Category: Leading

Leading Worship In the Shadow of Tragedy

1Yesterday’s mass shooting an at elementary school in Connecticut is the kind of tragedy that makes everyone – Christians, non-Christians, atheists, agnostics – take a step back and wonder how and why something so awful could happen. The fact that everyone who will be walking into your Sunday morning services has been asking those questions should give worship leaders and pastors reason to think very carefully about what they’re going to sing and what they’re going to say.

First, worship leaders, don’t attempt to be the consoler-in-chief tomorrow. You might be the first person “up”, but that role falls to your pastor. It’s appropriate for you to say something like “This morning as we stand to sing, most of us are singing with heavy hearts after what we’ve witnessed this past week. So as we stand, let’s declare what we know to be true: that God is faithful, God is good, God is sovereign, and God sent his son to rescue a very dark world”. That’s all, roughly, that you need to say. Let your pastor do the rest. And let your songs preach.

Secondly, it’s not too late to change your song selections for the morning. Here are the songs we’re singing at my church tomorrow in case this is helpful.

1. Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman)
– Opening song
– Helps us articulate praise to God in the midst of joy and sorrow
– “Blessed be Your name… when I’m found in the desert place… on the road marked with suffering… though there’s pain in the offering…”
– “You give and take away…”
– We will keep the arrangement of this from getting too rocky

2. It is Well with My Soul (traditional)
– Song after the welcome, where our pastor will have people be seated and will address the tragedy and lead in prayer
– The 4 traditional verses assure us that when we experience peace, or sorrow, or trials, because “Christ has regarded (our) helpless estate, and shed his own blood”, we can say “it is well”. Verse 4 reminds us that one day Jesus will return.

3. How Long? (We Have Sung Our Songs of Victory) (Stuart Townend)
– Offering
– The verses contain cries to God like “Lord we know your heart is broken by the evil that you see…” and “…but the land is still in darkness and we’ve fled from what is right. We have failed the silent children who will never see the light”.
– The chorusses echo so many places in the Psalms and say “how long… before the weeping turns to songs of joy?”
– The last verse gives hope: “But I know a day is coming when the deaf will hear his voice, when the blind will see their Savior, and the lame will leap for joy. When the widow finds a husband who will always love his bride, and the orphan finds a Father who will never leave her side.”
– The version on iTunes that you should buy is the one off of the “Pour Over Me” album
– We’re singing this during the offering, and not expecting people to sing along.

4. There is a Higher Throne (Keith and Kristyn Getty)
– Communion song
– A song about the hope of heaven, where Jesus will “…wipe each tear-stained eye, as thirst and hunger die…”

5. Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (traditional)
– Communion song
– “Come, Thou long expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free. From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee…”
– We will take the chorus from the old Vineyard song “All Who Are Thirsty” with the simple lyrics “come, Lord Jesus, come”, and use it as a chorus on this hymn.

6. Everlasting God (Strength Will Rise) (Brenton Brown)
– Closing communion song
– A song of faith: “Our God, you reign forever. Our hope, our strong deliverer… You are the everlasting God… You do not faint, You won’t grow weary.”

As Bob Kauflin tweeted this morning (12/15/12), we should be regularly singing songs that help us lament the brokenness and darkness and fallenness of this world. But particularly after tragedies like this, when everyone has been shaken by seeing evil on display, pastors and worship leaders have to be willing to change their game plan and help people not only grieve, but grieve with hope in a good and faithful God, who sent his Son to suffer and die in our place, who knew grief and loss, and who was raised to life, ascended to heaven, and will run day return to “make all the sad things come untrue”.

Don’t Be Afraid to Laugh At Yourself

Every once in a while, while leading worship, you can’t hide from the congregation the fact that, at that moment, you don’t know what you’re doing. In these moments, you can either try to keep digging (in which case you usually make things worse) or just laugh at yourself.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

Back in May (of 2012), my church had its very last Sunday morning service on its beloved property of over 275 years. I’ve talked about this before (specifically here). Sunday May 13th was the day, and at the end of the opening time of worship at our 11:00am service, after we sang “Behold Our God”, I had planned for our congregation say Psalm 95:1-7.

The problem was that I hadn’t checked to make sure it was ready to go on the screen. So after “Behold Our God” ended, and I said “let’s read together from Psalm 95”, nothing came up. Awkward moment number one.

