Leading a congregation – Page 6

Let’s All Be A Bit More Childish

I am a big proponent of worship leaders thinking seriously about their role, thinking deeply about their theology, thinking practically about their skills, and thinking critically about current trends and pressures. A lack of introspection, evaluation, and hard conversations will inevitably result in a shallowness and flimsiness that doesn’t serve the Church well. To put it succinctly, worship leaders should always be growing up.

But if there is a downside to all of this serious/deep/practical/critical thinking, it could be that sometimes we lose our childishness.

There is such a wealth (praise God) these days of solid resources/articles/blogs/videos/conferences/books aimed at getting worship leaders to grow up and into their pastoral role and their function as ministers of the gospel. Most of the time it’s all really solid stuff. But sometimes I fear that some of it might run the risk of making us lose our childishness.

In the gospels, we have three different accounts of Jesus embracing children, saying “let the little children come to me” (Matthew 19:14, but also in Luke 18:16 and Mark 10:14). In all three accounts, people bring their children to Jesus, the disciples try to keep the children away, and Jesus tells the disciples to stop. And then Jesus says that he wishes everyone was more like the children!

Fundamentally, we must always come to Jesus like a child. Helpless. Transparent. Needy. Light-hearted. And, yes, clueless. But the thing about a child’s cluelessness is that it’s two sided: (1) they don’t know a lot of stuff that grown-ups know, but (2) they don’t know what they don’t know (and they don’t care). Is it any wonder why Jesus points to childishness as an ideal?

There’s a difference between childishness and immaturity. And to all the resources, articles, blogs, videos, conferences, and books aimed at helping worship leaders grow and mature, I say “the more the merrier”. But when I start to feel like I’m a child being turned away from Jesus because I don’t know enough stuff, I start to get nervous. And so should you.

So where’s the balance?

1. Always pursue growth. And always pursue leading in a more mature, skillful way. That honors the God who gave you the gifts you have (and some gifts you might not know you have).

2. Stay childish. And help your congregation stay childish too. Come to Jesus like little children. You might not know everything, you might not say everything the right way, and (gasp) you might even exhibit joy in your body/hands/feet (children are known to do that from time to time…) But that’s what you do when you’re a child. You’re helpless, transparent, needy, light-hearted, and clueless too.

In the disciples eyes, there seemed to be two different types of people around Jesus: the disciples and the children. Perhaps Jesus’ point was that, if he had his way, there wouldn’t be any difference between the two? Worship leaders, let’s not forget it.

When You’re a Time Hog

Every worship leader goes through a phase when they’re a time hog. It’s an inevitable part of their growth, development, and maturity. It’s unavoidable and understandable. Some worship leaders go through it once and learn their lessons. Most worship leaders grow up out of it but revert back every once in a while. Occasionally, worship leaders are known to remain as perpetual time-hogs, gaining a reputation among their colleagues and congregation that becomes hard to shake off.

When worship leaders first start off, they’re happy to keep it short and sweet. Doing one song, and being on stage for five minutes, is quite long enough, thank you very much. Those five minutes feel like an eternity and you’re sure that everyone in the room is staring at you, judging you, talking to each other about you, and making faces at you, thus you squeeze your eyes closed as tightly as possible.

Then they start to feel more comfortable. They start to settle into their role and begin to lead a sequence of songs. Five minutes has turned into 15 minutes, and they begin to think that the longer worship goes, the more songs in a row there are, the more people will worship God, and they can begin to ignore the clock, becoming a time hog, and still squeezing their eyes closed as tightly as possible.

I know there are some churches where worship can go as long as the worship leader wants, and the service can go as long as the preacher wants, and everyone is OK with a two-hour service being the norm.

But most churches don’t have two-hour services as the norm, and there are very real considerations (not the least of which is the Sunday school teachers and nursery workers who can start to get antsy at the 75 minute mark, if not before) that worship leaders can’t ignore when they’re on the platform.

A worship leader who isn’t sensitive to the clock, and consistently goes beyond the time allotted, will find two unfortunate results:

First, he’ll be working against himself, and he’ll find himself being allotted less and less time to lead worship, as the pastor and/or service planners try to reign him in.

Secondly, he won’t be trusted with additional responsibilities or leadership, since he can’t prove himself trustworthy in the “little” (yet major) area of time management.

A Sunday here or there when you go a little long can be excused, particularly if you’re a church that wants to be open to adjusting things as the Spirit leads. But even in the most flexible of churches, being a consistent time hog as a worship leader is not a good idea, principally because you owe it to the other members of the body of Christ to not act as if you’re more important than them.

So, don’t squeeze your eyes shut so tightly that you forgot to look at the clock. Be aware of your people, be respectful of your parameters, and be sensitive the Spirit. The more balanced your leadership, the better.

Know Your Destination

Occasionally my wife and I will get in the car (i.e. minivan), with all three kids successfully fastened into their car seats, with the diaper bag appropriately packed with snacks, drinks, diapers, wipes, back-up clothes, etc., and the correct shoes on the correct feet, and have absolutely no idea where we’re going.

I’ll back out of the driveway and Catherine will ask me something like “where are we going?” I’ll respond “I don’t know“. And then we’ll proceed to decide if we want to go to Starbucks, or the grocery store, or the mall, or to a playground, or some other errand. We knew we wanted to get out of the house before we all went crazy, but we hadn’t quite figured out where we were going to go. Minor detail.

