Worthily Magnify

Yesterday I shared some observations and tips for leading worship on Easter. I have a few more.

Watch out for the ladies who wear hats. If a woman comes to church wearing a hat, she means business. She’s in no mood to joke around. The bigger the hat, the more feathers and lace it contains, and the more valuable it appears, the more seriously you should take her.

Watch out for the dudes who wear pink pants. Listen, I know it’s Easter, but no man should ever be seen in public, especially in church, wearing pink pants. Alert your ushers to this man as quickly as possible and have him ejected.

If you ever need a good laugh, watch this video. “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” with “That’s Amore”. The best song combination in the history of time. 

People who correct you when you say “happy Easter” with “no… happy Resurrection Day!” should also be ejected. Yes, Easter has been commercialized and associated with bunnies and chocolate and eggs and spring time, but it doesn’t mean that if I choose to still call it “Easter” that I’m not a Christian. I am. And I really like chocolate. But not pink pants.

When/if you say “Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” (or something similar) you might want to say it with some enthusiasm. Seriously, it’s Easter. This is amazing! Jesus Christ is alive! Then why do you sound like you’re reading me a bedtime story? Raise your voice a little bit. It’s OK.

Timpani make every song sound awesome. I don’t care what song you’re playing. Add a timpani roll and now it’s officially awesome.

Brass makes every song sound even more awesome. More so than timpani, throw a good brass quartet onto a song and now you’re talking. Jesus is not only alive but he’s coming back right here, right now, right on this chorus! (By the way, if the trumpet player aims correctly, he can take care of a few of those fancy Easter hats.)

Easter Sunday afternoon naps are statistically proven to be more satisfying than any other nap any other day out of the year. It’s true.

The Sunday after Easter is a good Sunday for the youth band to lead the music. You need a break. They hardly ever to get to play in the main services. Take a vacation and let them lead for you. Just make sure none of the guys wear pink pants.

You may have noticed that things have been a bit quiet around here lately. The last couple of weeks were incredibly full leading up to a worship conference my church hosted for our congregation and other Anglican churches in the area. It was our first time doing this, a great “dry run”, and something we’d love to offer regularly. I hosted the main sessions, led music and rehearsals, taught two seminars, led the Saturday evening service, and did the music for that service and a Sunday morning service too. I was tired. But it was a good tired.

And now my wife, Catherine, and I are preparing for baby girl #2 in a matter of weeks. Our daughter, Megan, is coming up on 17 months old, so our house is about to get even crazier. But it’s wonderful.

In the midst of all the craziness of the last few months and the next few months (years? decades?) God has been teaching me a couple of important things:

Pray without ceasing. This used to seem like a high and lofty command. Pray all the time? Impossible. Who would want to hang around someone who never stops praying? How would I get anything practical done? What about when I’m eating a burger?

But I’m realizing this is actually a very comforting and refreshing command.

My days can be a bit crazy. Emails, Easter planning meetings, moving my office, baby sonograms, turn in receipts to finance office, choose songs, get home in time to help with Megan’s bath/nighttime routine, etc. Here’s what I’m praying in little snippets all throughout the day: Lord give me peace. Help me to know how to phrase this email. Give us wisdom about what time to hold services. Help me find that pizza receipt. What songs should we sing this Sunday?

Your days look different, but they can be crazy too. And it can be hard to find time for any prayer, much less a long prayer session, and certainly the entire day. But it’s easy to pray without ceasing when the prayers don’t have to be long. Who said our prayers have to be long? They don’t. It’s easy to pray when we can just pick up where we left off, stop attempting to sound impressive or pious, and remember that because of Jesus we have access to our Father – at all times. In the midst of your craziness and busyness, offer real, short, heartfelt prayers. It will help.

Laugh. A lot of the things we can get stressed out about in ministry wouldn’t seem like such big deals if we just learned to laugh at them.

In the last 5 months I’ve had three different offices. My first office got converted into more nursery space, my second office (which I was only in for 4 months) turned out being a better fit for one of my colleagues who helps with the choirs and orchestra, and so now I’m in my third office in 5 months. I like this one the best, but it’s been an awful lot of disruption.

And this past Wednesday, after I had taken Monday and Tuesday off to recover from the conference, I spent a couple of hours in the morning putting together a little loveseat for my office so I can have meetings in there. It turned out being incredibly ugly. So then I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon disassembling it and re-packaging it and mailing it back. I didn’t get an awful lot more done that day.

And in the past I would have gotten pretty stressed out about this disruption and backlog of work it created. But actually, it was kind of funny. I had a good time trying to figure out how to assemble it without a manual, along with our AV director Andrew. Then we laughed about how ugly it was. Then I amused myself and some others on our staff by attempting to somehow fit it all back in the box in which it came. You’ve never seen so much packing tape on the outside of a box.

I could have either stressed out about it or laughed. I chose to laugh. And I think that was a better decision.

What things do you allow to stress, burden, bother, and irritate you? Here’s a tip: look for the humor. Things are funnier than we realize they are most of the time.

Turns out that praying without ceasing and learning to laugh will make your craziness not seem so crazy, make you more Christ-like (do you think the little children would have wanted to run to a serious, up-tight guy?), and help you be more effective. At least this is what I pray is happening in me.