Why Are Worship Leaders Blue?

A truly alarming article produced on the Worship Leaders Research page reports that "Worship Leaders Are 8.5x Less Likely to Report Excellent Mental Health than U.S. Adults." The subtitle punches equally hard: "And Nearly 9 in 10 Are Getting No Help at All."

I have enjoyed reports by this team before—including friends Dr. Mike Tapper and Rev. Marc Jolicoeur. They're serious people and their research seems sound. Among the most striking of their findings is that the youngest cohort of worship leaders defies their generational norm in being the least likely to be getting psychological or spiritual counseling. The researchers don't feel confident yet in suggesting why, so I responded on Facebook with a few suggestions. Then I thought you might like to read their article and perhaps my response as well. So here's a lightly revised version of what I said—but, please, read the article first!

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Thanks for this article! I don't have scholarly expertise to offer here, but considerable experience as (a) a player, off-and-on, in worship bands for fifty (!) years; (b) a lay leader in congregations, off-and-on, for forty years; and (c) a historian and theologian who studies the North American church, and particularly evangelical churches. So here's a thought or two.

(1) When the article rightly asks why younger leaders defy the generational norms and wonders about the constraints of masculinity, I suspect you are close to the mark.

I suggest that the stereotypical masculinity so common in evangelical churches (the rugged cowboy) combines with two other factors to produce a situation militating against mental health for these people. The first of these factors is the job itself: the not-so-stereotypically-masculine job of professional musician singing in a genre that is very "soft." You can't score many "man points" for kicking out bad-ass rock'n'roll or hip-hop when you're playing mostly indie-rock with perhaps a couple of upbeat pop songs. The second factor is age. "Hey, Junior, are you adult enough to be on the pastoral team? Really, buddy?" This combination produce a situation in which younger worship leaders prevent themselves from seeking help. Rather than existing, as you suggest they do, in a "desert," they starve themselves of the care they need for fear of looking weak—even if that care is available all around them.

(2) I make bold to suggest that remuneration is lousy for a lot of these people. (Okay, that's not a particularly venturesome surmise. Few pastors get paid well. And young bandleaders—which is, let's be honest, what most "worship leaders" are: they're hardly trained liturgists!—likely get terrible salaries. Poor wages supplemented with limited benefit packages entail that affording sustained psychological care isn't possible—or, at least, that item never rises in the family financial agenda above "food on the table" and "rent" and "clothes for the growing kids."

(3) Finally, I think that "victorious living" theology, particularly the dramatic "overcoming/breakthrough" perpetual revivalism of the pentecostal/charismatic variety—which is also present, if watered down, elsewhere—sows self-censoring doubt in the hearts of such folk. This theology is at its worst, typically, in worship songs. One mustn't blame a school fight song or a romantic ballad for hyperbole, but one also mustn't take such language literally. Here's what I mean. Every Sunday morning, you lead congregations in the typical one-two combination of victorious anthems (all the battle metaphors, with Mighty Jesus doing everything for us) plus love songs ("Jesus, you're everything I need"—I don't need oxygen, or nutrition, or gravity...). Having made all these extreme claims about the all-sufficiency of Jesus, how do you then admit, on Monday morning, that Jesus isn't helping you "win" in your own life and seems to be not, in fact, all you need after all?

So here are three suggestions for further investigation: (1) unhealthy subcultural stereotypes; (2) unhealthy remuneration; and (3) unhealthy theology = unhealthy worship leaders. I also wonder if young people who worship in such churches also record lower-than-average access to mental health resources than the general population. The same influences work on them, too. But those influences will feel the most acute on the worship leaders. I hope they can get (more, better) help.