Welcome to the very first installment of Worship Leader Wednesday. Each week I will share an interview with a leader of musical worship in an effort to sharpen one another and gain insight on the hows and whys of what we do on a weekly basis.

Chris Vacher

Biographical Information

Spouse's name: Sonya
Years married: Almost 5
Children's : Two girls – Avery (2) and Emerson (6 months)
Years leading worship: 12
Church name and location: Orangeville Baptist Church – Orangeville, Ontario
Church website: www.orangevillebaptist.com
Denomination: Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Canada
Years at current church: 2
Instruments you play: Guitar, piano
Blog: Yep – www.chrisfromcanada.com

Is your role full time, bi-vocational, or volunteer?

Full time

What are you listening to right now?

I just pulled out some Christmas stuff – Various Artists: Songs From The Voice Volume 2: Son Of The Most High; Andrew Peterson: Behold The Lamb Of God; Needtobreathe: The Heat; Leeland: Sound Of Melodies; Johnny Cash: The Legend Of Johnny Cash.

What are you reading right now?

Allen P. Ross: Recalling The Hope Of Glory; J. Oswald Sanders: Spiritual Discipleship.

What's your musical heritage?

Both my parents were music teachers so I didn't have much choice! Music was always a very big part of our family but I didn't start lessons on piano until I was 9. When I was 12 I began playing saxophone in school music classes and kept playing that right through high school. I decided that I needed to start playing guitar to round out my musical portfolio towards the end of high school so did that by just teaching myself.

Describe your journey to becoming a worship leader.

I actually played on worship teams before I got saved. I didn't grow up going to church but when I started attending a youth group at a local church and they found out I had some musical ability I was signed up for playing on one of the teams. I never actually "led worship" until after I came to faith but it has given me a pretty unique perspective on the whole "Should non-Christians play on worship teams?" question. While I was in university I was asked to lead worship for various ministries and eventually was able to go full-time with my music ministry for a couple of years. This is a very condensed version but a little over two years ago I received a very clear call from God to go in to local church ministry so here I am.

What's the "DNA" of your church?

Orangeville Baptist Church is one of the founding churches of our denomination and will celebrate its 150^th anniversary in four years. Ten years ago Sunday mornings were pretty old school Baptist – preacher on the stage in the big chair, hymn books, organ, song-leader. Through some good times and bad times the congregation has grown to the point where our Sunday mornings are now very expressive – lots of art forms, interaction between preaching and worship, lots of involvement from people on Sunday morning.

Ethnically we are 99% Caucasian primarily because that is what our town is like, although that is changing. My hope and prayer is that the change in ethnic diversity in our town will be reflected over the next couple of years in our church.

In terms of age, our biggest growth area right now is kids with young families. We have designed an incredible kids program and there are lots of families out there where the adults went to church as kids and now think it's important for their kids to do the same. There is also an amazing baby boom in our church right now which is keeping everyone on their toes!

Describe for us your church's worship "style":

Because of the historical heritage of our church (and because of my own belief on the role of historical worship) we make a very strong effort to use music from every era of the modern worship movement. We include hymns because they connect us historically with the church of previous generations. We sing songs from the "contemporary" catalog because it connects us with the church today around the world. And we place an emphasis on writing and developing our own worship repertoire because we want to value history AND create history. That's a big thing for us.

Style is also reflected in how are teams are made up. We do it pretty similar to how most people are probably doing it – bass, drums, guitar (always acoustic sometimes electric), piano, keys and then 4-6 singers.

Non-musical worship – this is something we're developing but we have an amazing amount of artistic talent in our church – dancers, photographers, poets, etc – and I am always looking for ways to dig at that talent. When we use "alternative" art forms during worship we will always set it up as a reflection of our hearts towards God so that way if people don't "get" what we're doing at least they know where we're coming from. People have affirmed that to us after incorporating dance or whatever in a service.

How has worship leading changed you?

