Just wanted to give some simple updates:
More to come…next week…
Recently I heard the story of a lady who worked as a volunteer in a church. She had the keys to the kitchen. She was the “kitchen master” you might say. She would offer to prepare food for many church events and the kitchen was hers.
It came time for God to take her home. As the people were gathered for the funeral, they went downstairs to enjoy refreshments and people wondered where all of the refreshements were. After several minutes of wondering, someone finally said, “Well, this lady had the keys to the kitchen and she always provided the food.” The people gathered realized they would need to prepare their own food. There was only one problem.
The kitchen was locked.
I used to think I understood music and worship ministry. What I’m coming to realize more and more is that I understand music and worship technicalities. I can usually tell if a song’s going to work for our congregation, I can lead a rehearsal, I can teach someone how to vamp - blah, blah, blah. But what I’m realizing that I absolutely need to understand is music and worship ministry. As in – time, and a lot of it. Time to invest in people and develop and disciple new leaders. Time to invest in eternally significant things, not just picking a song that will be a hit for a while and we might forget in a year.
We’re all familiar with worship teams – in fact, we probably implement them every week. They look like this:
The worship leader leads these teams, leads the congregation in worship, leads rehearsals, teaches these teams how to play together, etc. But what happens if the worship leader dies “with the keys to the kitchen” so to speak? The team is now left on there on trying to figure out how to lead the team, the congregation, rehearsals and more. What we need are worship ministry teams that look like this:
Now what happens? No one person carries the keys. The team is thriving and continues to thrive if someone moves on.
I am guilty as charged of falling into the trap of being the “keymaster.” Are you? What can we do to make worship ministry teams and not just worship teams? Would you join me in taking the time to invest in the servants in your church to build a thriving ministry, not just a group of people who rehearses and leads music during services?
Today’s post was going to be on the importance of being healthy as a worship leader (both physically and spiritually) but I need to put that on hold. Look forward to those things tomorrow.
Today, however, I wanted to ask a question: How does your example (especially in ministry) affect how others worship God?
When we get up to lead worship, my hope is that our prayer and desire is to disappear so that God will be made more clear in people’s minds. We study about who He is so we can give an accurate picture of the God we’re worshiping to the people we’re worshiping with. We study encouragements from Scripture so we can encourage those who are worshiping with us and make them feel at home and welcome in God’s presence within the church. But if we do all of those things and make unwise decisions or run over those we’re working with (even unintentionally) - we will not disappear. Try as they might to get past the distraction that they see in us, the people that we’ve hurt or misled or ignored won’t be able to see anything but our mistakes. Even if they put the best construction on things that they possibly can - in the back of their minds they’ll remember what happened. As much as we want to disappear and make God the only thing visible through us, we’re always in the spotlight - faults and all.
A dear friend of mine in ministry and I just had an email exchange where my friend openly admitted that there was a struggle because of the way some parts of the music ministry was being handled. My friend was very courteous and gracious (and very right, I might add) in addressing an issue that needed to be addressed. I hope that I responded with humility and as much grace and courtesy as my friend showed me, but it got me thinking: What we do affects how others worship God.
As much as we’d like to be invisible, it’s just impossible. And as mature as many people within the church are to be able to forget about faults for a while and just worship God - more than likely even a small issue will nag at us when we see someone in leadership who we’re struggling with. Even more so if it’s someone you see every Sunday or multiple Sundays (in the case of worship leaders and pastors.)
We could spend our lives trying to make sure we never hurt anyone. That would be impossible. Even something that we feel wasn’t a big deal in the least could be a huge stumbling block to someone. We are human, and we will fall. But, God calls us to humility in everything we do - including our relationships. He also calls us to think of others much more than ourselves. Philippians 2:3-4 says this:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
It goes on to talk about having the attitude of Jesus - God Himself coming down to earth in the must humble form possible: the Creator of the Universe becoming a human. Not just a human, but a human that came to serve us!
We can pray for humility and pray that we can look out for others’ interests much more than our own. In everything we do, let’s do it as Peter suggests:
Whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever.” 1 Peter 4:11 (emphasis added)
Let’s live our lives as worship leaders (especially in ministry) “so that in all things God may be glorified.”
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.
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?”
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.
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