Is it really this bad?

This is another post about a blog I read, worshipideas.blogspot.com. Don Chapman is the blogger, and he has several websites that are really fantastic resources. You can read his latest blog at the kink above. Basically, he is bemoaning the fact that "good worship leaders are hard to find." It sounds to me like he has had a run-in with a person who leads worship and has fallen from the wagon on some issue or another. He sites some examples of folks who have been fired from their position, mostly for reasons pertaining to their personal life, and then hired by another church who knows about their checkered past.

My issue with his post has several layers.
#1--What about grace and forgiveness? Hate the sin, love the sinner; forgive 70x7 times, and all that.

#2--Are "good" worship leaders really that rare? And if so, what does that say for the worship of the people they are charged with leading?

#3--Am I one of the good ones, or the unknowing bad ones? I'm not looking for compliments or patting myself on the back here, I'm really curious. It's a soul-searching question.

#4--How can the Church raise up and encourage good worship leaders?

Unfortunately, more often that not I "hear" leaders in the church moaning about the fact that "their" worship is losing ground. Traditionalists are scared that many schools are cutting organ programs and so organists are harder and harder to find, especially good, trained ones who are sensitive to worship needs instead of a recital each week. Contemporary (what I would venture to call "boomer") worship folks like Don are scared of the same thing for worship and music leaders in their services. Choir directors continue to see numbers shrink as the average age increases.

Many folks see the worship pendulum swinging back toward traditional worship, especially with the interest in ancient-future worship and the emerging/emergent church and worship movements. No one knows where we are headed. My hope is that no matter what "style" our worship ends up looking like, I just hope that we can continue to have integrity in our worship and continue to reach out to the "least, lost, and last" in our churches and communities.