Beauty & Baal: How to Avoid Idolatry Born from Good Intentions

Beauty is a quality in worship that we're called to pursue with focus and refinement. But when does beauty become a Baal?

It lies in prioritizing perfection over excellence.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not advocating for loose, unrefined worship sets that show an obvious lack of preparation and polish. In other words, excellence goes to the wayside in those instances. But when you idealize a picture of perfection for your team, be careful that it doesn't stray into idolatry.

This is something I've pondered much throughout the last few years. Since re-integrating with the music team at my home church after a relocation in 2020, I've observed how people (mostly myself) can become so focused on the process of perfecting beauty that they lose sight of the Object worthy of beauty—that is, our Lord.

Many of our teams feature members of varying abilities: some with high levels of talent, and others with skills that need nurturing. For myself, I often see deficiencies that need to be corrected as fast as possible, and much of the time, it leaves an unnecessary wake of bruised feelings. The process of perfection can be an obsession for me. (I've pulled 8-hour practice sessions as a regular part of my routine in my younger days.) It's easy for me to project that level of intensity and dedication onto others, so I ended up letting perfection become an idol, even when I channelled that into leading worship teams.

In other words, my quest for beauty in worship became a Baal—and I was totally unaware of that for a long time.

Lately though, I've been curating a mindset and approach to solving issues that draws on strengths of each team member, rather than demanding conformity to my high standards. Recently, I had an opportunity to work with a junior vocalist who is still in the process of learning how to harmonize and be confident in their singing. Typically, a go-to approach for harmonies in contemporary worship songs is to sing a 3rd above the melody, so that's what we attempted at the start of our rehearsal.  

But it wasn't working in this case. 

I quickly realized that this young singer hadn't spent much time working on interval leaps that often characterize the contour of vocal harmonies, but could sing in unison very well on step-wise parts. Given this observation, I figured we would do much better with a simplified approach. 

Rather than drilling a complex harmony line over every lyric, we focused only on the chorus of the song. Even further, we assigned harmonies ONLY to two lines within the chorus' 4-line stanza. In doing this, the vocalist could focus on an attainable goal that strategically accented a prominent part in the song. At the end of our rehearsal, this young singer was able to nail the part every time and apply the approach to other songs within the set.

I could've demanded the typical vocal part of parallel 3rds from this singer, but several things would've happened:

• We would've taken 2–3x as long to get through the material in rehearsal.

• There would've been information overload on what needed to be performed, slimming down chances of success in execution.

• The singer's confidence would've been severely diminished.

• We would both be frustrated in the process.

But, by only worrying about a couple of key lines in the most important parts of each song, this is what resulted:

• We moved through the material right on time.

• All parts were nailed, consistently and repeatedly, after a few attempts of working the line out.

• The singer's confidence was visibly increased through body language and vocal projection.

• We both were encouraged and eager for the coming Sunday service after finishing rehearsal.

The approach I used with this singer demonstrated a push for excellence in one's strengths and using those to strategic effect in the vocal arrangement. Was everything perfect? Not all the time, especially comparing it to common practice. But was the end result satisfying and encouraging? 

You bet. 

Consider how you can encourage growth through implementing team members' strengths in a way that helps them improve their weaknesses without wearing them down or embarrassing them, instead seeking to instill confidence and eagerness to reach for new heights. In the end, you'll achieve excellence that can be refined over time, which is pleasing and acceptable as an offering to our Lord.

Be blessed 👊✌️