Category: Leading

Breaking Out of Worship Leader Prison – Pt. 1

This week I’m taking a seminary class at Reformed Theological Seminary here in Washington, D.C. The course is called “The Christian Life” and is taught by Dr. Steve Brown (no relation, by the way). Steve is hammering home the great freedom of grace that belongs to us in Jesus Christ and the horrible bondage most of us live in without realizing it. This is a shame for believers. It’s dangerous for people in up-front ministry.

Steve describes 12 prisons that keep us from experiencing radical grace and damage our ministry. They’ve been eye-opening for me and I want to share them with you.

1. Sin
Most of us are in a dangerous place. We’re up front, on a stage, sometimes on a screen, and in a position of leadership. The congregation thinks we’re pure, holy, righteous, have a great prayer life, tithe, sponsor an orphan in Colombia, and never get angry or lust.

The problem is that we know we’re not wonderful. We know we’re sinners. There are things we’ve done that, if people in the congregation knew about them, we’d be humiliated and never want to show our face again.

We’re in a profession where we have to pretend to be who they think we are. This is a terrible prison. This is great bondage.

If you go around pretending you’re wonderful (but feeling ashamed of your secret sin), you’ll be miserable. And so will the people who work with you and serve under you.

Guilty people make people feel guilty. Free people make people feel free. We have been set free from our sin by the blood of Jesus. Yes, we’re depraved. But we’re redeemed. Do you lead worship like a free person or a guilty person?

2. Guilt
Conviction says I have failed to be obedient. Guilt is the feeling associated with that conviction, and its purpose is to send us to Jesus. But once we’re there, guilt has no purpose.

Sadly, we carry guilt with us for years and years, and it is a heavier weight than we realize. This weight weakens us, limits us, makes us do stupid things, and acts as a leash around our neck, keeping us from running free in God’s grace

In addition to making people feel guilty, guilty people are always trying to work towards their own freedom. Most of the time this takes the form of us punishing ourselves in the futile hope that this earns us favor.

Hanging your head low, saying “no” to great opportunities, and carrying crippling feelings of anxiety and unworthiness won’t make you free. They’ll keep you in prison.

Worship leaders who walk in the radical and total grace of God are more emboldened to lead their teams and their congregations with abandon. Are you ministering with abandon or do you feel bound up?

3. Failure
Steve Brown describes the problem this way: “There is a neurotic sense of Christians that they don’t deserve success because of their sin. This sense creates failure”.

Think about that for a second.

Too many Christians, and too many worship leaders, have a neurotic sense that they don’t deserve success because of their sin. And so they fail. Maybe they go to a new church and take a new job. But they still don’t understand God’s grace. So they don’t think they deserve success. And so they fail again.

The sooner we realize that our “sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and (we) bear it no more”, the more freely we can sing “praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!” Until we do that, we carry our sin with us, we don’t think we could possibly succeed because of it, and our songs are halfhearted.

More tomorrow.

Are You Amazed Anymore?

A few nights ago our 15 month old daughter, Megan, started walking on her own. She had taken one or two independent steps before, but finally, one evening after dinner, she decided she was quite comfortable walking around our entire living room.

We were amazed. We applauded her, swooped her up and hugged her, took pictures and video, Skyped with her grandparents in California so they could see it, and delayed her bed time by quite a bit just so we could keep watching her walk.

Several days have passed and she’s still walking – but I’m not amazed anymore.

What would have been unheard of just a week ago – Megan walking around the living room – is now normal to me. I check email and read the news while she toddles around without any applause or swooping or filming or Skyping.

It’s easy for us to lose our amazement, isn’t it?

When I first came to my church 6 1/2 years ago, they were still relatively new to the use of contemporary music in congregational worship. I was young and immature, but eager and excited, and was quickly overwhelmed by how far the congregation had to go (and, whether I realized it or not, how far I had to go too).

Over the course of time, God, by his grace, has moved us ahead. Is there still room for growth? Oh yes. Have we made any progress? You would be amazed.