I think worship leaders can foolishly approach service planning like this sometimes. We get to the service with songs picked and rehearsed, a band/choir arranged and ready, a service outline printed out and ready to be followed, and the congregation coming to fill the seats. But we have absolutely no idea where we’re going.

I’ve heard preachers say that they know they’re in trouble when they can’t tell their spouse in one sentence what their sermon is going to communicate. I think the same is true for worship leaders. If we can’t articulate in one sentence what our songs (and whole service) is going to communicate, then we’re in trouble.

I’ve talked a lot about this idea in recent months. I used the example of the writers of the TV series LOST who obviously had no idea where the narrative was heading and just started throwing in nonsense. And last week I talked about how, when planning a service, you can approach it from the perspective of a core and an angle.

I just want to add that, just like on a successful trip in the car requires that you know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, what turns to take, and what route is best, an effective worship leader will know where he or she is going, how they’re going to get there, what turns to take, and what route is best. Choosing songs without knowing how they make sense in the larger narrative of your service will result in you driving around aimlessly for a while and burning lots of gas.

Know your destination! Your passengers will thank you.

Interview with Worship Links

Worship Links is a great website with tons of good resources for worship leaders. A few weeks ago they asked me a few questions and today they’ve posted the answers here. Check it out.

(You’ll also get some chocolate chip cookie dunking advice in there as an added bonus.)

Lessons From Lawsuits

Earlier this week, my church got final word that our long 7+ year legal battle with the Episcopal Church, our former denomination, is over. Completely over. Over over. Stick a fork in it because it’s done over. Even though we had left our former property in May 2012, we had continued our appeals to the Virginia supreme court and then to the United States supreme court, believing that we had a responsibility, particularly to other churches who might not have the same resources as we do, to see it through to the very end. So, we saw it through to the end, and we’re not looking back.

I’ll never forget the Sunday we took the vote in late 2006 to leave our denomination. It was Advent, and as we sang the line from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” that asks God to “bid Thou our sad divisions cease and be Thyself our King of Peace” I looked out and saw grown men, respectable men, Northern Virginian professional and powerful men, with tears in their eyes. They were in my eyes too.

This coming July I will celebrate my ten-year anniversary of coming on staff here. Over seven of those years were marked by a fairly high degree of uncertainty about where God was leading our congregation, whether we’d win or lose a particular case, whether we’d keep or lose our property, where our new offices would be, where we’d worship, whether we keep this or that piece of equipment, etc. It has been a wild ride. There have been low lows and high highs. We’ve had Sundays where I thought the roof was literally going to lift off, and Sundays when I wondered if the Holy Spirit had taken the Sunday off.

I’ve learned some worship leading lessons through these years of never-ending lawsuits.

First, the Gospel is our song. The songs that have resounded the loudest and longest over these seven years have been the songs that declare the good news of Jesus Christ. Whether we’ve been feeling good about ourselves or discouraged about a bad ruling, declaring the power of the Gospel has always tapped into something powerful. Always.

Second, the songs we sings should rest on the sure victory of Jesus, not on our changing circumstances. We won our first court case in April 2008. In our worship service after hearing that good news, we sang “On Christ, the solid rock, I stand…” We lost our second court case in June 2010. In our worship service after hearing that bad news, we sang “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing…”. We lost (big) our third court case in January 2012. In our worship service after hearing that shocking news, we sang “Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne…”. In our final worship service in our old building, we sang “And as He stands in victory, sin’s curse has lost its grip on me, for I am His, and He is mine, bought with the precious blood of Christ”. We experience changing circumstances but we rest in the victory of our unchanging Savior who was and is worthy of our praise. If we’re singing songs that only “work” if we’re happy and things are going well, then we’re singing the wrong kinds of songs.

Third, people are looking to sing songs that are true. We captured this in our recent live worship album (recorded one year after leaving our former property). People live in an uncertain world, full of harshness, full of law, full of lies, and full of sadness. The faithfulness of God and the power of the Gospel are the source of our joy, our hope, our lives, and our ministry. I’ve never gone wrong choosing songs that help people “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16). God knows they need it.

Fourth, comfort is overrated. I almost wish every church and every worship leader could experience what my church has experienced over the last seven years, especially the last two years since we left our building. It has been good for us. Our idols of comfort and convenience have been exposed. Our weaknesses have come out in the light. The dead branches have become more obvious. It’s hard for a church’s muscles to grow when it’s sleeping on the proverbial couch. We’ve been feeling the burn for a while, and it hurts, but it’s good for us in the long run.

Finally, you can’t manufacture the Holy Spirit (but you can try). A lot of worship leaders don’t realize that they spend a lot of time trying to manufacture the Holy Spirit in their services. Whether it’s by trying to recreate something produced on an album, trying to use certain audio or visual effects to produce your prescribed reaction, trying to bring rapid change in a matter of weeks, or turning the worship knob to 11 every week, worship leaders can easily slip into dangerous territory. Honestly, just relax. Choose songs that point people to Jesus, lead them in a heartfelt and humble way, make sure the music and musicians alongside you are as skillful as possible, and let the Holy Spirit do his job. It’s a beautiful thing to behold the Holy Spirit at work in a congregation.

It’s a tragedy when churches deal with lawsuits and litigation. I hope most churches and worship leaders never have to. But whether you’re in court, or a portable church in a basketball gym, or whether you’re nice and comfortable in your own permanent building, never lose sight of what’s really worth singing, who’s really worth singing to, and who’s really the worship leader (it’s not you).