Don’t Put It Off

I forgot to pay the water bill.

Somehow, it got buried in a stack of papers somewhere in our house and I completely forgot to pay it. Oops.

Earlier this afternoon, Catherine called me from home – she’s a full-time stay-at-home Mom to Megan – and told me that she tried turning on the faucet but no water came out. My mind immediately flashed to a mental note I had made a few weeks (months?) ago to pay that water bill. I guess that mental note got buried too.

So I rushed home, found a lovely note on our front door alerting us to the fact that our water had been shut off (not embarrassing at all, by the way), and went to city hall to pay the bill. Our water is now back on and all is well.

It was quite an odd feeling to walk into our kitchen, turn the faucet on, and have no water. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. My carelessness in tending to the not-so-minor detail of paying a bill had finally caught up with me.

A house remains cooled and heated, the lights come on when you flip a switch, the telephone dials, and the bank stays happy as long as you pay the bills. You might have a month or two grace-period if you forget, but not much longer.

It’s kind of the same way with leading a worship team.

You make a mental note to have lunch with your drummer because you think he’s getting burned out, but you forget.

Or you keep meaning to send your electric guitarist that training DVD but you never get around to it.

Maybe you have a singer who’s struggling with comparing how often he’s scheduled versus someone else. You know you should address it somehow – but weeks turn to months and now it’s been a few years.

When worship leaders are careless in tending to the not-so-minor needs of their worship team, either because they forget or because they’re procrastinating, they might have a few months grace period, but eventually things start shutting down. It catches up with them.

At any given moment, your worship team is just a few months away from being dysfunctional. It starts off subtle and then it grows. That’s why regular, clear, and pastoral leadership is needed to make sure people are focused, and priorities are clear. You’re not Superman, you can’t deal with everyone’s issues, and you can’t preemptively strike at every challenge, but you can make a point of not letting things get buried and forgotten.