But I’m not amazed anymore. And I should be.

What would have been unheard of just 6 1/2 years ago is now normal to me. I would have never been able to introduce an upbeat celebratory song. The band couldn’t have played it and the congregation would have been shocked. I certainly wouldn’t have heard any clapping or seen any physical expressiveness. Our repertoire was shallow. Our equipment was terrible. Our rehearsals were ineffective.  These are just a few examples off the top of my head. I could probably think of hundreds more.

God has faithfully helped us grow. He has answered prayer after prayer and allowed us to express our worship to him and encounter him in a level of freedom that we weren’t experiencing just a short time ago. He has done it. And I should be amazed.

The people of God have a long and sad history of forgetting his “wondrous works” (Psalm 105:5) and selfishly demanding more without remembering what he’s already done. We’re all guilty of this. But oh how much more satisfied and joyful we’d be if we opened our eyes to the miracles he’s done right in front of us.

What “wondrous works” has God done in your midst, in your congregation, in your own life and ministry, and in your worship team? More than you remember and probably more than you realize. What “unheard of” things are now normal?

There will always be room to grow. But there will always be a reason to be amazed.

I want to be a father – and a worship leader – who never ceases to be amazed by baby steps. How about you?

Don’t Believe Your Own Hype

You have a fan club, whether you realize it or not.

Maybe it’s small. A few old ladies who think you’re just adorable and ask when you’re going to make a CD.

Or maybe it’s larger. Gushing Facebook posts, lots of Twitter followers, people recognize you at the grocery store, and your church bookstore carries your very own CD.

Most worship leaders are somewhere in between. You don’t have a CD to sell or Twitter followers of any substantial number, but you do have a significant number of people at your church who see you up front regularly, have an affinity for you, and think you’re much more terrific and wonderful than you actually are.

In any case, it can be tempting to start to believe the hype that naturally surrounds anyone who stands on a stage in a position of leadership and possesses musical gifts. Before you know it you’re demanding only Evian bottled water, yellow M&Ms, and the auditorium a constant 72.4 degrees (that’s in Fahrenheit for my European friends).

Don’t believe your own hype. It’s a slippery slope to arrogance and pride and there is nothing that will hinder your effectiveness in ministry more. God isn’t exaggerating when he warns us that he “opposes the proud” (James 4:6).

Here are three practical ways you can keep the “hype” around you in check.

Be approachable
Avoid the temptation to cloister yourself away in a back room before and after the service. Rock stars do this. Worship leaders shouldn’t. Be available and approachable before and after the service. This is an easy and tangible way to demonstrate to your congregation that you love them, and to deflate the inflation of your ego.

Be humble
For anyone seeking to pursue humility, C.J. Mahaney’s book Humility: True Greatness is an absolute must-read. You can read it in one evening, but if you’re smart, you’ll take some time to read through it and allow the Holy Spirit to convict you and help you see where you need to grow.

It’s easy to say “be humble” but it’s hard to do. “Pursue humility” is a much better way to phrase it. Every morning, every day, and every night, resist the fleshly pull toward pride. Laugh at yourself. Encourage and honor those around you. Remember your sinfulness. Rejoice in Jesus’ work of redeeming you and covering you with his blood. That’s the only thing worth boasting in.

We start to believe the hype when we believe there’s something about ourselves that’s worth boasting in. Unless that “thing” is the cross of Christ, we’re off base.

Be cross-centered
Paul writes in Ephesians 2:1-3,

“…you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

You. We all. Our. By nature.

Verse 4:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

But God. Two of the greatest words in all of scripture.

The hype tells us we’re wonderful and adorable and a really big deal. The cross tells us we were children of wrath but are now objects of God’s mercy.

As a worship leader, to be effective you have to be deflective. People will sinfully want to praise you. You’ll sinfully want to receive it and believe it. Don’t. Deflect the praise of man and direct your own need to make much of something great onto the One who is rich in mercy and worthy of every bit of hype we can muster.

Proclaiming the Gospel Though Music at Christmas

Worship leaders face a lot of temptations this time of year.

