How Can It Be

1Charles Wesley’s hymn “And Can It Be” (1738) is one of the greatest hymns of all time. It’s a powerful proclamation of the good news of the Gospel, and full of amazing images of the freedom that Jesus purchased for us on the cross.

I’ve always loved this hymn, and as a worship leader I’ve been drawn to it simply because of the lyrical powerhouse that it is. It packs a punch and doesn’t need any musical help to get the message across. For years, I had been using Enfield‘s excellent arrangement, which preserves Thomas Campbell’s original tune (from 1825) but refreshes it in a very effective way.

Last year I wrote a new arrangement of this hymn with a new melody, different arrangement, and an added chorus. Messing with “And Can It Be” was risky since the original wording and tune are so familiar to most congregations. But I gave it a try, and the result was “How Can It Be”. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how it’s clicked with my congregation, and I wanted to offer it as a free download in the hopes that it serves your congregation too.

We included this song on our recent live worship album, “We Will Proclaim”. You can order the CD for $10.00 at http://www.tfcamusic.org, or also find the album on iTunes or Amazon.

Or click here to download it on iTunes..

And here’s a free chord chart.

Here’s the lyric video for the song: 

And finally, here’s me showing how I’d play this song on the acoustic guitar, especially if I was leading it by myself without a band: 

How You Can Stifle Your Team

1Working with musicians is a tricky business. Working with church musicians is a particularly tricky business. And working with volunteer church musicians is an especially tricky business.

With personalities, experience levels, spiritual maturity, and a host of other factors all over the map, it takes a careful worship leader to find the right way to give his team enough leadership and direction to draw out their best, while not giving so much leadership and direction that he stifles the gifts and creativity that the members of his team bring to the table.

Here are some ways that you can stifle your team.

Be the mean parent
They’re late to rehearsal. Again. They clearly didn’t practice. At all. Be careful to respond with grace. Yes, deal with what needs to be dealt with, but if you’re a big meanie, you’ll work against yourself, you’ll develop a reputation for being no fun, and you’ll make your team nervous. A scowl at your drummer when he messes up will make him angry, not sorry.

Tell everyone exactly what to play
Yes, give musical direction. Yes, you make the final calls. Yes, arrange the songs like you want to. But don’t direct every single measure. Don’t make all the calls. Don’t arrange every second of every song. Give your instrumentalists and singers room to breathe, improvise, experiment, and worship. Give up a certain degree of quality control for the sake of letting your team members feel like you trust them.

Give them inaccurate music
A misplaced and/or wrong chord will take you 15 seconds to fix before you photocopy it ten times. But once it’s handed out, that one wrong chord will cost you a minute or two (or more) at rehearsal. And it will do more than that. If there’s a consistent pattern of you disseminating inaccurate music, you’re basically communicating a low standard of preparation. If you communicate that, then expect your musicians to take a deep breath and not bring their best to the game.

Embarrass them during the service
Your musicians don’t want to look stupid in front of the congregation. If you go on unrehearsed tangents, or call for an impromptu modulation, or treat an 8:30am service like it’s a stadium rock concert, then no one is going to want to volunteer to back you up.

Choose music that’s too easy for them
Musicians want to be challenged. If you have some gifted musicians on your team, then don’t stifle their creativity by playing it safe all the time.

Choose music that’s too complicated for them
Lead worship with the team that you have, not the team you wish you had. Choose songs that your team can pull off well. Adapt arrangements. Do what you can to bring out the best in your team, not to highlight their weaknesses.

Demand unreasonable hours
Keep rehearsals short. Start them and end them at times that work for the most people. (For example, we’re rehearsing at 8:00pm this coming Saturday to accommodate several dads on the team who will come after they’ve helped their wives put the kids to bed.) Avoid really early mornings. If you expect volunteer musicians to give you too many nights and mornings out of their week, they (and their families) might start to resent you.

Take everything really seriously
If every email, every interaction, every rehearsal, and every service with you is all-serious, all-the-time, then your team is going to have a hard time hitting the joyfulness button all of the sudden when the service starts. It’s hard to fake joy. It’s also hard to hide joy. Encourage a joyful atmosphere on your team, marked by laughter, and that sense of joy will make a difference on the platform.

Every worship team is different, made up of different people with different gifts. Yes, it’s an especially tricky business. But one of the jobs of a worship leader is to draw out, evaluate, and deploy the musical gifts of his or her team for the glory of God. Take care not to stifle the gifts that God has arranged.

Too Many Toppings

1Within one mile from my house there are two frozen yogurt places. Directly across the street from each other. My two oldest daughters (four and almost-three) would eat at one of these places every day if they could. They love them. The frozen yogurt is fun for them, but it’s really all about the toppings. Oh they love the toppings. That’s what gets them excited. And messy.

Catherine and I have to limit the number (and weight) of the toppings our girls choose. It’s like trying to tame wild beasts when we tell our daughters they can only pick three or four toppings from the 1,529 options. But somehow we make our way to the cashier, pay, and find a table where they stuff the frozen yogurt and (mostly) toppings into their mouths with varying levels of accuracy.

I’m more of an ice cream guy myself. Chocolate. One flavor. How can you improve upon perfection? So I tend to look down on the frozen yogurt fad and think my daughters like the toppings too much.

