Well, I finally did it. This past Saturday I did my first recording session at my friend Andy’s house. The night before, I learned the song he wanted me to sing, called “Leave,” a quaint pop song that an old bandmate wrote days before that band broke up.

First things first about Andy: Forget modern technology and computers - he’s not a computer guy. He’s got all kinds of crazy equipment that we would lovingly call “vintage” - including reel-to-reel. Here, in his upstairs second bedroom, he’s at home in the wall-to-wall cacophony of instruments and strange mechanisms that make an album. In his mind, if some of the best albums of all time could be recorded with this stuff, then he can use it, too. When I first walked into the room, I got the feeling that he was a little afraid I’d be taken aback by the old stuff in there, but when I explained that my dad’s a fanatic about keeping all his old stereo equipment (including a Teac reel-to-reel), he looked relieved. So I felt quite at home and, while Andy was tinkering around with the equipment, they handed me some interior design magazines to keep myself occupied.

In the back corner of the room, the small clothing closet was turned into a recording booth - nothing you can stand in, but there’s some sort of insulation covering all walls and a carpet on the floor. The door had been removed so I was able to stand in the doorway, in front of the microphone.

Then we recorded. I didn’t really know what to expect. Professional singers have been known to say how much they love hearing their voice played back to them, so I wondered if I would have a similar experience.

I didn’t! LOL

It’s been a long time since anyone’s recorded my voice in this way - around 15 years. In that time, my voice has changed quite a bit and the only recent (in the past 6 years) recordings that I’ve had were live with three-hundred or more people singing along with you, so it’s not the same. He played my voice back to me — and I immediately begged him to turn it off. I couldn’t even get through the first verse, I was so embarrassed by the sound of my voice. I looked at him, horrified and said, “Is that what I really sound like?” I realize this is repetitive to keep saying it, but the sound really was horrific to me. Of course he thought I was crazy, but no matter how many times I listen to my voice being played back, I cringe. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

The first recording was also a bad recording, because I just sang it straight instead of owning it. So we scrapped it and I gave him a few more recordings of the song. All through the process he seemed really thrilled with what I was giving him, and that makes me happy because my fear was that I would go in and do this song injustice - the point was to give him something he’d be happy with, regardless of what I thought of it. So, at the end of the day, even though I didn’t like the sound of my voice (still don’t) he was very happy. I got there around 10:00 and we wrapped up around 2:00. Overall, I have to say it was a lot of fun and, if asked, I’d do it again.

And before you ask, no I’m not sharing the recording with you because my voice is horrifying! LOL

A couple of months ago I was searching around the internet for some ideas on a creative Christmas Eve service. What I didn’t want was the standard fare: Stale Christmas Carols with the usual candlelight, the same passages of scripture that are read every year and, after an uneventful hour, everyone goes home to something more interesting. What I wanted was something more creative that still had the presence of God at the center. Honestly, if I was asked to attend the same old Christmas Eve service that I’ve been to before, I would make an excuse so I wouldn’t have to attend. With this in mind, my art-degree pastor and I set out to come up with something interesting for our church.

When starting out with a newer church, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when providing these sorts of extra services. First, you will almost always have (dramatically) less attendance on anything that is NOT a Sunday morning service. Don’t panic. This is quite normal for a newer church. You should never, ever take this to mean the following:

1. You screwed up and this is God’s way of telling you.
2. You suck and no one likes your church.
3. Your church will fail in the next year because you can’t keep a reasonable headcount.
4. All of the above.

There are a lot of reasons for the dramatic drop in attendance of what I consider to be “extra-curricular” services. Most of the time it’s simply chalked up to having other commitments and conflicts. This isn’t always the case, either.

In newer churches, there are a lot of other things happening. A couple of months ago I mentioned the foundation that is laid in a new church. The foundational period is absolutely critical. Not only is there a spiritual foundation being laid, but a communal one as well. Depressingly enough, it takes a while to develop a strong bond of community, as well as getting people interested and excited in what’s happening in the church. Often times people like hearing that their organization/church is active, but they are reluctant to have their lives inconvenienced by attending any of it. It takes a while to develop.

This is hard for pastors because they want so much to bring people together through fun events - it’s just how God made them. Pastors have a million things they want to do in the community and among the body, and it can be discouraging when so much time and effort is put into something for a small handful of people who show up.

