Mr. I’m-Too-Busy-To-Reply-To-Emails

Every few weeks I attempt to get my inbox to zero. And in the process, I inevitably come to the bottom few emails that I have let go for weeks with no reply. The person who sent them took the time to compose them and send them to me, but I never took the time to even write them back and say “I will get back to you soon”. I became Mr. I’m-Too-Busy-To-Reply-To-Emails.

And so I begin my belated reply with some sort of genuine apology. I really am sorry (and embarrassed) that I didn’t get to the person for a few weeks (and in some cases, months) and so I say genuinely apologize and ask for their forgiveness. Then I reply to their email.

And that’s the point. I do eventually reply to the person’s email. To never reply to an email is the equivalent of hiding in your house when someone rings your doorbell who knows you’re home. If it’s a salesman, or someone suspicious, you’re probably doing the right thing by hiding. But if it’s a friend? Or a church member? Or a brother or sister? You should reply to their doorbell ringing.

Likewise, if a friend, church member, or a brother or sister-in-Christ sends you an email, you should reply.

If your email volume is at the level where you need administrative help with sorting through them, then you should make sure that person gives the courtesy of a personal reply. And you should make sure your administrative helper isn’t weeding them out too heavily and keeping you from being engaged with people who are seeking you out.

There are occasions when I come across a Mr. I’m-Too-Busy-To-Reply-To-Emails. A few days go by and I figure he’s just really busy. Then a few weeks go by and I begin to get the idea that he just pressed “delete” and moved on to something he thought was more important. After a few months I just assume that person is too far-removed for me to ever be so fortunate to speak with him.

And that’s sad.

As much as you’re able, don’t become a Mr. (or Mrs.) I’m-Too-Busy-To-Reply-To-Emails. Even if, like me, it means you to have eat some humble pie and apologize to people you’ve kept waiting. Better late than never.

Different Songs for Different Seasons of the Church Year

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak to a gathering of (mostly) Anglican worship leaders, many of whom did not grow up in a liturgical church. I was asked to share on the rhythm and progression of the church year and suggest different songs that work well during different seasons.

I thought it might be helpful to share my notes here.

Guiding principle:
If the point of the church year is to point people to Jesus, then the point of the songs we sing during these seasons is to point people to Jesus.

How observing the church year in the songs you sing can be helpful
It helps you get out of ruts. If all 52 Sundays out of the year are just regular Sundays, you’re bound to get bored and so is your congregation. Observing the church year, telling the story of Jesus, can help you get in different gears and experience different kinds of services.

Advent
Songs that await Jesus’ coming again/heaven.
Songs that focus on his first coming.
Not Christmas songs yet!

1. Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending
2. O Come O Come Emmanuel
3. There is a Higher Throne (Getty)
4. Lord, We Wait (Townend/Getty)
5. How Long? (Townend)
6. How Long? (Andrew Peterson)
7. From the Squalor of a Borrowed Stable (Townend)
8. Soon (Hillsong / Brooke Ligertwood)
9. All to Us (Passion, on my church’s CD)
10. Creation Sings (Townend/Getty)
11. Glorious and Mighty (Sovereign Grace)
12. There is a Redeemer (Keith Green)
13. Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
14. Jesus Shall Reign
15. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (vs 4 especially, on my church’s CD)

Lessons and Carols
See this post from two years ago.

Christmas
Avoid sentimentality at all costs
People want to sing carols on Christmas
But people have been hearing them in Target and on car commercials
Look at older wording of hymns. Usually stronger theology.
Wait until Christmas Eve to sing Christmas songs. It’s supposed to make people want it!

Epiphany
Not a season most churches emphasize that much
Songs that focus on the Kingship of Jesus
Cardiphonia.org has tons of great suggestions

Lent
Too many people view Lent as a season to refrain from chocolate in order to suffer a little bit and prove to God they really love him, but they feel guilty when they eat chocolate and wonder if God now doubts how much they love him, so they just give up and feel weak and gain weight and feel even more guilty and like God is disappointed.

This is not the point of Lent. If Lent points to Jesus, then the songs should point to Jesus.

A time to paint a huge picture of God’s holiness, our sinfulness, and Jesus’ saving grace.

No alleluias in most liturgical churches during Lent.

Here’s a list of songs that follow an Isaiah 6 trajectory — seeing God’s holiness, our sinfulness, our need for atonement, and God’s gracious extension of mercy and pardon through Jesus.

1. Holy, Holy, Holy
2. Holy (What Heart Can Hold) (Redman)
3. How Great is Our God
4. Holy is the Lord (Tomlin)
5. We Fall Down
6. Immortal, Invisible
7. I Come By the Blood (Sovereign Grace)
8. Jesus, Thank You (Sovereign Grace)
9. How Deep the Father’s Love (Townend)
10. Jesus Paid it All
11. You Alone Can Rescue
12. Here is Love (Grace Takes My Sin) (on my church’s CD)
13. Now Why This Fear (on my church’s CD)
14. When I Survey
15. Come You Sinners (Jamie Brown)
16. Jesus, Son of God (Passion)
17. The Power of the Cross
18. And Can it Be
19. Rock of Ages Cleft for Me

Palm Sunday
Give people the experience, in one service, of using the same lips to praise Jesus and to call for the death of Jesus.

Explain what “Hosanna” means

1. All Glory, Laud, and Honor
2. Hosanna (Praise is Rising)
3. Shout to the Lord
4. Majesty
5. Here for You (Passion)
6. Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)
7. The Power of the Cross
8. To See the King of Heaven Fall (Gethsemane) (Townend/Getty)
9. Glory Be to Jesus (old hymn. Do it slowly)
10. My Song is Love Unknown

Hillsong’s “Hosanna” is popular but not very clear…

Easter
Don’t waste this opportunity to present the gospel in song
1. Jesus Christ is Risen Today
2. Crown Him with Many Crowns
3. In Christ Alone
4. See What a Morning (Townend/Getty)
5. Christ is Risen (Matt Maher)
6. Mighty to Save
7. Jesus Son of God (Passion)
8. Behold Our God (Sovereign Grace / on the TFCA CD)
9. Hail the Day (on Sovereign Grace’s CD “Risen”)
10. Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks…
11. Before the Throne of God Above
12. You Alone Can Rescue (Matt Redman)

Pentecost
1. All My Fountains (on my church’s CD)
2. Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God (Getty/Townend)
3. O Great God (Sovereign Grace)
4. O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
5. Consuming Fire (There Must be More) (Tim Hughes)
6. Pour Over Me (Stuart Townend)
7. Holy Spirit (Wendell Kimbrough)

And while we’re on the subject of liturgy, here’s the seminar I taught at the 2011 Sovereign Grace Ministries WorshipGod conference on “Thinking Surgically While Leading Liturgically”.

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.