Category: Uncategorized

Handling Awkward Moments – A Medical Emergency

This past Sunday at my church, I was sitting in the congregation and listening to the sermon, when I noticed an individual stand up and walk towards the back of the room. I thought it was an odd time for this person to leave since the sermon was almost over, and I also thought it wasn’t very discreet since they were sitting directly in front of the preacher!

About 15 seconds later, a huge gasp arose from the back of the room as this person proceeded to faint, fall onto the laps of a couple people, and end up lying on the floor.

Thankfully, we have several doctors and nurses who attend our church, two of whom were sitting within arm’s reach of where the individual fainted. We’ve also prepared for this kind of incident by installing emergency 911 buttons at our sound desk, and training our ushers how to respond. This person was taken to a hospital within minutes and released that afternoon, but it was still a huge disruption to the service.

It’s impossible to know when a service might be interrupted by a medical emergency. But it’s good to think through how you should respond. Bill Haley, one of our associate pastors who was preaching, handled it like a pro. Here’s what he did:

Don’t pretend it’s not happening!
Bill recognized he has lost the attention of the room, and that someone needed help. To continue with his sermon would have been futile and foolish. He could pick up his sermon later, but he had to address the emergency first.

Ask if there are any doctors in the room
Bill was in mid-sentence when the person fainted. After hearing the loud gasp and seeing that someone had fainted, he immediately said: “are there any doctor’s in the room?” Seconds later, an ER doctor and a handful of nursed were at the person’s side. Bill had the advantage of a microphone, and he used it well.

Pray
Once this individual had medical attention and 911 had been called, Bill said: “let’s pray”. He led the congregation in praying for the person until they were being carried out of the room.

Slowly get back to where you were
After this person was taken out to the lobby, he reassured people that he would update us on their status at the end of the service, encouraged us to keep praying for her, reminded us that God was in control, and slowly transitioned back into his sermon.

Recognize that the dynamic in the room has changed
I had planned to follow Bill’s sermon with Enfield’s arrangement of “Crown Him with Many Crowns”. Knowing that people were still shaken up and distracted, we changed the arrangement on the fly to be a bit more laid back and less aggressive. To follow a medical emergency with a rock version of a hymn could have been perceived as insensitive and jarring.

One thing that Bill did that ended up adding to some of the confusion was to ask intercessory prayer team members to go lay hands on the person who had fainted. This resulted in too many people being around, and required the doctor and nurses to tell people to go back to their seats. Next time, I’d ask people to extend a hand towards the person from their seat, but to leave room for the professionals to do their job.

I may never have to deal with this particular scenario again, and you may never face this kind of “awkward moment” in one of your services. But when you’re dealing with a group of people standing up and singing for long periods of time, a variety of ages, 52 Sundays a year, and just plain old odds, it’s most likely going to happen someday.

Thank You Gary

When my family moved to Fairfax, Virginia in September of 2000, I was a depressed, confused, and lonely high school boy. My dad had taken a job as one of the associate pastors at Truro Church, and our family packed up from the panhandle of Florida and came with him. Sitting in between me and my dad in the front of our moving truck was my brand new Taylor 410-CE acoustic guitar, a gift from my youth group just the night before, on my last night leading worship for them.

One of the first people I met at Truro was a man named Gary Jaskulski. He was the Director of Music and Arts and led a music program that was like none I had ever seen in my limited Episcopal (at that time) experience. After an opening hymn with organ, full choir, strings, brass, and timpani, they segued into the Gloria, still with the organ, full choir, and strings, but now with piano, guitars, drum set, and the pastor (now my bishop) playing his tambourine and shaking his hips. They actually attempted to do “blended” music, as in, do all kinds of styles of music in one service, and they actually pulled it off pretty well.

It wasn’t long until he cornered me after church and asked me to come by his office later in the week, with my shiny new Taylor, and audition. I wasn’t quite sure what to think – I was used to playing contemporary music with four or five chords, had never worn a choir robe in my life, and had never auditioned for anyone! A few days later I came by his office, we played and sang through a few songs together, and he asked me to play guitar on Sunday mornings. And I had to wear a choir robe.

So for several years I came every Sunday morning and played guitar at Truro Church under Gary’s leadership. It was just what I needed.

It was a place for me to grow and mature as a guitarist. Many Sundays he would put music in front of me with no guitar chords at all. Just a treble clef and a bass clef. I had to figure them out on my own. And many of these songs had more chords than I had ever seen in one song.

It was a place for me to grow in my love for more traditional forms of music. Up until coming to Truro, I might have sneered at what I thought was the irrelevancy of the organ. Now I got to sit under it every Sunday, hear Gary play it with amazing skill, and experience the grandeur of such a beautiful instrument.

It was a place for me to learn how to be comfortable with spontaneity. If Gary wanted me to take a verse of a song, he would just point at me about two measures before the verse started. I had to learn to watch him, to be ready, to be comfortable with making mistakes, and to rehearse just in case I got called on.

It was a place for me to experience multiple styles of music being employed in one service with excellence, humility, and joy. Gary was just as comfortable letting the organ soar on “Glory Be to Jesus” as he was playing gospel-style piano on “Soon and Very Soon”. He loved playing glissandos.

I had no idea when I first arrived at Truro and met Gary what a difference he would make to me as a worship leader and musician. I still try to emulate him on the piano. I’ll probably never come close. He was that good.

But after a year or two of playing under Gary’s leadership, I remember asking myself: “what is it that is so unique about how Gary leads?” I realized what it was. I never left a service thinking about how skilled an organist, pianist, or choir director Gary was. I left more aware of how great God is.