If you are currently in this situation, don’t give up. It’s all just a part of the process of church planting and building. Remember to take joy in the small victories - the ones we see through God’s eyes. Okay, so you didn’t hit 100 church members this year like you aspired to. I’m sure God has done other things with the 30 strong you now have. Okay, maybe you can’t quit your job and become a full time pastor because your church isn’t great at tithing. Ask God to show you where His victories have been this past year.

So, while searching for ideas on a Christmas Eve service, I came across a blog called “Creative Leading.” Coincidentally enough, it’s written by some dude who is from Seattle, loves coffee, and is a worship leader out in the middle of nowhere in Illinois.

Ok, I really don’t know if he’s living in the middle of nowhere, but it’s Illinois so I have no real reason to believe otherwise. Either way, what are the odds that I’ve found another person with these things in common as myself? I decided to plug his blog into my Google Reader.

One big difference between our situations is that it appears he is paid to be the worship director at a large church. I am not. How it usually works is God tells me I have to go to some dinky start up church and slave away day after day, training future leaders for little to no reward, and I go. If I don’t go then I end up absolutely miserable wherever I am currently at. By now I know God well enough to know that I do not argue. If He says “you will go to the martial arts church” then that’s what I do: I go. I do no not pass GO, I do not collect $200. And so, this was how I ended up at my current church.

I remember being a worship leader in a larger church. Those were the days, dudes. It was inspirational. The groundwork was laid and people showed up for the extra services with bells on. Nightly services were the best ones to lead worship at because the people who show up for those are the ones who have come with an expectancy of God’s presence. It’s not like a Sunday morning service, which can be more of a mixed bag - more on this in a later worship volume.

Anyway, I read his blurb about his wonderfully awesome Christmas Eve service. Five hundred people showed up to what was probably a big production. The worship team (apparently he’s got enough people that he rotates worship team members six months on and six months off - my thoughts on this in a later worship volume) rehearsed for two and a half hours. That’s right, two and a half hours.

Yeah, I remember what that was like.

Sometimes we, as human beings, have a very goofy way of looking at Kingdom successes. There are very polished churches out there with huge productions and we look at that as if it’s what we should aspire to, often forgetting that God doesn’t always grow us into big churches. We’re obsessed with church growth — walk into your local Christian bookstore and take a look around. Entire sections are devoted to the “formula” it takes to grow a church. It’s tough being small. It can be depressing being small. Those in leadership feel ever so alone. We want to be bigger. We think success means lots of people and this isn’t always the case.

So in comparison to this worship dude at the bigger church: Do I think what God has me doing is any less relevant? No, not at all. I’m in the trenches with the best of ‘em, raising up the spiritual leaders of tomorrow. It isn’t easy raising up leaders, but I’ll tell you something — at the end of my life when I am called to account, I don’t want to be the one who refused to raise up the leaders God had given me to train. I’ve trained many people now, and everyone is a new ball of issues to tackle. Worship practices usually comprise of having to teach the basics of leading worship — and feeling a tremendous win when your guitarist turns to you and says, “I actually worshiped during that.” You can’t help but get all excited because people are actually starting to GET IT.

Remember, take joy in the little victories.

And now, without further ado, I wish to recap my first Christmas Eve leading worship at my current church. Please make sure you are not drinking anything, as you will probably shoot your drink out of your nose. I’ve already told a couple of my friends this story, so if you’ve already heard it, you can skip it. Unless you’re one of those who enjoys to revel in my misfortune, then by all means, continue.

I got sick on Christmas Eve day. That sucked because I really needed the entire day to get ready for the service. After I managed to throw up a couple of times (you’re welcome for the visual), I was feeling slightly better and was able to do a last minute scramble.

I had asked my guitarist and his wife (who was the previous worship leader) to play an instrumental duet of “O Holy Night” during communion. She plays a recorder, and I liked the idea of juxtaposing the raspy recorder with the picking of an electric guitar. I had given them a month to rehearse.

I had asked them to show up at 5:30 (the service started at 7:00) so we could run through the songs. When I get there, they were already there, practicing. It was a bit spotty, but I was very encouraging. I just hoped it would be “okay” and not “horrible.”

They also had their two year old son with them. Since 12:00 they had been out at the local Catholic church, because they also contribute to the music efforts there, and had been a part of their afternoon Christmas Eve service. So it’s now about 5:30 and they hadn’t been home yet, or eaten. This includes their two-year old.

Those of you with children can already see the train wreck this is heading for. I don’t have kids, but my spidey senses are tingling. Still, I rely on people to manage their children and I figure it will be fine.

