i am an offering

As my friend put it recently - “You coming up for air?   You’ve been pretty silent lately.”

Yep.

Over the past few months my wife and I began conversation about the potential of me looking for another job.  She’s been working full time and providing for our family, which has been amazing and for which I haven’t been grateful enough - but it’s time for that to change.  With the addition of our daughter, her mommy desires have definitely kicked in and she would love to spend more time with our little one - which I think is awesome.

So, I’ve been on a job search for the past month or so.  I have been working part time for some time, and finally looking for full time work.  I would love to be a full time worship and music director someday, but the truth is, many churches find it hard to swing that as a fulltime job.  So I will be joining Billy Chia as a bivocational worship leader.

So, in the midst of my job search, this blog went pretty silent as I had begun building a portfolio site to display my graphic design work in order to get a job.

I have one offer and I’m waiting on another offer right now that I think would be a better fit for me.  I still want to continue to be involved in worship leading and in writing this blog and participating in The Worship Community - but life is crazy and I’m still trying to figure out some schedule issues.

In the meantime - I would appreciate prayer, you can check out my portfolio site and I’m hoping to get back to blogging on worship and music regularly very soon.

Thanks for the listen - enjoy the rest of the week!

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.

What I Blog About - From Wordle

Since Billy Chia just confessed that he is a “church addict” after entering his blog into wordle, I wanted to see what would come about if I did the same thing.  Here it is:

The best thing about it - every time I refreshed, the words “worship” and “happened” always showed up prominently.  Thank You, Lord, for reassuring me that “worship happened” every time we have gathered!

Blog Love - Some Links You Should Check Out

Shannon shares a great series on Maturity in Christ.  I’d highly encourage reading all parts.  Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, a bit more, and a bit more!

Brad Loser (loh-ser, not loo-zer!) is going through Worship Matters. If you want some detailed thoughts from some folks going through the book, definitely check it out.  He shares quite a bit, so be prepared for some reading, but it’s worth it.

Billy shares a really fantastic post on complaining and feedback to follow up his humorous post that he posted in response to Ragamuffin Soul’s “you-asked-for-it” question. I think I’m one of the few people that actually recommends not reading Ragamuffin soul, but I thought Billy eventually turned this around quite positively. *EDIT* Los contacted me directly with a very positive comment asking why I said this in the comments.  I really appreciate it and explained why I said this below.  I shouldn’t have said it and should have let people come to their own decision about his blog.  I do apologize for that and hope we can all be at peace.  The power of words are quite incredible at times.

Russ has a fantastic story about his privilege to be Fred’s guest at National Worship Leader Conference and hang out with some of the more famous worship folks.

Lorie King has a featured article on The Worship Community on how to enhance stage presence. I think her perspective is right on with all of these tips.

Finally, Fred has a wonderful post about making sure we focus on good things happening and celebrate victories.

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!  More thoughts from my teaching this Sunday will come next week.