Today Gary stepped into the presence of that great God, after a long battle with cancer. His wife Merillee, son Christian, and daughter Catherine were by his side as he breathed his last breath.

I’m confident that there are pipe organs and pianos in heaven that we cannot even begin to imagine. It won’t be long until Gary has found one of them and is playing and singing “Glory Be to Jesus” with the saints and the angels joining in and falling on their faces in worship.

Gary, I thank God for you, your life, your ministry, and your contagious passion for his glory. Now you get to experience that glory in all its fullness. Enjoy your new robe.

Music Through the Eyes of Faith – Pt. 3

Are you the kind of musician who will only listen to, play, and utilize one style of music? Do you consider other forms of music beneath you? Do you look down on musicians who don’t have the same gifting as you do?

These two quotes towards the end of chapter 1 of Harold Best’s “Music Through the Eyes of Faith” might be helpful (and convicting). May God enable classically trained musicians to take joy in jazz, hip-hop musicians to take joy in Bach, and by-ear guitarists to take joy in organ music – all for the glory of God.

“When Jesus Christ became flesh, he became a part of the creation in exactly the same way that every human being has. That is, even though he was fully God, he came fully human… In a way, God was simplified. And as with so many simplicities, this deepens the mystery. While this emptying means everything to our redemption, it applies to our artistic and musical creativity with nearly equal force. An analogy may help. Let’s say that before Christ became human, he could be likened to a symphony, in all its complexity and power – magnificence carried out over a grand expanse. But when he became human, he became a folk tune, simple and shortened… His becoming a folk tone was not a compromise, a dilution, a put-down, or a thinning out… Becoming a folk tune was a uniqueness in itself, with its own wholeness, integrity, and usefulness. Putting it this way prevents us from saying that a folk tune is a thinned-out or reduced symphony. Rather, it is an emptied symphony, completely possessed of its own wholeness, integrity, and uniqueness… Each musician must come to experience the dignity, rightness, and eventual joy of putting things aside, of emptying oneself and taking the form of a servant. Such musicians must be able to move back and forth, gracefully, servingly, and willingly, from the symphony to the folk tune, back and forth without complaint, compromise, or snobbery, without the conceit that doing an oratorio is somehow more worthy or more deserving than doing a hymn tune. All servant musicians must be able to be in creative transit, serving this community and challenging that one, all the while showing grace, power, elegance, and imagination.”
The Incarnation, Human Creativity, and Music Making, pages 32 and 33

“Which is the greater mystery, that Christ is God or that he could empty himself while remaining God? Likewise, which is greatest mystery, that we are artistically creative or that we can remain just as fully creative while emptying ourselves?”
The Incarnation, Human Creativity, and Music Making, pg. 34

See part one and part two for more quotes.

Praying for Unction

Unction isn’t a word you hear very often these days, but maybe that’s not such a good thing.

Tullian Tchividjian, the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, recently shared on his blog about how his “heart burns” for God’s “sacred anointing”, or “unction”.

While his post is written for preachers, I wanted to share it here because worship leading is another form of preaching. Every week, worship leaders have 15, 20, 30, or more minutes to point their congregations to the greatness and glory of God in Jesus Christ through music. So, read this post and where you see the words “preaching” or “preachers” – insert “worship leading” or “worship leaders”. May we all pray for God’s sacred anointing, his unction, every single time we get up to lead.

————————————————————

I’m a die-hard believer in unction. Unction is an old fashioned word which describes an effusion of power from the Holy Spirit as one preaches. It is the one thing preachers need above everything else. It is the accompanying power of the Spirit. This is what Charles Spurgeon dubbed “the sacred annointing.” It is power from on high.

In his book on the preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Sacred Annointing, Tony Sargent describes unction well. He writes:

[Unction] is the afflatus of the Spirit resting on the speaker. It is the preacher gliding on eagles’ wings, soaring high, swooping low, carrying and being carried along by a dynamic other than his own. His consciousness of what is happening is not obliterated. He is not in a trance. He is being worked on but is aware that he is still working. He is being spoken through but he knows he is still speaking. The words are his but the facility with which they come compels him to realise that the source is beyond himself. The man is overwhelmed. He is on fire.

Oh how my heart burns for this sacred annointing, this unction! I hope and pray that preachers all over the world would spend much of their sermon preparation time begging God for this power on high. For, it is preachers who are borne along by the Holy Spirit that are used to effect a deep and sobering awareness of God and his truth that transforms.

In his book Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace, Iain Murray writes:

Preaching under the annointing of the Holy Spirit is preaching which brings with it a consciousness of God. It produces an impression upon the hearer that is altogether stronger than anything belonging to the circumstances of the occasion. Visible things fall into the background; the surroundings, the fellow worshippers, even the speaker himself, all become secondary to an awareness of God himself. Instead of witnessing a public gathering, the hearer receives the conviction that he is being addressed personally, and with an authority greater than that of a human messenger.

Given the fact that the ultimate factor in the church’s engagement with society is the church’s engagement with God, my earnest prayer is that, for the sake of the world, more preachers would come to know and understand what Andrew Bonar meant when he wrote: “It is one thing to bring truth from the Bible, and another to bring it from God himself through the Bible.”

Please pray, dear friends, that God would annoint my mind and mouth on Sunday as I preach so that God’s people would hear from God. Please pray that God’s Spirit would so inhabit my words that everyone would leave worship tomorrow being able to say, “God was surely in that place.”

I can’t manufacture unction regardless of how well crafted my sermon is and how well prepared I may be. The biggest work must come from God.

So, come thou fount of every blessing and do for your people what I cannot. Amen.

Read Tullian’s post here.