After I let those two practice their duet for 45 minutes (wtf) I finally interrupt, apologize, and say I will need to end their rehearsal in 3 minutes. They are OK with that. My guitarist and I rip through the songs. The last two songs require fast chord changes, so I inform him that I will play those alone. If he would like to sing with me during the songs, it was optional - he had set up a mic for himself on his own volition.

Then his wife starts to play a hand drum. I tell her she’s more than welcome to stay and play it during the service if she wants, and she happily says she would love to.

I rush my pastor into the back of the building and we pray.

The service starts. The two-year old is hungry and tired and wants someone to play with him. As soon as the first prayer ends and I start the song, the kid JUMPS UP OUT OF HIS CHAIR, RUNS UP TO THE FRONT OF THE ROOM WHERE WE’RE PLAYING, THROWS HIMSELF ON THE GROUND AND STARTS SCREAMING.

So you hear: “Come, now is the time to worsh — WAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

I’m sick, exhausted, we have another church in the building, and a two year old is screaming on the floor in front of me.

The song is completed and I switch gears into “The Heart of Worship” ala whining, crying and occasional screaming. Funnily enough, the Spirit of God showed up for this, so I was most grateful.

After the first two worship songs, we go to communion. This is when the instrumental duet of “O Holy Night” is supposed to take place. The two parents are looking at me, pleadingly.

Ok. I stand up from the keyboard, feeling all eyes on me. I walk around to the front and offer my hand to the kid. Immediately he stops, stands up and takes my hand. He was like the perfect little gentleman. I take him over to the Sunday School room, which happens to be the first room off of the main room. I hand him Mr. Potato Head. He takes it, plops down on the floor happily, and starts to play. I sit down with him. He hands me arms, legs, two choices of feet, a nose…

Then I hear a bit of the instrumental duet happening outside.

I have no idea what happened out there with the duet because I turned my back on this 2-year old for one second. While my back was turned, he had found some noisy toy that started playing some crazy loud song, and I had to lay on top of it in order to muffle the noise. This is no exaggeration.

As soon as the communion is over, I have to run back outside to the service. I open the door, tell the boy that his mom is coming into the room and I motion her to get her butt in the room. She nods back at me in what I thought was understanding. Apparently not because she went into the room, brings her kid out, and sits him back down at the front of the room, expecting that for some reason he will suddenly decide to be quiet.

He isn’t.

I start to lead “Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.” Again, the kid runs to the front of the room, flings himself down on the floor and starts screaming. After that carol, my guitarist gives me a sympathetic look. I nod back and excuse him from the rest of the service. He takes his wife and screaming kid out of there and I did the rest of the service on my own.

I was fine with that.

Tom and I stayed late to help clean up the church with my pastor, then I went home, made Tom a grilled cheese sandwich and some soup, did the dishes, and then passed out on the couch while he watched Food Network.

This service goes in my Hall of Fame as one of the Top 10 Funkiest Church Services ever.

Okay, so we’ve been praying about and discerning what it is that God is doing in our particular body (the church). Out of that, we’ve developed our “Core Songs” that are somewhere between 30 - 40 song titles for our worship sets.

So now what?

Building your weekly church set can feel overwhelming. If you’re having to do it every single week, it can also feel very repetitive and tedious and start to slip into boredom. The most important thing to remember any time you build a worship set is that it’s not your worship set. It’s God’s worship set.

Similarly to praying about the overall direction of the church, it is essential to pray about the particular service. Every week, God has a message. I like to think of it as a theme. If you charge into a service, guns blazing, without asking God what he wants to do, don’t be surprised if you end up missing it. Of course there’s grace and God always has a way of working things out, and he never lets us down. With that said, you can always just grab out whatever songs you like and put them into whatever order you think is best because God will always show up when we praise.

On the other hand, it would be so much more powerful if we were aligned with what He was doing.

I can’t remember if I said this before, but even if I did, it’s worth repeating: Prophecy plays a big part in leading worship.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” You’re saying. “I’m not one of those prophetic types.”

Prophecy is a big word. It’s loaded with tons of preconceived notions of being the almighty voice of the Almighty God, normally accompanied by rolling thunder or cherubim singing in blissful harmonies while someone, usually someone exponentially holier than you, loudly and profoundly gives you a piece of God’s mind.

No.

Prophecy is practical. Prophecy is for real people. Prophecy is for every Christian.

That means you, too.

I realize that you think I’m detracting from the main point of the series, which is to talk about church worship. This is going to come up time and time again in the series, so I’m not going to let it go. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.

