i am an offering

Tomorrow is December 1st.  Hopefully you’ve been planning for Christmas services already at your church and hopefully you’ve already incorporated some of the great classic hymns into your services (Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; Of the Father’s Love Begotten).

But what of the modern?  Where in the world is the depth that we’ve known in Christmas hymns yet repackacked in a modern style?  It’s all here, in “Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man” from Sovereign Grace Music.

I know I’ve reviewed this before, but I can’t stress enough how amazing this project is.  Not only is the music singable, it somehow still feels like classic Chritmas music, even though it is a modern project.  And although it is all new music, the timeless truths communicated within are brought to life with fantastic new imagery and thoughtful lyrics.

The album opens with a triumphant call to worship in “Christ the Lord is Born Today:

Death and darkness surely tremble
Light has come to all the people
The Lion comes to crush the serpent
He comes a Lamb, a lowly servant
Let the earth rejoice
O come and lift your voices

From this beginning track, we know that the album will be full of the awe of beholding the newborn King and the triumph that King has brought to us through His death on the Cross.

Often it is hard to wrap our minds around the fact that God took human form to redeem us, and even though the project’s song “Glory Be To God” helps us begin to see that fact a little more clearly,  the song still keeps the God that became human who He ultimately is, a God who is infinitely more than we can imagine.

Emptied of His majesty
He comes in human form
Being’s source begins to be
and God is born
All our griefs He’ll glady share
All our sins He”ll fully bear
He will cover our disgrace
And suffer in our place

And finally, keeping with the theme of God’s incarnation, lyrics on “Sleep, Jesus, Sleep” that perhaps helps us see for the first time what “we do not have a High Priest who is unable sympathise with our weakness” really means:

Sleep, newborn King
We’ll gently sing
You who reigns forevermore
Ruling as the Lord of Lords
You who never had a need
Must sleep

This project paints a beautiful picture in a modern, yet classic way of the birth, life, death, resurrection and ultimate victory of Jesus Christ.

I’ve always enjoyed Paul Baloche as a worship leader for many reasons.  He writes good music that’s singable and full of great content.  He creates fantastic resources for worship leaders and is a good teacher.  I met him once and he took the time to talk to me and he’s just plain nice.  But to me, this one clinches it.

Bob Kauflin is excitedly publishing a book called “Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God.”  I’m very excited for the read.  But what really caught my attention was this fantastic story from Bob’s blog:

I originally asked my dear friend C.J. Mahaney to write a foreword, because no one has influenced my life more in the area of leading worship. But C.J. thought I should ask someone who might be better known and not a part of Sovereign Grace. So I asked Matt Redman, a man I respect and appreciate deeply. Matt said he wasn’t able to do it. Then I asked John Piper, another man I respect and appreciate deeply. He couldn’t do it either. I went back and asked C.J. again and he again encouraged me to think of someone who might introduce the book to a wider audience. During that conversation I told him about some recent conversations with Paul Baloche that were encouraging.  “What about Paul?” he asked.

I had thought of Paul previously, but decided against asking him because I critique one of his songs, ‘Above All,’ in the book. I can’t ask someone to write a foreword for my book when I say something critical about one of their songs.  But I’ve known Paul for a few years, and thought I’d ask him anyway, after alerting him to the fact that I used his song as a negative example.

Surprisingly, Paul agreed to write the foreword. Or maybe I should say unsurprisingly, because Paul is a genuinely humble man. For as long as I’ve known him he has never stopped seeking to grow in his love for the Savior or his commitment to serving God’s people. So he wrote a very kind foreword. And I’m very grateful.

What a fantastic example of what a worship “leader” is suppose to be.  Were you aware that in the Bible, the word “leader” is seldom used?  Instead, the word that is used is “servant.”  Praise God for a highly visible leader offering his life to be exactly what he should be, a servant.

Warning - geeky material, but if you are a graphic or web designer, this is a must read! I promise that I will tie it in with worship, though, so no worries!

There might be several of you who have been asked by your churches to design a weekly email newsletter for them.  If you are a designer that holds fast to web standards, you know what a headache email newsletters can be.  There is not much standards support for CSS-based design so you have to make a choice:  design your email with CSS, keeping a prominent link to the html file so that those who can’t view it correctly can click there, or go old-school and design with ugly, bloated code using tables without current standards for design.

So the question is, why in the world do certain email clients not support CSS standards for emails?  If they did, html emails would be cleaned up, viewed correctly in each mail client, have much more accessability and many more benefits.

Enter email-standards.org. Campaign Monitor, probably the best service for sending html emails has been at the forefront of fighting a battle to get web standards in email.  I think with enough people speaking up and joining them in the fight this could happen.  Check out their new website and help spread the word.

So why does this matter for the church?  You’re probably thinking, “Okay, who cares, it’s an email!”  The only problem is, even emails have an effect on how people view the church.  Undoubtedly, churches are going to use html email newsletters.  We should learn all we can to be able to do them tastefully, in a way that will draw people to the church and not push them away.  Instead of not caring and producing either sloppy emails or emails that clients don’t support, we should lead the way in providing the smoothest way possible to get news to the people of the church.

So what happens when we think we don’t have the right people in place to raise up?  It’s time to ask some questions:

• Are you praying?  If you aren’t praying for a person to train and raise up, chances are that God’s not going to give you one.  It’s possible that He would, but much more likely that He will if you ask Him.
• Are you looking?  Or are you just saying “There’s no one available” when you haven’t even looked?
• Are you asking?  It’s very likely that your pastor or another ministry leader would know of someone with the gifts and abilities you’re looking for.  Ask them!
• Are you equipping?  Surely you already have several volunteers involved in your music and worship ministry.  Have you been training all along, with the intention of raising up someone out of that group?

In summary, the best way to avoid burnout in your ministry is to let go of our selfishness and our fear, learn how to train and equip, and pray, look, and ask if there is anyone available to raise up.  Once that person (or persons) is found, the burnout we would face from trying to do everything ourselves will go away, and a new leader will emerge.

This week we’ll finish looking at some reasons why we might be afraid to raise up new worship leaders, which eventually causes us to burn ourselves out.

One of the reason that we don’t want to raise up new worship leaders is that we don’t know how.  This is a very valid reason with some potentially easy solutions:

• First of all, learn how.  This might seem obvious, but many times we rely on our own talent to get us through things.  Because we rely on our own talent, we don’t know how to teach and train others.  It is our responsiblity to continuously learn and train ourselves.  I believe the most important training we could ever go through is that of learning how to equip others.
• Recognize that you might not have the gift of teaching.  The Bible is clear that certain gifts are given to certain people.  Perhaps you can play and instrument, sing, and lead worship really well but you have no idea how to teach others how to do it.  Find people who do.  Find music teachers within your church or even within your community.  Find people that can teach you how to be a better leader, and let those people teach your volunteers as well.
• Make time to teach.  So often in the world of church music we are constantly rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.  Schedule some time for teaching.  Come up with a monthly workshop time to teach your volunteers.  If that is too often, do it quarterly, or even twice a year.  Make time to teach.

Tomorrow we’ll look at what happens when we think we don’t have the right people in which to pass on leadership.