For a hoot, I checked my blog’s statistics on Google to see how many hits I was getting (ha!) and what people were interested in reading the most. To my surprise, the “worship” category was getting a lot of action. I’m not sure why this is because I really can’t interpret the stats all that well, but I am sure that a lot of it has to do with my mom giving my blog address out. Then I went to the stats for the site Tom and I keep for our World of Warcraft guild, and I saw that it had received more than 35 hits from my blog.
…
I pray to God my mom’s friends weren’t reading it. To anyone I may have inadvertently offended by what you may have seen there, I apologize.
But I digress.
I was really surprised to see so many hits to the “worship” category and, as I had been toying around with the idea of doing an ongoing series, thought I might elaborate on the subject. Three reasons make me reluctant about posting on the subject.
#1. Privacy. My spiritual life isn’t something that I so readily share with the internet community, so my online friends haven’t really seen this side of me. There’s always that fear of being branded a crazy fanatic, but this is who I am - I can’t hide it or lie about it. Not that I’m intentionally pretending that it’s not a part of me, it’s just the moment you start talking about how God was speaking to you, you’re immediately branded a crazy person.
#2. Reinventing the wheel: It’s something I obviously won’t be doing. Worship has been around for a long time, and not just worship itself, but good, corporate worship. (In case you’re wondering, there’s a difference, and a lot of people are confused about what good worship is. The church, in general, takes it for granted when “God shows up” or when they “got what they needed” and they don’t realize all that a worship leader has to do or sacrifice in order to help facilitate that. There are nuts and bolts that a lot of worship team members aren’t told and have to learn by making mistakes — publicly. When it’s discovered that we can sort of sing and barely play an instrument, we’re handed a microphone and given some stupid analogy of Maria Von Trapp climbing a mountain and they expect that to explain everything. If you are a worship leader and you have received the Maria Von Trapp analogy, do not be discouraged — it simply means your pastor has no idea what to do, either.) At any rate, I’ve been to many worship seminars and conferences, and over the years I’ve just stopped going. Why? Because I keep getting the Maria Von Trapp analogy and no one can tell me how to avoid burn out, how to mentor new worship leaders/team members, or even some basics like how to select songs for your church. Like everyone else, I was on my own to figure it out.
#3. Skill. Just because I’m posting about this subject doesn’t mean I am the best worship leader ever, that I have all of the answers, can solve any church’s worship problems, and am the most skilled musician ever. I am not the best worship leader ever, I don’t have all the answers, because the Lord has a mind of his own I really can’t do much except sit at the piano and watch him do whatever he feels like, and I have pretty much resolved that I will never, ever play a perfect worship set. Remember: if it isn’t sloppy, it’s probably wrong. On the other hand, I’ve been leading worship now for many, many years, have mentored many worship team members and leaders, and am now at my second church plant. If anything, I can at least recommend what not to do.
Let’s start at the beginning.
As I said a moment ago, I am now at my second Vineyard church plant. What does that mean? In short: It’s a handful of people from various backgrounds gathered together in a small space, feeling incredibly awkward and unsure about the future of their little congregation. You can think of it like an extremely fragile home group/Bible study. Spiritually, it is the same concept as that day you bring your newborn baby home. Hold it carefully. Support the head, keep it warm, feed it, love it, nurture it, and, for the love of God, don’t drop it.
The major difference between a home group and a church plant is that, with a church plant, a substantial spiritual foundation must be laid first, whereas with a home group/Bible study, the substantial foundation will already be there from the church it is connected to. Now, a home group will still need a foundation to be laid in that smaller community for whatever God wants to do in it, but it won’t be as critical. I don’t mean that the home group foundation isn’t important, because it is. It’s just a lot more flexible because home groups are generally pliable, and more temporary than the overall church itself. At least, this is my experience.
Whatever is laid as the church plant’s foundation — everything that church does now and in the future will be launched off of it, will be based off of it, will rest upon it. As leaders of a church plant we have a tremendous responsibility, not just to the current members, but to those who will come after us in the life of that church, one, two, three, five, ten, fifteen, or however many years down the road. What is built on that foundation now will have lasting effects.
Okay, enough of the spiritual jargon. Everyone’s heard the bit about laying a foundation, but it’s rare when someone tells you how to actually lay one. What does this mean practically?