The other problem was that I was depending on the words being on the screen so I didn’t have a bible or a printout close by. So I had to rely on my memory. Which at that particular moment, in front of 1,000 people, decided to fail me. Awkward moment number two.

By God’s grace, I had the presence of mind to laugh at myself.

After realizing that Psalm 95 was, in fact, NOT going to come up on the screen, I said “…maybe I’ll read Psalm 95“. People laughed. Phew. Awkward tension lowered a little bit.

Then, after fumbling my way through trying to remember how Psalm 95:1-7 went (and not doing a very good job), I said “(pause) that’s a paraphrase“. People laughed. Phew. Awkward tension lowered again. Then I quickly prayed before I made any more mistakes!

My point is that in those worship leading moments when it’s clear to you and to the congregation that you’ve made a mistake — it’s usually a good idea to just laugh at yourself. It gives them permission to laugh too. It lowers the tension, breaks the ice, and then everyone can move on.

Here’s the clip of the moment for you to enjoy. Feel free to laugh.

The Value of Out-of-the-Bubble Advice

News flash: if you lead worship in any capacity, whether it’s full-time, part-time, or volunteer, one thing is inevitable. You will face a difficult situation at some point. And you won’t know what to do. And how you handle the difficult situation will have consequences.

A member of your congregation is so angry at you that he/she threatens to leave the church. How do you respond?

It seems like someone else on the ministry team/staff at your church is out to get you. Who do you go to?

A member of your worship team is openly living their life in a way that’s contradictory to being in up-front worship leadership. How do you tackle this?

Your pastor is critical of you to other members of the congregation. What in the world are you supposed to do?

You inherited a “worship design committee” that is seeking to exert control over you and your song choices that’s not helpful. Do you have any hope of survival?

These are just a few made-up scenarios that either in my own ministry, or in my experience knowing other worship leaders, touch on some of the difficult situations that leave us wishing we were in another line of work.

And while the difficult situation that you’ll face might be different from one I described above, your questions will be the same. How do I handle this? What is my next move?

You handle tough situations by getting good advice. And, preferably, out-of-the-bubble advice. Someone who can look at your situation from a 30,000 foot view. Someone who’s not emotionally involved. Someone who has Godly wisdom. And, most importantly, someone you can trust to be honest with you.

Here’s the thing, though. And I want to be careful how I say this.

Sometimes the worst advice you’ll receive will come from other people who are in ministry. This is because, generally, people in ministry don’t have as much business/management/leadership experience as the people who are, you guessed it, working in the fields of business, or management, or leadership.

I’m not saying that people in ministry, namely your senior pastor (who you need to include on as much as you can) or other pastors at your church, won’t have good advice. Go to these people too. They’ll have great insights and observations and could potentially help you avoid some landmines. You might have a pastor who’s incredibly wise and experienced. (And even if he’s not, you should still keep him in the loop and love him as well as you can!)

But, again I’m making a generalization here, most pastors or people in ministry, are not nearly as experienced or seasoned in the political and managerial realities of real-world leadership issues as some of the Godly men and women in your congregation are.

So If I could give one piece of leadership advice to a new worship leader, it would be this: when you face difficult situations in ministry and you don’t know what to do, stop and take a deep breath. Pray a lot. Talk to your pastor and get his advice and observations. But then get outside the bubble as quickly as you can. Find someone who can be your mentor. Someone who has run a large-ish organization. Someone who’s been in politics. Or someone who is a gifted leader. Spill the beans to them. Then listen to their advice. Give them permission to be honest with you. Because maybe you’re the problem! In any case, listen well and you’ll benefit from them.

Out-of-the-bubble advice will prove to be incredibly valuable to you as a worship leader, and will help you navigate the inevitable difficult situations with wisdom and clarity.

Try Not to Act Like a Narcissist

A few months ago I was taking a seminary course on pastoral counseling through the Washington D.C. campus of RTS, or Reformed Theological Seminary. At one point the professor was making a tangential point about one of the defining characteristics of narcissists, which is that they treat the people in their lives like they’re cardboard cutouts. They can move them around, put them down, raise them up, dispose of them, and use them however it serves them.

Then he moved on, and moved back to whatever the main point was that he was making.

