The "Song" IS the point....

From Yahoo news about the Super Bowl opening last night....

"Perhaps she was too concerned with breaking Patti LaBelle's record for turning single-syllable words into entire paragraphs during the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," but noted ex-teen queen Christina Aguilera botched the national anthem something fierce before the Super Bowl. Aguilera started out all right, but she had a problem with the ramparts -- specifically, the "O'er the ramparts we watched" line, which she left out altogether.....Aguilera tried to make up for it by combining two lines -- "What so proudly we watched," instead of "What so proudly we hailed", but let's just say that it was too late to reverse the error. Twitter blew up, and all Aguilera could do was to over-sing every word from there on out, which she most certainly did."

This was a good reminder for all of us who are called Worship Leaders and Teachers of God's word... It can so easily become about us, as we add too many notes and turn single-syllable thoughts into entire paragraphs.   The worship moments of a service are about the songs, not us and not our "performance" of it.  It's not even about what the song is doing to us emotionally.....we need to let the words of truth and the activity of singing them speak for itself.  This holds for teaching as well.  It's a hard line to walk when taking a few paragraphs that take 3 minutes to read slowly and turning them into a 30 minute message...we need teaching and we need to "discuss" what the writer meant, but those of us who teach need to be careful of our own commentary and opinion, less we add too many notes to "singing".


I feel bad for Ms Aguilera, but these are the kind of mistakes that eventually lead to humility and maturity....at least I hope!


Just remember.....the song IS the point, not the performance of it.