Sentimentality
There’s a great temptation to embrace the sentimental elements of Christmas. Snow falling softly while the fireplace roars and children laugh while eating warm apple pie that Grandma made while singing “Silver Bells” on top of a reindeer. This makes us feel all warm inside but makes no lasting difference to our lives.

Creativity
Creativity for the sake of helping people hear and celebrate the good news of Jesus Christ in a fresh way is a good thing. But creativity for the sake of saying we’re creative is most certainly not a good thing.

It can be easy to get carried away with trying to be creative this time of year. A Christmas pageant with a real live baby Jesus, surrounded by live animals, standing on hay, surrounded by a choir of angels suspended from the ceiling illuminated in bright light, while the choir sings a Christmas anthem accompanied by a 16 piece string section while a video plays and dancers dance and everyone in the congregation holds pretty little candles.

This might really impress people, make some people cry, and be more elaborate than any other church in town, but when we place creativity as the highest priority on our lists, it usually comes at the expense of the simple and powerful clarity of the Gospel. If creativity serves the goal of making the Gospel as clear as possible, then go for it. But if it gets in the way, avoid at all costs.

Tradition
Christmas can bring out the traditions like no other season. Traditions can be very good and helpful. But they can also be boring and stale and ineffective. Just because your church has always done it a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the best way.

Oh, if it were only so easy as telling people this and convincing them to try something new. I know it’s not.

If you’re serving in a church with a lot of traditions that you think could use some reevaluating, my advice to you is to tread slowly and softly. You’ll probably have to live with a lot of those traditions you’re not crazy about for a long time. But build trust with people and you’ll earn some capital you can spend on convincing people that there might be a better song than “Come On Ring Those Bells” to open a Christmas Eve service.

Satan hates this time of year when Jesus’ birth is being proclaimed around the world and in the songs being played in the department stores. It’s no wonder, then, that those songs are increasingly watered down and Jesus made to seem incidental rather than central. Sadly, the church too often goes with this flow. Let’s push against it and proclaim with boldness the good news – the best news – of the coming of Jesus Christ.

Feeding Your Worship Team (Literally)

A dozen bagels from Panera: $8-12.

A coffee traveler from Starbucks: $12.

One large, two-topping pizza from Papa John’s: $10-12.

A worship team that isn’t hungry: Priceless.

Sometimes taking care of your worship team isn’t so complicated or expensive. It’s as simple as picking up some bagels and coffee before a long morning of rehearsals and services or ordering a pizza for a late evening meeting when people are coming straight from work.

This shouldn’t come out of your pocket. If you oversee a budget of any kind at your church, designate some funds to be used for food for your worship team over the year. Make sure there’s enough for a nice meal for everyone who attends a worship conference, for a Christmas party and end-of-year cookout, and other things in between.

But if your church doesn’t have money for that, devote some time and energy to getting people in your congregation to cook meals and bake goodies and brew coffee for you and your volunteers on long mornings or late evenings.

You don’t always have to provide food for your worship team. Obviously, people can take care of themselves and remember to eat something before they come to church!

But I have been amazed over the last year or so at what a huge difference it makes to team morale and energy level when there is something to munch on and something to drink.

We’ve installed a little refrigerator in our back room and keep it stocked with mini-soda cans. We also have some bite-sized candy and breath mints in bowls on a counter-top. On Sunday mornings, we’ve contracted a local bakery to deliver a little tray of food on Sunday mornings at 8:30am. It changes a bit every week, but usually has an assortment of cheeses, crackers, fruit, pastries and bagels. The musicians and pastors who are serving on a Sunday morning now swarm the food tray and devour it in a matter of hours.

When we gather as a team for a mid-week meeting in the evening, I’ll do my best to make sure food (usually delivery pizza) is provided, since this will sweeten the deal for people coming straight from work.

You might be surprised by how much providing a little bit of food and drink seems to honor people and keep them fresh. Sometimes leading and feeding a worship team can be hard work. But other times it’s as easy as pie. Literally.