Let’s forget about what we think prophecy is and lay hold of the reassuring truth: It’s just God talking you. You’re reading your Bible and a couple of key verses pop out at you. That’s God talking to you. You’re praying and suddenly you start praying in a certain direction because it’s just suddenly in your head. That’s God talking to you. You’re leading worship and in the middle of a song you just feel the need to shout out a prayer. Again, that’s God talking to you.

Oh sure, there’s that whole first person prophetic “Thus sayeth the Lord” business, but let’s face it: You don’t really like that kind of a thing anyway. The common, day-to-day hearing from the Lord (prophecy) can be just as effective as Mr. Thus-Sayeth-the-Lord — the same Spirit of God that motivated you to play “Here I Am To Worship” this coming Sunday is the same Spirit who was speaking through the Thus-Sayeth-the-Lord dude.

I don’t know if we have time to talk about why there’s a difference in the way God talks. That could take another series in itself to talk about so I won’t. What I will say is this: The grass is always greener on the other side. Maybe you’re envying the person who can deliver a first-person prophecy every Sunday morning while all you get is “well, I saw this picture of a big box of crayons…” or maybe you don’t even get something that concrete. God talks to everyone in different ways and — see, I’m already opening a whole can of worms by saying this — for all intensive purposes of the worship series, I will say that the way God talks to you is based entirely on Him and not on you.

If someone said that to me I could fire back with a bunch of reasons why that can be incorrect, but for the sake of staying on the worship topic, let’s leave it at that and move along.

The point of this sidebar on prophecy is to say that however God is talking to you, don’t shun it. You’ve gotta go with it, people. Embrace it! By doing this, you will allow God to speak to you more strongly, more frequently and, dare I say, in other ways as well. You need to hone that in order to hear what He is saying in regards to a theme for your Sunday service.

You will also need it while you are leading your worship service, but that’s for another volume.

Moving along. Once you have your theme, I would give you the following rules of thumb to keep in mind while you choose your songs:

#1. You don’t have to do the fast songs first and the slow songs last. Mix it up and be creative. For example, this past Sunday, I did the following songs:

Desire - Track 2 on the link. Not a fast song, nor is it a slow song. It has movement while being very worshipful.

God of Wonders - Track 9 on the link. Normally done as a slow, worshipful song, but we kept it moving at about the same tempo as Desire.

Come and Fill Me Up - Track 9 on the link. This marks about the middle of the worship service so we kicked it into high gear and did it at a pretty exuberant pace.

This Is Love - Track 20 on the link. After our high geared song, we break for communion. Taking advantage of the brief intermission and communion, we quickly switched gears and went into a very worshipful song. Yes, I’ve been criticized for ramping up the worship set in some fast, rocking worship and then turning a 180 on everyone. This can work but you have to make sure to do it successfully. “This Is Love” is appropriate lyrically for the communion, and also gives us a layer of depth to our worship set as we have just thrown in something very intimate and worshipful. At the end of your worship set, everyone needs that grand finale - that final “oomph,” if you will, to the end of the set where they can just let out how they feel. Throwing this worshipful song will give an added dimension to the final song:

Forever - Track 2 on the link (scroll way down). We had ramped up the worship early on and half way through and then cut everyone off. But you don’t want to leave them hanging. The final song should be your appropriate finale, to give everyone that “oomph” that they need in order to express themselves. If you don’t give that at the end of your set, you’re leaving everyone hanging. It’s like the novel that didn’t give you a satisfactory ending. Don’t do that.

#2. Change your songs to keys that everyone can sing. Yeah, it’s great to sing “I Can Only Imagine” but when everyone tries to hit that high note, suddenly no one is worshiping anymore - the congregation is sitting around feeling embarrassed because they couldn’t hit that high note.

#3. Make sure the lyrics of your songs make sense as you flow from song to song. If you change themes every single song, it’s W.W.: Worship Whiplash. Don’t do that.

I’ll try to get another volume in the next couple of weeks so we can continue some of the things I talked about in volume 1 but wasn’t able to come back to. Post any comments or questions below and I will be happy to discuss.

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.

I really don’t know what to say to myself about this. Am I angry? Am I worried? Am I just tired and wary because of all the ways I’ve been crapped on and abused?

That last part is actually a quote from my pastor when we met last night over an explosion of chocolate - when we first met a year ago, I appeared to be someone who had been used and abused by other churches. Some of that’s true and some of it’s not. The church, overall, is a beautiful and wonderful thing. I truly believe that and it angers me when I hear people say otherwise. The real difficulty is some of the individuals who unknowingly crap all over you.

