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The Separation of Church and Concert with Andy Cherry

Beyond Sunday Worship Podcast

Release Date: 05/22/2025

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Beyond Sunday Worship Podcast

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Today’s conversation is with my friend Andy Cherry. Andy is a Worship Leader, former Worship Pastor, Songwriter with Capitol CMG, and touring bandmate with Brandon Lake.

Andy is mega talented and a thoughtful voice on the tensions of worship and industry. As a professional songwriter, he’s someone whose livelihood is connected to the worship industry. We have a great chat about excellence culture in the church. Has it gone too far? Why it’s uncomfortable to combine the words “worship” and “industry”.   Why we need to expand the kinds of leaders we hire into Worship Pastor roles. At the heart of it all is a love for Jesus, a passion for His presence, and a desire to serve the people of God through honest art and biblical faithfulness.

Topics Covered:

  • Early influential records
  • The problem with our performance culture in church
  • Separating concert from church
  • Why we need to write about more topics
  • Andy's songwriting & creative process

Resources Mentioned:

Show Sponsor: Planning Center

My goal in this podcast is to help you grow as a worship leader. Of course that includes your formation, but it isn’t limited to that—it’s also with practical tools to help you in your ministry.

It’s hard to talk about being a worship leader without mentioning Planning Center. As you know, I’m a huge fan. A lot of you are already using Planning Center Services to schedule your volunteers, plan your worship services, and give your team the tools they need to learn their music. But with Planning Center People, you can stay even more engaged with your volunteers and anyone looking for how to get plugged in.

First, some good news: People is completely free with any Planning Center subscription. No, you didn’t hear me wrong—it’s free. Second, some better news: you can use People to add new volunteers to your teams quickly and automatically.

In People, you can make forms for anyone interested in volunteering, put them in a step-by-step training workflow, and then automatically add them to Services to schedule them for the right team. And that’s just one way you can use People. From sending automated emails and seeing church-wide engagement to organizing your member database and keeping information up-to-date, there’s tons you can do.

So go to planningcenter.com to use People for free.