The Cringe In The Creative Department
Please God, Make It Stop
Mega church in Manhattan. Tiny country church in Canada. Global conferences. Worship tours. And yes—leading worship with an acoustic guitar in a group home for five mentally disabled adults who smelled like urine and were higher than a Hillsong bridge—yep, been there too.
The wild part about those group homes? Only other guy I know who’s done that—like actually led worship for the forgotten, the medicated, the ones left behind in a haze of side effects and fluorescent lighting—is Joel Houston. He and I both put in time in that quiet purgatory while dreaming of stadiums. Two wannabe Billy Corgans singing to ghosts in sweatpants and hospital bracelets.
Obscurity, man—it’s medicinal for creatives with ambition disorders.
My dad made me do it. Said it was my job. Joel? It was the only job he could hold onto at the time. So no, we weren’t there because we were saintly. We were there because life (AKA The Good Shepherd) shoved us there.
But dang, did it help us.
Serving God as a musician has been one of the strangest, rawest honors of my life.
And yet—brace yourself—the part I’ve hated most? It’s not the 20 unpaid hours a week since puberty. Not the exhaustion. Not the weird pride people thought I had for being in a church band playing songs that sounded like rejected Sonic Youth b-sides. ("You just do it for the glory," they said—like anyone ever picked up a bass to impress girls with a Darlene Zschech cover.)
No, the part I’ve loathed will shock you.
And it’s probably gonna knock over a few sacred fruit stands. Because I’ve been seeing the worship gurus talk about this a ton recently.
Creative Departments got real serious all of a sudden.
Back when my dad was leading worship—shredding Maranatha and Integrity bops with all the swagger of 1980s Clapton in denim and a blazer that somehow counted as formalwear—there weren’t these labyrinthine “worship departments” with flow charts and mood boards. Volunteers ran things. Maybe a church would hire a worship leader-slash-musician-slash-bulletin-folder. But that was it.
Sometimes I think about getting back into it—worship leading. I do miss it. Until I remember how deeply, existentially exhausting it all is.
Learning songs that make you consider scheduling a lobotomy after performing. Brutal, unholy call times. Idiotic setlist decisions because someone, somewhere, decided this steaming pile of unintelligible noise is “anointed.” And the time mismanagement? Staggering. No one can waste your time like a Creative Department on a mission to “steward excellence.”
And bro—I speak for a living. I literally use a microphone professionally. And still, somehow, the Creative Department finds a way to involve themselves.
They ask me to come in an hour early for a mic check.
LOL. Yeah, no.
I’m not doing a mic check, you overweight Professor-Snape-in-a-mall-looking-for-his third-arrest LARPer. Send Chad up to chant “Unique New York” into the mic while you recall last Sunday’s settings. We both know this is completely unnecessary.
Better yet? Pop some batteries in the thing, slap some gain on the channel, and let me talk. You’re gonna forget to unmute me anyway, panic halfway through the intro, and pretend you “had a firmware issue.” Just be a pro. Turn your gay knobs like a man and ride the fader for the first 60 seconds of my sermon.
But again, that isn't even my biggest Creative Department gripe.
I once lost my cool on a guitar player—nothing dramatic, just a tone check with edge—and the guy walked out. Why? Because he didn’t practice. Showed up to Sunday morning rehearsal expecting to learn the songs. Which is, of course, insane—we don’t learn songs at Sunday rehearsal—once again, time management. He quit. Cursed me under his breath. Showed up at C3NYC like a prodigal with pedals.
Honestly? I did him a favor. Saved our church a hundred hours of stress and gave Josh Kelsey a lovely little gift box of chaos.
But musicians? Man, they’ll endure anything. Anything. Just to play. Just to be onstage.
It’s actual, clinical masochism. The stuff they’ll put up with to bang a drum in front of people is deeply concerning. Psychological case study level stuff.
But here’s the one thing I could never—and still cannot—abide:
