Coming soon to a worship platform near you: the personal confidence monitor.
Not long ago, I was talking with a friend who has a similar background to my own. He currently works with churches and, like me, has a history of touring and making records in both secular and Christian environments. Two old-school thinkers, one might say.
One of the things we talked about was some of those ever-present axioms of our time that may or may not be applicable nowadays. A big one was the unspoken rule that you should never, ever, under any circumstances, stop a song and start over. From my experience, this is a fundamental, carved-in-stone kind of law. Especially in the church world, where another carved-in-stone, spoken-out-loud rule is: do not create distractions. Anything that interrupts the flow of the morning worship service, even in a small way, is something to avoid.
And truly, how often does this really happen anymore?
Well…
Within a week of that conversation, I was visiting a large church, and sure enough, there it was. The first song opens, the worship leader starts to sing, but the confidence monitor goes down. He’s lost. No clue what to do. As if on cue, he stops the band, then finally interrupts the awkward collapse and says, “Okay, sorry folks, we’re going to actually start that song again.”
There’s nothing wrong with an iPad on stage. The question is whether it’s a helpful tool—or something you can’t function without.
Maybe the team wasn’t embarrassed, but I felt at least some adjacent humiliation, as in my mind I could hear the deafening sound of a long record scratch as the band deconstructed into silence and nervous laughter.
The screen becomes a safety net, then the safety net becomes the standard.
Listen, I get it. Mistakes happen, equipment breaks, and sometimes you can’t prepare for every potential failure point. These days, with overproduced and highly stylized services, a little humanity is not a bad thing. It’s okay when people see that everything isn’t perfectly polished. But this one was preventable.
The confidence monitor going down was not the real problem.
The real problem was that the team could not function without it. It also made me wonder how many other tech failures would derail an entire service. Apparently, this is still a conversation we need to have.
To be fair, this is not really just about confidence monitors. It’s also about iPads on stage, chord charts, lyric prompts, guide cues, and any other tool designed to help us function on Sunday morning. I’m not against any of those things. They can be very useful. But there is a difference between using a tool and depending on it for survival.
Take iPads on stage. I understand why people use them. They are convenient and flexible, especially for volunteer teams. But when a musician spends the entire set staring at the chart, barely looking up, I think we have to ask whether the chart is helping or whether it has become a crutch. The same goes for the worship leader who can’t get through a familiar song without the lyrics on the monitor.
Back in my day.
You knew this was coming. Most musicians didn’t have that option. In the earlier days of modern worship, many church musicians came from bars, clubs, studios, touring, or some combination of those environments. Players were doing three- or four-hour-long sets a night. Touring musicians were playing longer shows with 20, 30, sometimes 40 songs. They learned the music and lyrics because they had to. There wasn’t a practical alternative.
Don’t let your crutches cripple you.
During that same season, a lot of professional musicians, singers, and audio engineers came off the road and got involved in their churches. That is sort of my story. We brought our own baggage, no doubt. I don’t miss the darker parts of life as a road musician, and I don’t recommend that as a discipleship path for anyone. But we did bring an understanding that preparation included actually knowing the material.
Fast-forward to today, and many church musicians and singers don’t come from those backgrounds. On the whole, I think that’s a very good thing. I love seeing young musicians get involved in church early. I love that they can develop their gifts in a healthy environment and hopefully avoid some of the places and patterns many of us had to grow through.
But I do think we lost something along the way. We lost some of the discipline of memorizing parts. We lost some of the expectation that the team should actually know the song, not just follow it on a screen. Too many worship musicians are staring at iPads with chord charts, and too many worship leaders are relying heavily on the ubiquitous confidence monitor.
Sometimes it feels like it should be renamed the “lack-of-confidence” monitor.
Now, I know the pushback. Someone will say, “People are busy. Volunteers have jobs. Cindy is a paralegal at a busy law firm, has three kids, and doesn’t have time to memorize four songs every week.” I get that. I really do.
But let me gently push back, especially to full-time paid worship staff. I’m willing to give Cindy more grace here than I am you. The old pros from the touring and bar scene were performing many more songs than that from memory, and plenty of them also had day jobs. On Sunday, we’re usually talking about three or four worship songs, maybe five, and most of them have been in rotation for months. Let’s be honest, that should not be an unreasonable ask for most worship teams.
That does not mean every volunteer has to operate like a touring professional or full-time staffer. That would be unfair and unrealistic. But it does mean we may be asking too little of ourselves when it comes to preparation. There is a big difference between extending grace to volunteers and building a culture where the team can’t get through the day without the monitors and iPads.
When every lyric and chord is only a glance away, memorization can start to feel unnecessary. Until it isn’t.
A mentor of mine used to say, “Don’t let your crutches cripple you.” That line has stayed with me because it applies to so many areas of ministry and production. A crutch can be helpful. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary. But if we keep leaning on it after we should be walking, eventually it holds us back.
That’s my concern with confidence monitors and iPads. They are not the villains. The technology is not the problem. The problem begins when the technology enables a lack of preparation.
The screen becomes a safety net, then the safety net becomes the standard.
Most Bible teachers encourage us to memorize Scripture. Why? Because memorization helps move the words from something we read to something we know. It shapes how we think and respond. Why wouldn’t some version of that same principle apply to worship?
If you have memorized the lyrics, chords, arrangement, or whatever part you are responsible for, that muscle memory handles the basic structure of the song. You’re not burning all your energy just trying to remember what comes next. That frees you up to be more engaged with the rest of the team, the congregation, and yes, maybe even the Holy Spirit.
I’m not suggesting that every person on the platform should perform every song every week with no chart, no prompt, and no safety net. That’s not realistic. I am also not trying to create some heavy-handed worship team boot camp where people are shamed for needing a reminder.
Technology should serve the worship experience. It should not become the team’s short-term memory.
In some ways, our dependence on iPads and confidence monitors mirrors what is happening everywhere else. Navigation, spellcheck, reminders, autocorrect, and AI-assisted writing are all incredibly useful. I’ll admit it. I am probably more dependent on GPS than I should be. But that’s just between me and the road. On a worship team, our dependence affects more than just us.
For all the tools we have, the most reliable method is still the old one. Memorize your part. It worked before the iPad. It worked before the confidence monitor. It worked before most of the tools we now assume are essential. We did it before, and we can do it now.
You may have to shake the dust off that muscle, but I promise you this: memorizing your part is still more reliable than any screen on the platform. It doesn’t need power, signal, network, or a reboot. And it helps you lead, play, sing, and serve with more freedom.
Are there other technical crutches that might be holding back your team or worship experience, or one your team has overcome? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Until then, don’t forget to listen.