But I couldn’t get past what he had just said. Narcissists treat people in their lives like they’re cardboard cutouts.

I immediately started thinking about how I interact with the members of my worship team. The ones I know well. The ones I don’t know so well. The newer members. The stronger members. The weaker members. Do I value them and treat them like brothers and sisters with love and respect and honor? Or do I see them as cardboard cutouts, names on a spreadsheet, there at my disposal to be used as I deem best, with no consideration of their hearts?

Now, I think I’m a pretty sensitive guy and try to do my best to care for the musicians with whom I serve alongside. But, newsflash of the century here, I’m not perfect, and in that moment in that seminary class, I think the Holy Spirit was convicting me of a dangerous ability to be careless with people in the church and, perhaps unknowingly, act in a way that can be hurtful to them.

Maybe it’s not scheduling someone for 6 months and never explaining to them why. Maybe it’s never responding to an email from someone, deleting it, and assuming they’ll just go away. Maybe it’s not getting back to someone who asked you to call them. Who knows.

Try not to be a narcissist. Treat people with love and honor. It doesn’t mean you to have to make everyone happy and never be tough. You need to be tough in ministry sometimes. But don’t be a jerk.

As a wonderful old lady in one of my former churches once told me, ministry will (hopefully) make you tough and sweet. That’s what the Holy Spirit wants to help us be, and by God’s grace, he’ll keep helping us find the balance.

Six Ways to Improve Your Church’s Worship

It takes a long time for churches to grow in worship. Expecting immediate change is one of the major reasons why worship leaders and pastors get discouraged and give up. It’s never as easy as we want it to be, and it always takes longer than we want it to take.

Well, maybe not always. Sometimes there are easy things we can do to make a difference in a relatively short amount of time.

As I’ve visited and watched other church services and worship leaders over the years,  I’ve found myself coming back to six things that I wish I could suggest in almost every case. These aren’t earth shattering suggestions. They’re fairly simple.

But they’re fundamental. And if worship leaders and their churches would make some minor corrections in the fundamentals, I dare to suggest that they’d see significant improvement in their Sunday morning worship services.

Here are my six suggestions:

1. Turn the lights up
Romantic restaurants turn the lights down to help couples feel isolated. Movie theaters turn lights down so you can see the show. When churches turn the lights down it creates isolated spectators. Turn the lights up brighter to facilitate communal involvement in worship of Jesus together.

2. Have your pastor call people to worship
Is the pastor (or one of them) even in the room yet? Is he eating a donut offstage? Does he not think this opening time of worship is important? Does he agree with what the worship leader is doing? I guess I don’t think this time is all that important either. These are the questions and that’s the conclusion your congregation may have if they don’t see the pastor’s face until the sermon. He should be up on stage early. He should welcome people, pray for the service, and encourage and invite them to worship. When the pastor is seen as supporting and participating in worship, it will make a difference for the better.

3. Use congregation-friendly keys
Seriously. If you sing songs that are too high, people will tune out. Read my old post on this if you have any questions.

4. Remove rock-star stage elements
Being elevated on a stage is enough. But projecting the worship leader’s face onto a giant screen? Building a platform for the bass player to stand on for no apparent good reason? Fog? Come on. I can understand building a platform for the drums so they can be rolled and moved with ease, but do we need extra platforms on top of the already existing platform? No. And do we need to see the worship leader’s face the whole time we sing? No. We don’t. Take away these distractions as soon as you can.

5. Don’t introduce too many new songs
When you don’t introduce any new songs, your congregation tunes out because they’re bored. When you introduce too many new songs, your congregation tunes out because they don’t have the energy. Two new songs a month, max.

6. Nudge your team to be more expressive
No congregation will go beyond what they see modeled from up front. If expressive worship is modeled from up front, from the singers and musicians and the pastor, then you’ll see expressiveness in the congregation. They’ll know it’s safe. But if no one up front is expressive, then of course you can’t expect the congregation to be, except for the one brave soul. They’ll know it’s not permitted.

There’s a growing epidemic in our churches of worship bands playing songs while a tuned out congregation waits for the sermon. If the musicians and pastors think more carefully about serving their congregations and inviting them into worshipping Jesus together, then we’ll all be pleasantly surprised. And God will receive more of the glory due his name.