Category: Leading

Let’s All Be A Bit More Childish

1I 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.

Always Know What’s Next

1There are few worship leading skills that will end up serving you as well as the skill of always knowing what’s next in a service. Not only having your bearings, but also knowing who is supposed to be “up” after you, and what they’re supposed to do, will prove an invaluable skill and help your colleagues and volunteers learn that they can trust you.

Every Wednesday morning at my church, all the worship staff and pastors gather for a 30-minute meeting to (a) debrief the past weekend and (b) look ahead to the coming weekend. We look over the service, who’s doing what, what’s happening when, if anything out of the ordinary is happening, and if there’s anything we need to change.

By Sunday morning, half the people who were in that room on Wednesday have forgotten most of what we talked about.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve finished a song and looked down to the front row, expecting one of our pastors to come up and lead a prayer, and they look at me with a nice smile that says “I have no idea why you’re looking at me”. Since I can’t just say “because you’re supposed to come up and lead the closing prayer like we talked about on Wednesday, remember?” I just smile back and segue into the prayer. After the service we laugh about it.

Being able to cover for other pastors, scripture readers, prayer leaders, etc., is important. It keeps things running smoothly, and it’s one helpful way you can serve the people around you. Your pastor/the preacher will especially appreciate your eye contact and a gentle nod when he’s supposed to come up and do/say something, since his mind can be in a million other places.

It’s not enough for a worship leader to lead the songs and then be done. A worship leader should also be comfortable and familiar with the structure, outline, and elements of a service (particularly the tricky ones) to give his fellow-worship leaders direction when they need it.

Keep a bulletin/order of service/planning center outline close by. And be ready to jump in (with a smile) if you need to. People will trust you and enjoy leading services with you when they know you have their back.

When You’re a Time Hog

1Every 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

1Occasionally 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

1Worship 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.)