Everything that God does at your church is going to be different than what God is doing at another church. Even if you are right next door to another church, it’s going to be different. If it wasn’t different, then it really wouldn’t matter what church we went to, now would it? Keeping this in mind, when a new church is born (planted), God must establish what he is doing there. It’s going to be new, it’s going to be different, and whatever everyone thinks church should look like goes out the window. I can’t stress this enough.
The same goes with worship. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 people in the same room who have strong backgrounds of worship, God is going to need to establish what he is doing with your corporate worship. Some churches are wild while, on the opposite end, some are quiet and intimate. Most are fixed somewhere along the spectrum. In the initial stage it is, quite literally, a blank slate. Forget what you think you know about worship. Forget what the rest of the church thinks they know about worship. God is going to establish his will for that church and it’s going to be different. So don’t try to force an agenda, mood, or tone. You’re starting over from scratch as if you’ve never had worship in your life.
Start off with a core group of songs that you can use from now until the end of time. If you want to teach some of the hot, new songs that are out there, wait a couple of months. Establish your core, which should be around 25 - 30 songs, and pound them into the ground until everyone knows them backwards and forwards. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200, until you have set up your core songs.
Some of the people in your church may not appreciate this time of core song development because they want new, hip and awesome, and you’re trying to do them a favor by setting up your foundation. Believe me, you will thank me for it later. There is nothing more frustrating than getting six months or a year into the church and realizing that your song selection is all over the place and you don’t know where you’re going or what new songs you should do next, because all of the songs you’ve ever done somehow feel like new songs. Trust me, set up the worship foundation. You will always have these to fall back on, and anyone else who comes along to lead worship after this will have a base to select from as well.
Depending on how remedial your church is, you may need two or three months to establish your core. It sounds like a long time, but if you consider that there are about four weeks in a month, you will see that you really only have 8 - 12 worship sessions to teach your core songs. Five or six songs a set, 30 songs to establish… you do the math.
So how do you pick these songs? Prayer helps.
No, seriously. The reason for this is simple yet not so simple. Listen to me carefully, people: The songs you need to choose should reflect what God is doing (or will be doing) in your church.
Here’s an example. There are a lot of great songs out now that every church is doing, even Catholic churches are borrowing for their evening youth sets. One good example is “Open the Eyes of My Heart.” It’s a great song that’s been around since the late 90’s and is now hitting it’s stride. Paul Baloche hit it out of the ballpark once again with this song. Right now it’s on every Christian station, everyone knows it, everyone loves it; yet another winner from Integrity Music. Every church knows it, every church is doing it, Michael W. Smith is even singing it on the radio. It’s a great song.
For the unfamiliar, the lyrics go (simplified):
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, open the eyes of my heart
I want to see you, I want to see you
To see you high and lifted up, shining in the light of your glory
Pour out your power and love as we sing holy, holy, holy
It’s a great song. I taught it to my last two churches.
I will not be teaching it at my current church until I feel motivated to do so.
Here’s why. God has been pressing upon my pastor and myself that he is going to be doing something new and big in our church. Whatever he’s going to be doing, he isn’t going to need to open our eyes to see it, because it’s going to be so blatantly obvious that you’d have to be an idiot not to see it.
Because God is not worried about our eyesight right now, I’m going to move along and select songs that will apply to us a little more. There are two big topics that my pastor feels God is doing.
I’m not going to tell you what they are yet. I want to highlight the fact that I didn’t say I feel God is doing x, y, and z in the church. Spiritual crap aside, if you just aren’t sensing or seeing the direction of the church, go talk to your pastor. Seriously. It’s okay. Find out what they believe God is doing in the church. Spend time in prayer. If your church has a regular prayer time where people get together to pray for the church, go. It is part of your job (yeah, that’s right, I said ministry is work and not “happy fun screw-off time” - it can be fun and rewarding, but it’s still work and you have a responsibility) to have a general idea of where God is taking you, or at the very least, what he’s generally doing in your midst. Stay connected. Talk to your pastor. If you are just not the whole “touchy feely prophetic” type, don’t sweat it. God has a way of reaching us and will make it clear to you. If you still aren’t sure, don’t be afraid to go to your pastor. It is critical that you and your pastor are on the same path. Find out what God is doing, possibly where he may be taking you, and select songs that will support what God is doing. If he’s bringing freedom and healing to the church, avoid depressing songs that remind everyone how much they need to grovel and repent. You get the idea.
Okay, so you understand the need to establish your core songs based on what God is doing or plans to do in your church. I said I was going to tell you what God is doing in my church, and I will, but not today. That will come in the next lesson.