Uncategorized – Page 20 – Worthily Magnify

Signs That You’re High-Maintenance

Are you a difficult worship leader to work with? Does your pastor find you to be a constant challenge? Do the other staff members at your church avoid disagreeing with you? Hopefully not. But sometimes worship leaders, with the wonderful artistic temperament that God gave us (not to mention the sinful nature we’re born with), can become mini-divas without realizing it.

Here are some signs you might have become a bit too high-maintenace.

1. You disagree with everything the pastor suggests. He can be right sometimes, you know!

2. You think you’re the only one who “gets it”. You’re not.

3. You get defensive when someone wants to help you choose songs. Loosen up.

4. Your natural response to a new idea is “no”. Try not to shoot down ideas so quickly.

5. You ask permission too much. Maybe he’d be happy to give you a longer leash than you want for yourself?

6. After church, you immediately fish for compliments. It’s obvious to people, and it’s not attractive.

7. Your office door is always closed. Be sociable. It’s good for you.

8. You think everything is a “big deal”. Most things you think are big deals are actually small deals that you make into big deals by treating them like they’re big deals. Relax a little bit and everyone will be happier!

How to Start Off a Worship Leading Career

Yesterday I received a question over email from someone who asked:

I am helping a young friend who is just working a “job” right now and leads worship at our church every third week. He is musically talented (singer, drums, guitar, other percussions and harmonica that I know of.) He needs direction on the qualifications he might need to be useful to a church body as a part time or full time worship leader as his calling/career. He feels called but doesn’t know how to get started. I do not know where he should start or how to advise him. Can you help?

Here’s what I shared:

To be useful to a church body as a part time or full time worship leader, your friend needs to demonstrate consistent dependable leadership. He needs to find a venue, whether it’s a small Sunday morning service somewhere, or a week night thing, or a bible study, or a mid-week service where prove he can lead a worship team, choose songs, do the necessary administration, be dependable, and help people worship God.

When I was in your friend’s shoes, I began to lead weekly for our youth ministry, quarterly for church worship celebrations, sometimes for healing services, on men’s retreats, for Alpha, for weddings/funerals, and for VBS (vacation bible school). Get as much varied experience as possible to be well-rounded. Then a church will look at you and know they can trust you with responsibility.

I wrote a post several years ago with more thoughts on this called “Getting Experience Makes You Experienced“. For worship leaders who want to have more responsibility and opportunity, and even a full or part-time position, there’s no other place to start than by saying “yes” to as many offers that come your way.

Know Your Motivation

Thinker Effective worship leaders learn how to manage multiple sources of information while they’re standing on stage leading worship. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you sensing? What time of day is it? Is it really hot in the room? The list goes on. At any given moment while you’re leading worship, you’re experiencing a flood of information. You have to learn how to process it all, which means knowing what 95% of it you’re going to ignore.

But while most things you have to deal with are external, the one internal source (i.e. your motivation) can be the strongest force of all. Why are you asking people to sing this particular song? What are you hoping to accomplish by having them clap on every beat like on the recording? Why are you choosing that arrangement?

You have to know your motivation well enough to discern when it’s wrong. And when you can discern that your motivation is wrong, then you’ll know to not do the thing you’re thinking about doing, until your motivation is right.

Here are some common wrong motivations for worship leaders:

This is how they do it on the recording
This is cool
This makes me sound good
This makes me look good
I can’t let the clock quench the Spirit
This song always works
This will get the place hopping
This will get the mood worshipful
This will catch my congregation up
This is my performance

Here are some right motivations for worship leaders:

This will help them sing confidently
This will help them see and magnify Jesus
This will bless them
This will make me look foolish but I’m going to do it anyway
This will honor my pastor
This is going to stretch them
This is not my preference, but it’s the best decision
This will help people hear/respond to the sermon
This isn’t the way they did it on the recording but this serves my congregation better
This isn’t something my team can pull off, so even though I’d like to do it, I will wait

Search your heart when you’re planning or leading worship, and ask yourself “why am I doing this” or “why am I asking them to do this?” The answer to those questions will give you a good deal of clarity on how to move forward.

How to Handle That Guy

A few weeks ago I had a Sunday off at my church (our students were leading worship that morning) and so I accepted an invitation to lead at a church whose worship leader needed a sub since he was going to be the one preaching that morning. I had a great time, and really enjoyed meeting the congregation and musicians there.