For the most part, these individuals mean well and in many cases they don’t realize they are even doing it. They just want to help in their own way and don’t see that what they say or do is tearing you down. Some of them do realize it, and they’re doing it to make them feel better about themselves. As it goes with basic fundamentals of humanity, people are often left thinking about themselves and their own feelings and everyone else be damned. This is why some of us get cussed out in the back right before we’re stepping out on stage to lead a worship set on a beautiful Sunday morning — then half the congregation wants to know why the worship felt “weird” that morning. Too bad you can’t give them an honest answer.

Looking back over the last twenty years of my life, I can’t help but wonder if maybe I was doing it wrong. I wasn’t the one who wanted to lead the big Sunday morning worship services — I let the worship leaders with “groupies” handle those. And when we’d have meetings, these young, noobie worship leaders would look at me like I was crazy because I wanted the Sunday night services.

Tell you what. Have your flashy Sunday morning services with your swanky sets and your latest and greatest songs that all the kids want to hear. Give me the Sunday evening and weeknight services. Guess why? Because the majority of people who show up to the Sunday night and weeknight services are there for one reason and one reason alone: to experience God. Sunday mornings are more of a mixed bag, plus you get the people who haven’t spent any time with God during the week, and completely expect you to jump start them and give them their dose of weekly spirituality. From a spiritual standpoint, it’s harder to do, like pulling a heavy sack up a mountain. No thanks. Give me the less glamorous sessions instead.

Let me say this now: I will never be the “favorite worship leader” in the church. And if I ever get to that point where I am, I will turn this farking car right around. The reason for that is simple: I do not lead worship for anyone’s enjoyment. What comes out of a worship set is a product of what the Spirit of God is doing at that moment and if you don’t like it, tough. You can try to lead your own worship set and manufacture sentiments on your own — plenty of people do it, preying upon people’s emotions. That’s not my gig. In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than cruising through a worship set at mach 10, then suddenly realizing God made a left turn about two verses and a chorus ago. You can keep going if you want, but the rest of the worship service won’t be as good. My suggestion is that you suck it up, go back, and make the left turn.

A few years ago I ended up leading worship in a church that, for some odd reason, started worrying too much about the latest and greatest worship sets. They really wanted younger sounding sets that really rocked.

I have no problem with that. Really. Except at that one point, when everyone became too worried about writing their own songs and being generally too awesome for words.

The guy who took over worship started having meetings with me about this, because basically I’m me: The more adamant you get about asking everyone to act retardedly, the more adamant I’m going to become about not doing it. And you’ll be mad. But I’ll keep doing it. With a smile. The worship dude kept meeting with me and he would say how he wished I would do younger, more thrashing type sets because “that’s what the kids want!” but then he’d turn right around in the same breath and say he can’t figure out how I can get corporate worship to happen the way I do. “Everyone is really worshiping God - how do you do that?”

I’m not retarded?

Here’s a hint: It’s not manufactured crap. I’m not here to play on people’s emotions. There are plenty of churches who will do that and I don’t go to them.

Then I ended up at another start-up church, where I was the sole worship leader of every single service and home group for a couple of years. I won’t lie, it’s a lonely place to be. It’s also draining and inconvenient, because your whole existence as a church leader is about being inconvenienced and crapped on because everyone has an opinion and those who don’t need to suck up all of your time because they want you to mentor them. It’s tiring. So I got married, moved to the middle of nowhere, and stopped going to church for about a year and a half.

After so many years of going through this, I’m tired and stressed and angry because I’m tired of being the black sheep. But I hate bad worship, and it bothers me that I’m just sitting in the back when I know I can do something to fix things. Every church service makes me more and more angry because I’m watching noobs make stupid noob decisions. It’s not their fault — a lot of us get thrown into worship because we’re often the only one who can play an instrument or sing. Sometimes we can’t even do one of those well, and yet we’re handed a microphone and expected to lead worship. We learn through trial and error, mostly error, and for some of us it’s harder to figure out than most. I’ve had 20 years of trial and error, so last night, my pastor finally came out and told me how everything was going and basically begged for help. I felt bad, so I offered to help.

I don’t know how I feel about it. I can’t promise to know everything there is to know, even with all of my experience. I can’t promise to be able to fix everything, because worship is such a strange thing. A person can know all there is to know about it, but then miss what God is doing. This spells disaster for a worship set. Everyone has a time or two when they’re just having an “off night,” so to speak. The same is with worship. I could jump into this and it could be a disaster.

I think I’m just tired of being the one swimming upstream.