Archives For Ryan Egan

On Grief and His Salvation

Ryan Egan —  February 22, 2011 — 3 Comments

An empty swing and a gray sky

I’ve always had a hard time knowing what to say to people in certain situations that I’ve never been through.  Even considering myself as an emotional empath there are often situations where I try to be empatethic toward someone but find myself thinking, “Well, I feel bad for this person but I have no idea what to say because I’ve never been through it.  So, I’ll just say, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and more than likely never follow-up with them again.”

But when you go through it, when you experience what you’ve only just heard about, a whole world opens.  You want to get back with those people from before and love on them with a love you can only give now that you “get it.”

One thing remains for the believer, however, that is a common bond even if you haven’t experienced the same kind of grief;  the unending, deeply-rooted joy of God’s salvation that He has purchased for us at the cross.  No matter what happens, nothing can take away the finished work of what Jesus did there.

So we cling to His Word, His salvation, and His promise of eternal hope:

“The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.  And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.” – Psalm 9:9

Proclaim Online's Great Worship Resource Giveaway Logo

I love cloud-based software for churches.  It seems to make the most sense as so many people that are in so many different locations are involved in the ministry work of the church.  I also love smart software.  And, I also love presentation software for churches that makes sense.

I think software that does all of what I just mentioned might be making it’s way to us.  And, boy, do they know how to say “hello!”

Proclaim Online is a new church presentation software being released that’s

  • cloud-based (anyone can access and build the service slides from anywhere)
  • real-time (everything’s updated right away and always on the latest revision)
  • AND has what looks like a built-in announcements section (something that I think many of the other software offerings are lacking, unless they’ve added the feature recently.)

Not only does the software look super useful, they’re also giving away a ton of free stuff from some pretty well-known names in the worship ministry field (Planning Center, Integrity, Worship Leader Magazine, Praisecharts, to name a few).  All you have to do is head on over to Proclaim Online’s website, watch the video, then do what they ask you to do to enter the Great Worship Resource Giveaway.

$25,000 worth of stuff. 100’s of winners.  Multiple opportunities to win.  Great prizes. You can’t beat that, can you?

What prize would you like to win the most?

My desk at Concept7

“What do worship leaders do most of the day?” was the search term that caused someone to spend over nine minutes on the site yesterday. This got me thinking a bit about what the congregration’s perception of a worship leader might be. After all, we just get up on Sunday mornings (or whatever day we happen to lead worship), play our songs, read a little Scripture, and that’s it right?

Although full-time (and even part-time) worship leaders know that this is far from the truth it’s good for us to take a step back from our world, step into the shoes of a church attender who is sacrificing a piece of their finances in order to pay for “the guy that helps us sing songs.”

I’d love to spend some time hearing from all of you on what you “do most of the day” so that we can gently encourage and enlighten those who might not understand the responsibilities that come with the worship leader vocation. I’ll get things rolling with a very inexhaustive list of some things I think are worth paying the worship leader to do that does not include leading music during corporate gatherings:

  • Spending time researching and choosing quality music (both from a content view and a singability view)
  • Equipping and mentoring folks who would become worship leaders in the congregation (or even all the members of the worship team)
  • Working with the pastor to plan meaningful worship services
  • Practicing an instrument and memorizing music (Yes, I think worship leaders should be paid to do this, I also think pastors should be paid to practice delivery of their sermons)
  • Spending time in God’s Word and prayer in preparation for what they will say during their time of leading worship during a corporate gathering

As I said, this isn’t an exhaustive list, so it’s your turn.  Have at it.  What do you, as a worship leader, “do most of the day?”

This past weekend we enjoyed spending Saturday morning at our Living Worship worship team workshop.  It was a very fruitful time and made me value even more the opportunity to provide training for our ministry team.  Some things we covered were:

  • Why We Do What We Do – an overview of the purpose of our Music and Worship Ministry
  • Vocal Blending
  • Instrumental Blending
  • Audio issues
  • Video issues
  • Putting it all together

I share some thoughts in the video above of a major freeing moment I had at the workshop as well as the importance of training our teams.  Be sure to take a look!