i am an offering

Well, I have kind of veered away from the ultimate purpose of this blog within the last few posts.  That purpose is to share teaching, tips and training on leading worship within the local church.  Even though it’s been fun to build community (which I love, by the way, so please keep joining in the comments) I miss just pouring out my heart with what I’ve learned in leading worship and raising up worship leaders within the local church - so it’s time to get back to it.

Building a Worship and Music Ministry

At my former church, I was blessed to be able to be hired into a pretty well-established ministry.  I just needed to continue to work with those who were already involved and recruit some more volunteers who wanted to be involved.  Currently, the situation’s a little different.  I’m in a church plant that’s about five years old that has had kind of an on-again, off-again worship ministry going on.  So basically, I’ve jumped in with a little bit of a ministry, but not much.  There’s been some great growth, but now I’m stuck.  Why?

Instead of taking small steps to build things up gradually and consistently over time, I’m wanting to take huge steps to have a full-fledged ministry right now.

I sent out a Twitter post a couple of days ago asking for some advice on building a worship ministry.  Billy Chia sent me this:

Do Less - fewer songs, fewer people, fewer “extras”. Keep it basic and add one new component at a time.

I think he nailed it.  When we begin to build a worship ministry, or any ministry for that matter, we need to look at the big picture slowly.  Yes, it’s good to have a huge vision, but don’t get discouraged when that vision doesn’t happen over night.  My roadblock has been just remembering to take the small steps, the fifteen minutes a day that doesn’t seem like much but will ultimately have me going, “Wow, how in the world did this ministry grow so quickly?”

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

So, make a point to take things slowly, yet with persistance.  Take one small step at a time.  Soon that small step will lead to a bigger step yet that bigger step will seem as small as the original small step.  So, what’s the next small step you need to take in order to persistently build the ministry?  Mine is setting up a meeting and making a few phone calls I’ve been putting off.  Let’s get to it.