastor tries to drive home a point, that is inspired manipulation, and that is not a bad thing.
Singing a song from an honest place is quite beautiful… especially when the singer is the writer. I don’t think that anyone writes the hook of a song and says, “Oh, that line will totally slay them with the Spirit. This is going to be good. People will be tricked into following Jesus left and right!”
When a song is written, it comes from the soul of the writer. The Holy Spirit and the mind of Christ WHICH WE EMBODY will certainly evoke powerful moments in a song, or a sermon, or in any work that is considered expressive. So if that powerful moment manipulates someone’s emotions, than it’s totally the work of the Holy Spirit. When we pray, we pause and invite the Holy Spirit to join. When we worship corporately, a worship leader would be doing us all a great disservice if he ignored prompting or movement of the Spirit.
So follow how the Spirit leads, and if that’s emotional manipulation… my vote is for MORE.
Right on, Rebecca! I’ve also been feeling like that word manipulate is not as bad as it sounds. Thanks for the definition.
So far honesty is coming up as an important ingredient. Keep it coming peeps!
Hey Caleb, great thoughts on this topic. I think that there is something so tightly knit together between music and emotion that its hard to distingush between the to in the secular and sacred realms. And then when you mix the Spirit and the music pointing upwards its a whole new ball game.
What I find is that we are called as leaders to usher in our people/congregation into the presence of God and allow God to be God in what I will call these “moments”. So some churches specifically schedule in times in their service flows to create a “moment” where they will revel in and enjoy God and allow Him to minister. I dont know where I sit on the whole “scheduling moments” thing, but I think that we definately need to be open to these moments when they happen organic or not.
I think I can speak for the majority of worship leaders to say that they’ve seen and felt experiences where these moments are forced or in a worse case ignored and moved on too quickly.
As for me, I believe that we as worship leaders should keep 3 things in our forsight as we lead. We need to be aware of what the Spirit is doing in our own hearts, what the Spirit is doing amongst the band, and then thridly what the Spirit is doing in the congregation… And honestly, if 2 are going in 1 direction you follow that…. Majority rules…. haha!
M
Good thoughts Marshall. I like the “3 Things”.
You said, “As for me, I believe that we as worship leaders should keep 3 things in our forsight as we lead. We need to be aware of what the Spirit is doing in our own hearts, what the Spirit is doing amongst the band, and then thridly what the Spirit is doing in the congregation…”
Along the same lines, Steve Nicholson from Vineyard USA was visiting with a small group of us and said praying with your eyes open is important, 1. so you can be aware of what the Spirit is doing amongst others and 2. if someone is possessed you’ll know before your face gets bitten off.
HAHA! I hate it when faces get bitten off…
Something to watch out for for sure
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