Hmm. Not sure I've ever thought of it. I guess that would be like asking how has being a man changed me. J Honouring the call of God on our lives is very clearly worship, in my mind, so at that point there was excitement about serving in a new ministry but also the feeling that the bigger motivation was simply obeying God.

Any risks you wish you had taken but did not?

I was part of a church for a couple of years that, looking back on, would have been very very open to new, experimental expressions of worship. I pushed a little bit in a couple of areas but not nearly as far as I could have compared to other mainline churches.

How did you fare during the "worship wars?"

Wasn't even a part of it. Didn't grow up in church but have always had an incredible appreciation for hymns. When it comes to what we do here on Sunday morning we have a very clear vision and set of values and that guides us in our programming decisions. Some people don't like it and come late or sometimes leave the church but we don't lose sleep over that.

Describe your process for planning a worship service:

I get the series title, "big picture" and main points from my pastor a couple of months in advance. I will usually take the series as a whole (let's say it's 4 weeks) and come up with a pool of songs and I'll say "It would be awesome if we could do these songs over the course of the series" because they fit thematically or whatever with the overall arc of the series. I'll also spend time with our other leaders and some creative types from our church and we'll talk about whether there are some things we could be doing that would take more than a couple weeks to plan – drama, dance, set design, etc. Two weeks before Sunday actually comes I'll get the full run-down from my pastor and for the next week or so I'll pick at the service – try different set list ideas, look for appropriate videos, etc. On the Thursday before the Sunday we have our final walk-through and that is our last opportunity to make any changes. Saturday morning we practice with the worship team and then we hit the floor running on Sunday morning.

That's how we do it now but we are changing that drastically over the next couple of months.

Please include a sample worship set list and/or service order:

Here's October 21st's outline:

Your Name Is Holy
Amazing Grace (My Chains)
Centre

Pray

Offering

Announcements

Enough
Hungry

Message

Jesus Paid It All

Do you write music for your congregation?

Yes. Actually I'm running a songwriters' forum tomorrow (October 27) for people in our church who are interested in exploring this a little more. I'm excited about that!

Describe your song-writing process.

I'm a big believer in co-writing so I try to do that as much as possible. The song that has had the most traction in our congregation is a song that I wrote with a friend of mine who is a worship pastor at a church about an hour from here. He is coming to co-lead the forum with me.

When you look back decades from now, what do you hope to see you've accomplished as a worship leader?

Hopefully I can say that I was faithful to the call of God on my life and inspired people to have a bigger view of who God is.

I sometimes think about a 10-year old kid in our church. He will be with us until he's 18 and leaves for university. That's 8 years. Times 52 Sundays equals 416 Sundays. Plus other events where worship happens let's say that there are 450 worship opportunities for this kid in our church. Now say that in those 450 worship opportunities we're doing an average of 5 songs – sometimes more, sometimes less. So that kid is going to sing about 2000 songs along with the rest of our congregation.

I try to think about that kid on the day he leaves our church – what's the picture he's going to have of God based on the songs we've sung? Who would he say God is? What songs would he say best describe God's character?

We sometimes think that a single song on a single Sunday morning really isn't that important and that we just need to "fill the slot" but as soon as I began thinking about it in that perspective it totally changed how I see Sunday morning.

What are your predictions for the future of worship?

I just hope the church keeps doing it! I can see the church as a whole continuing in the vein of offering various "types" of worship based on what kind of music you like – traditional, contemporary, emergent, country, contemplative, etc. I think we'll see more and more churches encouraging simplicity in their worship expressions. There will always be the churches with big lights, big sound but as more and more churches reduce in size (or start small) the impulse will be to do more with less.

What is one thing you wished every worship leader knew?

Remember that Jesus Christ, not the song that you're leading, is the mediator between God and humanity.

Come back next week for yet another interview with a worship leader. If you would like to be interviewed in a future edition of Worship Leader Wednesday, please leave a comment to this post.

Popularity: 12% [?]