It’s possible that he might have been in a little bit of a funk himself, or I was just receiving his words differently than he meant them, but it’s something that has stuck with me and recently has come to the forefront of my mind.Lately I have had no passion or desire to grab my guitar or to sing much.  I put in what it takes to know the songs I need to lead worship on the weekends, but that’s about it.  The funny thing is that I still really enjoy the serving part, i enjoy the fellowship playing in the band brings, i enjoy processing the specific avenues of worship for each particular weekend I lead, but the passion for playing for the fun of it has (hopefully temporarily) left me.

While picking up some accessories with a friend of mine at a local guitar shop this past weekend I began to confess these feelings, which was somewhat hard for me since I’ve always been the guy that’s been playing and writing and learning more than others in our circle.  After admitting it, my friend rightly asked me “well should you really be leading our congregation in worship?”  at that point it struck me… “yes, i really think i should be”.  My friend continued “because you know serving should come out of joy and not out of duty”… I agreed with him, which left him confused.

But it had hit me, I still very much enjoy the act of serving my church, I enjoy the fellowship that comes with playing in a band on the weekends, and I am glad to offer my talents and gifts to my church.  Though there is a great disconnect between my lack of desire to go grab my guitar and learn a new song and my desire to give what i have back to the one who created me that I don’t understand, I will still struggle on and explore the reason for the disconnect.

It’s having a purpose behind your passion, so that even if your passion fails your purpose remains.

1) preparation - This one is probably one of the biggest ones that I can’t stress enough. Preparing yourself spiritually, preparing yourself for rehearsals, preparing yourself for services/gatherings, preparing your band for what’s happening. Not only do you need to keep yourself prepared to do your part, but you need to go a step further to make sure you are prepared to lead your band and prepared to help them. Go the extra mile to have a conversation with the speaking pastor to see how you can help enhance what he is speaking about. Have yourself prepared way ahead of time to allow time and energy to help prepare others that you are leading. Preparing yourself spiritually from beginning to end is vital. If you do all of the work and then invite God into things the night of a gathering or are in prayer on everything leading up to a gathering then just do things scripted without letting God and the Holy Spirit move you, you are missing out on what you and your congregation can experience. So bottom line… Follow the boy scout motto! BE PREPARED!

2) flexibility In the ever changing world of ministry, we need to be flexible. Pastors shift directions, singers lose their voice, drummers are unexpectedly called out of town, equipment randomly stops working, the list goes on and on… we need to be ready to handle any situation that may come up and not freak out. If we are unwilling to be flexible in situations we are stifling our ability to lead our band to be flexible for us. Being flexible also goes along with being prepared. If you have everything down and are completely ready you have set yourself up to be flexible. If you and your band consistently have things together dropping a song, adding a new song, doing an unexpected acoustic night, etc is alot easier than if you’re half prepared and need to do a 180 all of a sudden. Flexibility is a sign of an effective worship leader.

3) knowing the songs Not only should you know your parts inside and out, but you should also know your bandmates and singers parts. Not saying you need to play every instrument and perfect every harmony, but you should know at any given point in the song what the drummer is doing, you should know how your band builds dynamics in every song. When something doesn’t sound right you should know if it was the bass hitting a wrong note, a singer that was flat, or a drummer missing a fill, etc. Not that you lord peoples parts over their head, but when things aren’t going right you are able to pin point the area that needs work and can then help your bandmate out to figure out how to fix it.

4) communication Without strong communication skills things can go awry in a split second. Being that you’re working with artists/musicians one of our downfalls is strong verbal communication in our expectations, standards, basic information, etc. The people you work with in your ministry need to hear and know what’s going on. Figure out the best way to communicate things to them, whether it’s a phone call, an email, a letter in the mail, or having a band blog. Anyway you do it you need to communicate clearly so everyone understands what you need them to know. Also communicating with your congregation from stage, you need to help keep things moving, transitioning well, tying in scripture, etc. The only way to get better at that is practice and experience. Ask your pastor for tips on communicating verbally. You don’t want to give mini-sermons, but adding in thoughts, scripture, and life experiment make you more transparent to the congregation and they’re usually more willing to follow someone they trust.

5) knowing your bandmates/building unity Invest time into the people you serve with/lead. The better you know eachother and the more trust that is built in relationship the easier people follow you. If you are closed off from your bandmates and don’t make an effort to know your bandmates outside of rehearsals and gatherings you are selling yourself, your band, and your church short. There is something almost unexplainable when a group of people are leading worship together that are totally unified in purpose, friendship, & Christ. Like I tell the highschool band I lead “we don’t want to sound like we are all just ironically playing the same song at the same time, we want to be connected with one another.” Have you ever been rehearsing a song and, though its not something you could put your finger on, things are just not sounding right? More than likely the band is just not gelling together. Though building friendships outside of the rehearsal/gathering space is important, it’s also vital to implement the idea of unity musically in those areas. I will usually break the band apart, and have just the drummer start his part, then after a few bars have the bass player come in, when they are locked in a groove add a rhythm/acoustic guitar, and so on and so forth. When you do that it mentally forces everyone in the band to pay attention to what each person adds to the song and usually produces great results.

This is in no way a perfect list, but I believe it is a great start to check those 5 areas of your leadership to help grow your ministry and leadership skills. I love feedback, so let me hear it!

