I was talking with a friend the other day concerning the future of his church. As a pastor in another state, he is working with a congregation that has seen some incredible moments in their history. The problem is – that’s all they think about.
“Remember when pastor so-and-so did this…remember that revival years ago…remember when all those young families started coming…”
His dilemma was that they had seen God move in the past, and all they wanted to do was to tell of the glory days.
I am still in crippled status. After 2 weeks in a hard cast, my ankle is still broken from the infamous basketball game. I am in the boot for 4 weeks gradually applying some pressure on it. Still on crutches. Obie said this morning, “Daddy, your crunches go squeak, squeak like a mouse.”
They sure do.
As you look at this picture above, I will ask you, by the look of it, which ankle is hurt? Of course you would say, the ankle on the left of the picture is the one hurting.
And you would be wrong.
The ankle in the boot feels fine. No pain, no real discomfort, it’s just annoying to have it confined to a boot. The ankle that is hurting more is the ankle on the right side of the picture. I have experienced a real pain deep inside that ankle not confined to the boot. When talking to my buddy who is a doctor, he said what I’m experiencing is called overcompensation. Having to put more weight and pressure on the uninjured ankle oftentimes causes more long term damage than the injured ankle.
I firmly believe the principle of overcompensation is happening in your church right now. You’ve heard of the 80/20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. You look at the other 80% of people as if they are broke and so you start putting more pressure on the 20% that isn’t broke. The problem? Overtime, you can cause more damage on the 20% if you burn them out. From the outside, you still can identify those that are not working in the Body of Christ. Spotting them is as easy as spotting a broken ankle in a cast.
I’m a struggling worship leader.
I’m not poor or unable to find places to lead worship. I just struggle with the tension in worship leading.
For years, I have learned how to set the table for people to come to worship. Setup the right mood lighting, pick the right type of music, dress this way, talk that way, and people will come back to the meal you prepared. It’s like you are setting the environment for a nice restaurant, and you are just hoping you can serve a course that is so unforgettable, the people will come back week after week.
But maybe in churches, we have been guilty of sitting on the wrong side of the table. What if we stopped expecting to get your needs and wants met in every worship service we attended? What if we stopped obsessing over the service we were receiving and started focusing on the service we are offering?
For years, I have bought into the church growth principle that the more choices you give people in a church, the more successful the church will be.
To agree with that principle, you must gauge a church’s success by the number of people who stay at that church. But is that true success?
Here are the courses that the American church is serving up:
And the list could go on.
You know the feeling. It’s worship practice, and there is something in the room. Call it stagnation, complacency, hitting a wall, getting settled, or maybe something else, but you know when you work with your worship team and it just seems like you aren’t getting anywhere. You’ve hit the bottom.
That’s why you need a lift.
On March 26th (UPDATED DATE: we had some scheduling conflicts, and pushing it back makes more sense) we will have a free worship workshop held at North Side Baptist in Greenwood, SC. At Lift, you can bring your whole team and get equipped on how you can lift your worship, your team expectations, and your team’s abilities.
Still processing all that Jesus did in me and around me at Passion 2011. I needed to go a day late due to church responsibilities, but college students were texting me telling me how incredible everything was before I even got there. Being able to worship alongside our students and join them in giving sacrificially to worthy causes was such a fantastic way to begin the year.
I could go on and on about the programming of Passion. Who wouldn’t love to hear Louie Giglio, Beth Moore, Francis Chan, John Piper, Andy Stanley, and David Platt speak? Who wouldn’t be overjoyed to be led in worship by Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band, Matt Redman, Charlie Hall, Kristian Stanfill, Christy Nockels, and other special guests? No one would deny the energy getting 22,000 college students together for lively worship with incredible, impacting media presentations. Everyone was impacted by the profound presentations of the needs in the world.
All of that was great, but it wasn’t my favorite part.
Wednesday, we got to work with the talented group, Dust of the Ground. Jeremy and Austin are the duo that make up this talented media company. Since I’m friends with Jeremy (Jeff Lethco’s son), I’ve seen some of the fantastic projects they have finished. When I saw how talented they were, I knew they might be the answer to an idea I had.
I’ve had all these worship instructional video ideas in my head for a while now. 3 minute clips that could be used in churches to drive home a concept concerning worship during a service or at the beginning of a message. By taking a biblical principle concerning worship (true worship, lifting of hands, why we sing, etc.), and giving a mini-message through the power of film, I thought we might could go further faster on some of these areas which churches struggle.
We had practice on Wednesday for Sunday, and everything went great except for the feeling I needed to change things up. So Friday, I sent an updated list for this morning. I wanted to scale things back and really let our voices fill up the room with praise for our King. I’m so thankful for a team that doesn’t complain when I send them an email and say we need to go in a different direction. Each team member jumped in there this morning prepared and knocked it out of the park! Great job!
Today, we worshiped to:
In addition to a great worship time, Ken also gave us a word of testimony concerning how the City has already impacted him. This is an online tool that our church is starting to use to communicate with one another. If you want to join the early group getting connected on the City before our January 9th launch, go here.
OG (the David Denton) also gave a word of testimony for our church. After losing his father this year, he went through shock and pain. But OG chose to believe in the hope we have in Christ. He cited that he was able to overcome due to the church surrounding him and caring for him. Such a great word from such a sharp dressed guy in his shiny white shoes!
Last night for our worship team development time as we focused on capability – leading with excellence, I decided to bring in a vocal expert: my wife. Amanda has her Master’s in music education and focused on vocal pedagogy. So, she got us moving and thinking about some ways that we can use our vocals more effectively at the beginning of practice. We had all our musicians and techies go through the exercises, because it will help everyone out. Don’t worry, our vocalists are going to be working on the soundboard soon.
Here are some of her great notes that she gave us last night:
Many churches are involved in what church growth experts have labeled “worship wars.” Not wanting to lose a particular style of music, many churches find themselves in a battle to maintain their preferential style. It’s more than contemporary vs. traditional. It has to do with instrumentation, volume, genre, layout, lighting, etc. Unfortunately, many churches split over such things. Question: how
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