Throughout your life as a musician, you will most likely be in positions where you are not in charge. You may be playing in a church band under the direction of your worship leader and pastor; you may be supporting a traveling ministry; you may be in a recording session, reporting to an album producer. Whatever the situation, it is important to learn how to serve others as a musician… and it’s not always as easy as it sounds!

There is a huge amount of variety across the field of music. Some people like jazz; some people like rap. Some prefer classical, or bluegrass, or funk, or polka. The great thing is, God can use any genre of music! He’s not bound by stylistic preferences, but as a serving musician you may be required to play some styles that you aren’t very fond of. Your goal as a servant is to help accomplish the plan and vision of whoever you are serving. You may enjoy jazz, but if your worship leader wants a bluegrass sound, you might have to lay off those cool chords that you like so much and focus on the primary-colored major tonalities.

This can require a degree of personal detachment from the music: not a lackadaisical attitude, but a realization that you and your musical leadership won’t always agree on how things should be done, and you can’t let yourself get hung up on wanting everything to sound the way you think is best. Hopefully your environment is such that you can offer suggestions that you believe would make the music better, but individual taste in music varies so widely that you can’t always expect your suggestions to be accepted. You probably haven’t liked all of the music you’ve ever heard; I know I haven’t. But part of being a serving musician is being willing to play even something you don’t like, if it supports the vision of those you are serving.

As an example, I had the honor of having Abraham Laboriel play on an album I was working on. Abraham is quite possibly the best bass guitar player who has ever picked up the instrument, not only in terms of technique but in anointing. To my surprise, this great musician would play an outstanding take, emerge from the recording booth into the control room, and ask me if I was happy with what he did, if there’s anything I want done differently. Even with all of the amazing talent and musical insight that Abraham has, he was there to serve.