Matthew 10:39 “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” (NASB)

The greek word for “life” used in this section of scripture is yuchn in english characters (pronounced psoo-khay’) and this means “the breath of life, the vital force which animates the body and shows itself in breathing”

So what Jesus is talking about is giving up your will to control the “vital force which animates the body and shows itself in breathing”. And though life seems more complicated than that, without the breath there is no life to live.

Lately I’ve been at points where I felt I couldn’t breathe, & I’ve also found my breath at the times I am realizing the greatness of God, I find my breath when I’m giving back to him what he’s given to me. I’ve found it hard to breathe when I’ve made decisions in selfishness, when I’ve tried to control situations, & when I’ve done my best to naively ignore God. I want to take steps in life where I find breath. Because when I find it I feel that “peace beyond understanding”.

I know there are certain gifts I’m given that aren’t given to everyone, and when I find myself not using my gifts in a context that brings glory to God I find it hard to breathe. On the other hand, when I am in community with a group of musicians and we’re leading our congregation to take a moment with God I find breath. I look forward to finding more breath, and pray you all can see where you’re trying to breathe and let “Christ in you” show you breath.

What I have noticed is that a worship leader can tend to just repeat the same ad-libs, thoughts, scripture word for word as if the words are scripted and if they veer off they will get in trouble. This has began to bug me more and more, not that sharing the same verse at 3 seperate services is bad, but when it comes off as scripted the message loses passion. If you had a wonderful conversation with the guy at Starbucks on friday and are excited to tell the congregation because the conversation relates to one of the songs you are singing but then on Sunday you tell the same story sans the fresh excitement, the message you want the congregation to understand can so easily get lost in translation.

Too often I think we try so hard to find that one perfect thing to say that by the 2nd or 3rd time we say it we’ve forgotten why we’re saying it. Though the verse you shared at the early sunday service can be just as, if not more, effective at the 2nd sunday service, if you have lost the passion in why you are sharing it you are stifling the possibility. I think the same can be said for whoever is speaking and I have noticed the pastors at our church usually do a good job of getting the same mesage across in slightly different ways to keep their passion in sharing it fresh.

Bottom line, I guess this post is a challenge to myself and lead worshipers everywhere to examine our purpose behind the songs we sing, the words and scripture we share when we are leading the congregation.

Though I am not new to leading worship at all and have actually doing it longer than all of these guys except one, but I am new to working with them as a team that they have established and at 23 I am easily 10-20 years younger than all of them. After discussing this with my mentor he thought it would be good to try and mix things up and keep my style rather than just stepping in and doing it like they do it (nothing against the other guys but for the most part they are kind of clones of our head guy, probably cause that’s all the know of a worship leader) So with my youth and my diverse experience with different worship leaders I have a lot of different views on how things should work with the band, the sound, the flow, etc. Not only am I working with a whole new group of people to help lead a ministry I’m also working with all new people in the band, sound guys etc. I don’t want to step on too many toes too quickly I do want to keep my style, personality, & flavor on the Weekends and mid-week services I’m leading at.

I’ve already gotten some questionable comments on things… for example,

I was leading a couple weekends ago and I was going through the parts with the singes spelling out how I pictured things working… Through our conversation I found that this was completely foreign to them. They are used to one taking high harmony, one taking low and they sing every word with the worship leader. how I’ve always lead is I’ve used the people singing harmonies as another instrument (like a lead guitar or percussion) who comes in and out and does parts to add to the song rather than just being a constant (like an acoustic guitar or lead singer) Because this obviously can beautifully build dynamics and ad the sweetest touches to songs (i.e. “Nothing but the Blood” by Matt Redman, Christy Nockels ad libs make that song ya know?)

Another example is that they are used to just playing the song like the cd, where I come from more of a “make it your own” kind of deal, I have brought that in with a lot of good comments from others, but a lot of questionable band members.

A way my friend Aaron explained it at lunch today is that I lead in such a way that things come together very “organically” rather than “produced”. I have always done things where we are more of a band that works on songs together and does thing unique to us rather than being 5-8 seperate musicians coming in to try to play together. With that kind of analogy it does make sense that I am (using another analogy) trying to put a square peg into a round hole with my style.

There are other issues such as how we interact with the congregation and stuff that I sometimes completely disagree with and other things like that too but what I’m looking for from you guys is just thoughts on ways to be assertive with keeping my style while still being pleasant to work with and agreeable to the team yet consistently pushing the envelope.

I hope I haven’t painted a negative picture of my ministry, they are all wonderful people and I really do enjoy serving with them, hence this post looking for feedback on how to do so genuinely

Guitars:

acoustics: Taylor 310CE (2004), Fender DG20CE (2000), Custom Made Yamaha D series (my dad made it himself in the late 70’s)

electrics: Gibson Blueshawk (1997), Fender tex-mex Telecaster (1999), Fender Strat (1991)

Amps:

Fender HotRod DeVille Fender Deluxe 112

Pedals

Ibanez TS9 Boss Digital Delay Dunlop Cry Baby MXR Phase 90 Marshall Gov’Nor

I also have a slew of recording equipment (mics, rack effects, etc…)

I record on my Powerbook G4 15″ 1.67GHz

Over the years I’ve played both electric and acoustic, but ever since I got my Taylor I find mysel playing acoustic a lot more frequently :o)