After our pre-service rehearsal, one of the singers said to me “Sam is going to be so happy that you’re doing so many hymns!” I laughed and said “You guys have a Sam too?”. It’s true. Every church has him. Maybe his name isn’t Sam, but you know who I’m talking about.

He’s that guy who’s very comfortable letting you know whether or not you/your songs/your number of hymns/your choice of the wording of “Be Thou My Vision”/your choice of whether or not to wear a tie has been met with his approval or disapproval. You see him coming and you’re tempted to run the other way.

How do you handle “that guy”?

Don’t let him get under your skin. Don’t let him intimidate you. Don’t let him approach you in those sensitive minutes before or after the service and throw you off your game.

Instead, give him what he wants: an equally strong opinion back, with a smile and a laugh. “That guy” has a strong enough personality to confront you with his opinions, so you have to channel a strong enough personality to hand it right back to him.

Don’t be a jerk, but do be firm. Find him amusing. Love him. Call him by his first name. Give him a firm handshake. If you’re in the mood, listen to what he has to say, thank him, and tell him what you think. If you’re not in the mood, say hi to him and tell him it’s not a great time. He’ll appreciate your strength and he’ll back off.

Whatever you do, don’t let that guy get under your skin. He’s just a person who wants to be liked. Like him, be firm, and be comfortable being strong.

Jesus Can Melt Hearts of Stone

Much of my childhood was spent sitting in a minivan. A Dodge Caravan to be exact. In 1994 we upgraded to a stylish Toyota Previa (and by “stylish” I mean “hideous”) which we took all around the country on summer vacations. I even learned to drive that wonderful automobile.

I spent so much time in minivans that I promised myself I would never purchase one for myself. I was too cool, and they were too dorky. I was too manly, and they were too girly. I was too sophisticated, and they were just too, well, practical.

So before I got engaged I bought a Ford Escape. Not as manly as an Explorer, but not as girly as a Jetta (no offense). Then, after several years, including marriage to Catherine, the birth of our first daughter, and the impending birth of our second, I traded in the Escape for one a massive, gas guzzling, four-wheel-drive, dark blue, rugged, menacing Chevy Tahoe.

My ego was thrilled. My pocketbook, however, was not. Turns out that Chevy Tahoes use a lot of gas. And if you need to put 4 new tires on it, those tires cost a lot of money. And they’re not cheap to insure. And the county likes to charge you a lot of taxes every year to register the behemoths. Not to mention the pesky debt I had plunged us into.

It was extremely impractical for my growing family. Yes, you could fit a killer whale in the back (or so I’ve heard), but it wasn’t terribly easy for Mom to reach back and fetch a dropped pacifier in the middle of a grueling five-minute drive to the grocery store. But, darn it, it was NOT a minivan.

I was the most anti-minivan guy you’ve ever met. I openly laughed at my friends who purchased them. I knew that I would never succumb to the allure of the automatic sliding doors. And the in-floor storage. And the DVD player. And the easy access to the 2^nd and 3^rd row. And the easy-fold seats. And the window shades. And the massive amount of cargo space. And the easy access to car seat LATCH systems. And the little mirror that lets you look back and see your kids. Oh and the windows roll down all by themselves when you hold down the unlock button. It’s amazing!

Last week we traded in the Tahoe for a Honda Odyssey and I couldn’t have been more excited.

How could a die-hard anti-minivan SUV driver have such a change of heart? I think Jesus did it. I began to see how a different car would serve my wife and kids better in the small spaces of a grocery store parking lot. I began to see how owning a massive Tahoe wasn’t good stewardship of our finances, nor a wise investment. Jesus melted my heart of stone and replaced it with the heart of a practical Dad.

Jesus is in the business of melting hearts of stone. He does it at his pace and in his time. Just two months ago I wouldn’t have been ready. But a week ago it was perfect timing. Jesus knows what he’s doing, he knows how to work on stubborn resistance, and he can turn ardent opponents into tender recipients.

You can picture the faces of ardent opponents, or stern-faced resisters, in your congregation as you read this. They stare at you during worship with a look that says “I am not impressed”. They look down on you and you wish you could do something about it.

Pray for them. It’s as simple as that. Pray that Jesus melts their heart of stone. And smile at them too. Maybe even offer them a ride in your manly minivan.