You’re at a worship conference. The leader on stage is your age. The room is bigger than yours will ever be. He’s funny. He’s tall. His band is tight. And by the time the second chorus hits, you’ve stopped worshiping. You’re just doing math.
But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Psalm 73:2-3 (WEB)
What’s actually going on
Envy is the underground feeling worship leaders don’t talk about and almost all of us have.
It’s not the same as comparison. Comparison says, “their church is bigger than mine.” Envy says, “I want what they have, and the wanting is starting to rot something in me.”
It shows up specifically in this role. The platform exposes you to other worship leaders constantly. Their songs are in your set list. Their tutorials are on your YouTube feed. Their followers are in your algorithm. Their churches are on the leadership conference circuit. And you, who got into ministry to love Jesus and serve a local church, find yourself wanting their reach, their sound, their team, their wife who handles the merch table.
Some of that wanting is appropriate ambition. Some of it is something else. The Hebrew word in Psalm 73 carries the sense of “to be hot, to burn.” Envy is hot. It burns through what you actually have so you can stare at what you don’t.
A worship leader said it like this: “I love what we do here. I just want what they have over there. I’m losing the love for here because of the wanting for there.”
That’s envy’s whole project. Not making you hate yourself directly. Hollowing you out by making everything you have feel small.
What’s true
Psalm 73 is the most honest envy-prayer in the Bible. The psalmist watches the prosperous and almost gives up his integrity over what they have. Then he writes one of the most pivotal verses in the Psalter: “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me, till I entered the sanctuary of God.”
The turn doesn’t come from understanding. It comes from worship. He stops calculating. He goes to the place where God is. And from that place, the prosperity of the envied person looks different.
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.”
That’s not a denial of the envied person’s gifts. That’s a relocation. The psalmist found out he was envying second-tier things. The worship leader with the bigger platform doesn’t have more God. He has more platform. Those are not interchangeable.
You have what the psalmist had. You have nearness. The worship leader you’re envying may or may not have that. You can have it without the platform. They can have the platform without it. The one thing that holds you up Sunday after Sunday is nearness, not reach.
Envy fades, slowly, when you spend more time in the sanctuary than on the algorithm.
For your team
- Who are you secretly envious of right now? Be specific. What exactly is it you want?
- What would change about your week if you took the psalmist’s relocation move (less calculation, more sanctuary)?
- What’s one input in your life right now that’s feeding the envy more than feeding the love?
Pray this
Father, the wanting got hot this week. Cool it. Take me back to the only thing that has ever held me up. Whom have I in heaven but you? Help me mean that. Amen.
This Sunday
Before the service, unfollow one account on Instagram that you know is feeding your envy. Not forever. Just for the season. You can’t grow love and envy in the same soil.
Go deeper
In the network: Search “The Psalm 73 Move” for the live training where Chris and I walk through how to actually do the sanctuary-not-algorithm shift when you’re a worship leader chronically online. Free at thechurchcollective.mn.co.
This devotional is part of The Church Collective’s free 52-week worship team devotional series. Get the first 12 as a free PDF and a fresh devotional in your inbox every Monday morning.