Avoiding the Trap of Judging Worship - 10,000 Fathers & Mothers

One of the things that naturally happens when people start trying to grow in their competency as a songwriter or worship leader, is that they start paying much more attention to the songs they hear and the worship services they attend. On one hand, this can be a great learning season that brings a lot of heightened awareness, and to a degree we encourage it. If you’re going to be a student of something and advance in a particular skill set, you do need to observe, ask questions, and ask yourself if you would have done it differently and be thoughtful about why. This type of “assessing” is helpful in the growth process.

But all worship leaders need to be aware that there’s a line you can cross where “assessing” becomes “judging.” That path will ultimately lead down a road that makes it much more difficult to engage in worship, because it puts the Why (and the Who!) in the backseat and brings your preferences and opinions to the forefront.

As worship leaders, nothing we do should be primarily about us or our preferences. If you’re called to be a worship leader, your primary job is to lead your people into authentic, dynamic worship, in spirit and truth, of the living, triune God. We are to submit our preferences in service of the people we’re entrusted to shepherd. Your preferences might help you discern where you’re called to be, but they play a smaller role in the life of your ministry than you might initially think because not everyone engages in worship exactly the way you do. Most importantly, the more we allow our preferences about worship to engulf our mindset, the more difficult it is to simply delight in Jesus.

healthy assessing

How do you know when it’s okay to practice “assessment” as a worship leader?

The moments where assessing is beneficial in the growth and vocation of a worship leader will primarily happen during the planning and preparation process for services, including during rehearsal.

Putting on your healthy assessment hat in those spaces is actually part of your job! You need to be able to listen to a song someone sends you during the week and discern whether or not it should be part of your church’s corporate worship services. You’ve got to be able to make decisions about when a volunteer is ready to step into more vocal or instrumental leadership, or when to spend time in rehearsal working out a particular musical part. That all requires assessment. This same is true if you’re part of any kind of worship school or songwriting group, so long as the assessing lives within the confines of those assignments for the purposes of the educational process and growing in skill.

Where’s the line?

But if every single time you hear a worship song it becomes an exercise of picking it apart for not having good enough rhymes or the production sounding not up to your standards – that’s a sign you may have crossed into “judging” territory. The same is true if you find yourself in the congregation during a worship service consistently focusing more on what each singer or instrumentalist is doing rather than engaging in worship.

In our humanity we can let ourselves do these things without thinking about the pride involved in it, and it’s a big heart check for me too!

But I really don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize that I missed opportunities to engage with Jesus in worship because I cared more about whether someone rhymed ‘me’ and ‘free’ or because I was paying more attention to whether the singer or electric guitar player hit every note perfectly during that worship set on Sunday morning. I don’t want to make those moments about anything other than Him.

The one who matters most

The danger of letting a posture of “judging” lead the way in worship songs and worship settings is that we often forget to consider what God’s heart toward it might be. And I sure hope the heart of God is pleased with well-intentioned, albeit imperfect offerings because I do it all the time! We’re all on a journey of growth, after all.

Is He worthy of excellence? Absolutely.

He is worthy of the best each of us has to offer.

My love for Him should forever spur me on to hone the gifts He’s given to me so that I can offer my best back to Him. But if Scripture has anything to teach us about this, it’s that God looks at the heart and almost always has different criteria for “judging” than we do – and in the end only His judgement stands!

It’s not up to me to determine what someone else’s best is, or what their offering should look like. Of course there are spaces where we can push each other to grow and learn. Those happen in the context of community and in relationships where there is trust, safety, and openness, where real dialogue can happen. It doesn’t happen from a distance and it shouldn’t produce judgment or arrogance.

If you’ve found yourself in this sort of head space, I’d encourage you to go to Lord with it. Express your heart’s desire to be able to enter into worship with a purity that’s all about Him, and confess where you’ve fallen short. Ask Him to help you take those thoughts captive whenever you’re in a worship environment, and to give you discernment on when to put on the “assessing”’ hat and when to remove it and simply sit at His feet.

It will probably take some time to unlearn those habits, but the Lord is patient with us! I am praying for the hearts of even the most seasoned worship leaders to return to offering gifts to Jesus rather than judging the gifts of others.

10KFAM exists to raise and release spiritual mothers and fathers who creatively shape the future of the church. The primary way we do this is through our Worship School, an 18-month discipleship program rich with community, coaching, and Master’s-accredited content (that doesn’t require any relocation!). Whether you’ve been leading worship for decades or are just starting out, we invite you to join the journey of learning to cultivate and give away what God’s placed in you. Click here learn more about the School.

next worship school begins MAY 5-9, 2025

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