I think worship leaders can start to like the toppings too much too.

They start to add in so much that the primary substance of the gospel is covered over by whatever else they think needs to be included. Whether it’s in their eclectic song selection, varied repertoire sources, artistic stage elements, exploration of different themes, embrace of an array of emphases, use of cool effects, pursuit of variety, desire to be creative, penchant for liturgy, or an attempt to make everyone happy, they get carried away with the “toppings” and the whole thing becomes a bit too messy.

Worship leaders must limit the toppings so that the flavor of the gospel is what people taste above all else. Whether in a small church or a large church, as different as their worship might look, there should be a common core of the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ that never gets covered over by other add-ons.

May it never become about the toppings for us, our musicians, or our congregations. How can we improve upon perfection?

Surviving and Savoring

1So it turns out that having three children in the house is actually pretty crazy.

In the months leading up to Catherine and I welcoming baby girl # three into our family, we kept hearing the same line from parents who had been through the transition from two kids to three. It always went like this:

“Good luck moving from man-to-man defense to zone defense!”

I remember thinking several things whenever I’d hear this:

First, it sounds like you’re saying my life is about to get crazier. That’s wonderful. I’m so glad I ran into you.

Second, it sounds like you’re saying that this isn’t going to be easy. Is that right? I hadn’t thought of that.

Third, thanks for the terrible advice.

And now, just three weeks into the transition, I see that there’s really nothing else than can be said to parents about to enter the vortex of insanity which is the reality of being outnumbered by children who depend on you for everything. It’s such a privilege. And it’s such hard work.

Of course Catherine and I know we’ll survive. We’ll know we’ll look back on this time and it will have gone by in a flash. We know that we’re so blessed. We love our little girls so much and the minute they’re (finally) asleep, all we do is talk about how much we love them.

Parents live in this tension of savoring the moment on the one hand, and trying to survive on the other. Savor and survive. My goodness our girls are beautiful but if my four-year-old decides to change her shoes again before we leave we’re going to be here until next Christmas. All of this in one thought.

People in ministry experience this same tension. It’s demanding but it’s rewarding. Sometimes a lot more demanding than rewarding, and oftentimes we don’t see the reward for years after living with incessant demands, but faithful sowing always yields some sort of fruit in God’s timing, and whether in this life or the next we’ll eventually be able to savor the sweetness of being a part of God’s work.

Sometimes all you can do is just hang on and try to survive. And then sometimes you can step back and savor. But through it all, God is upholding you and remaining faithful. There will be seasons ahead that are crazier. And seasons ahead that are more calm. And then one day, like a breath, it will all pass away. In the meantime, just hang on and God will get you through it and teach you a lot in the process.

When a Congregation Resists a Worship Leader

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The dream of every worship leader is to serve a congregation who makes their job easy. They sing every song with gusto. They never complain or gripe. They learn every song after singing it once. They’re always just begging for more. It’s like you’re in heaven every Sunday. Freedom abounds.

I suppose these kinds of congregations exist, but my hunch is that they exist, blissfully, mostly in the dreams of delusional worship leaders.

The reality of most worship leaders is that they serve congregations who don’t exactly make it easy. There are weeks, and seasons, and years of painful slogging. There are particular people who seem to relish the opportunity to criticize you. Songs fall flat. Excellent musicians don’t exactly fall out of the woodwork. And as you look out over your congregation you get the distinct impression that they’re just not that impressed and they’re just not that into you.

Congregations can tend to be, in a word, resistant. And this is the phenomenon referred to as “reality”. Real people, the people who are actually sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings, tend to like to feel safe, and tend to want to avoid having their personal sovereignty threatened. And few things threaten the personal sovereignty of people more than heartfelt worship. It gets at our pride in a unique way that’s both good for us and painful for us at the same time.

And when a worship leader faces resistance, he or she can handle it one of four ways.

First, give up. They’re resisting your leadership, so they’re all cold hearted atheists, and you should take your talents somewhere else.

Second, double down. They’re resisting your leadership, so they need to have a fire lit underneath them, and you need to rock their faces off until God sends revival.

Third, embrace the status quo. They’re resisting your leadership? You didn’t really notice. You pick some songs/hymns. You lead them. You get your paycheck. You go home. Why rock the comfortable boat?

All three of those options are tempting at different times. Most worship leaders (myself included) have chosen all of those responses at different stages.

But there’s a better option and a wiser response when you find yourself leading worship for a congregation who’s resistant: take it slow. They’re resisting your leadership, but you don’t need to give up, and you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot by acting in a way that would make yourself the poster child of what they’re resisting. A bit of their personal sovereignty is at stake, after all, and if you try to take that space by force, there will be casualties.

So unless you’re one of those worship leaders who leads the congregation of your dreams, I suggest that you face resistance, you take it slow. Evaluate. Build trust. Serve them on their level. This isn’t you lowering yourself. It’s you incarnating yourself. And there’s a big difference.

Once you’ve done that, then you can begin to actually lead the people that are actually in your congregation. and you’ll slowly begin to see people’s personal sovereignty begin to soften in worship, creating a more conducive environment for heartfelt praise in response to the glory of God in Jesus Christ, the one who came to serve and not be served, and to set the captives free. Be encouraged that God’s longing for freedom in your congregation is unfathomably greater than yours.