Recently a Seth Godin podcast popped up in my YouTube feed. I hadn’t heard from the famed marketer in years, and it reminded me of the crazy time over TWENTY years ago when Seth included Worshipideas.com in his ebook 99 Cows (download it – I’m Purple Cow #24!) Seth is still the innovative genius he’s always been, and the podcast got me thinking again: can what Purple Cow teaches be applied to today’s worship leaders? It sure can!
A Purple Cow worship leader is not the flashiest, trendiest, most emotional, or most vocally impressive person on the platform.
A Purple Cow worship leader builds a worship experience that actually helps the congregation sing.
The Purple Cow Is Not You
The Purple Cow is Seth’s way of saying: in a field of brown cows, the purple one is the one you stop and tell people about. And the remarkable part has to be built into the product itself, not added later as hype. In worship ministry, the “product” isn’t the worship leader’s personality. It’s the whole experience: songs, keys, flow, arrangements, transitions, and pastoral sensitivity.
When the Service Turns Into a Concert
Don’t you just hate it when Sunday morning accidentally turns into a concert? (Or maybe you don’t, and that could be the problem.)
No one planned it that way. No one sat down and said, “Let’s make this all about me.” But it happens.
We pick the newest song because we want people to know we’re current. We sing in that ridiculously high original key because it makes the song sound more like the recording (and showcases our voice). We build a set around the kind of emotional moment we personally enjoy.
None of those things are automatically wrong, but they become wrong when the congregation stops being served.
What Actually Makes a Worship Leader Remarkable
In Purple Cow, Seth’s big idea is that remarkable things are built into the product itself, not slapped on later as hype. In 99 Cows, he sharpens it further: remarkable means “worth recommending.”
For worship leaders, that means the Purple Cow is not your vocal ability, your cool setlist, your expensive gear, your trendy song choices, or your dramatic bridge build.
The Purple Cow is a worship experience that actually helps people worship.
The question isn’t, “Does this set make me look like a great worship leader?” The better Purple Cow question is, “Will this help our people sing, pray, understand, and respond?”
Bottom Line: Build the kind of worship experience people talk about for the right reasons. Not because the band crushed it or you nailed that high note, but because people walked out saying, “I actually got to worship and connect with God this morning.” That’s the Purple Cow.
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