Leadership Equals Servanthood

One of the most profound, important things I have ever learned is that you cannot effectively lead if you don't serve first.

The reasoning behind this comes from the saying, "Lead by example." People don't want to follow someone who hasn't gone there before. They are more apt to trust and listen to someone who has been there, experienced the situation, understands what they are going through, and has the knowledge and wisdom to handle the situation.

Jesus knew this concept perfectly. He was the picture of servant and leader. By the end of his time on earth, he had many followers. And yet he was always the first to comfort people, the first to lay hands on people. He'd wash his disciples' feet, he wouldn't pick and choose between needy people, etc, etc. No matter how famous he got, He never stopped serving those he led.

The problem today is that when people are put in a leadership position, they let it get to their heads. They may have a lot of skill & experience, they may be good at bossing people around, but there's a lot more to being a leader than that. An effective leader has followers who trust and respect him or her. And you build that trust and respect by serving. Being the leader doesn't make you better than everyone else, just in charge.

My challenge for you today is this: Swallow your pride. Do some work. Set an example. If you want people to follow you wherever you go, learn to serve them first. You'll find that they'll follow you without you having to say a word.

Effective worship leading starts at home

A couple of posts ago, I made a smart remark about how if you want to go crazy in worship, try worshiping at home.

This post is for those of you who didn't get it.

I think it's common knowledge that many Christians are merely Sunday Christians. On Sunday mornings, they're all about Jesus. Dusting off the Bible, putting on the Sunday best, driving to church with the family, singing the songs, taking sermon notes, shaking the hands, etc, etc. Then it's Monday, and they're flicking off bad drivers on the morning commute, arguing with their spouses, ignoring their children, making fun of other kids in school, or worse. Maybe they don't necessary sin but they sure aren't acting like a saint.

The assumption is that these Sunday Christians don't apply to the church-goers who are heavily involved at church. Whether they're a Sunday school teacher, an usher, or a worship team member, we automatically believe that these people are "Super Christians" at home, at work, and/or at school.

As a worship leader, I made the mistake of believing that worship team members take their gifts home with them. I love playing guitar, piano, and singing and every chance I get, I play. Sometimes I'm practicing specific songs I want to introduce to the team, sometimes I just want to jam, other times I just want to worship.

Unfortunately, Active church participation does not equate to an active spiritual & genuine lifestyle outside of the church (Heck, it doesn't even equate to an active spiritual & genuine lifestyle inside church, but I'm definitely not broaching that subject). Active church goers are even more susceptible to neglecting their personal devotions and times of worship. They get this mindset that because they're so awesome on Sunday mornings (and Wednesday nights and Friday nights), they're good for the week.

How incredibly wrong that is. Leadership equals servanthood (stay tuned for a post on this). Meaning, the people that serve the church in some form are leaders. They should be spending more time with God on their own than everyone else, not less.

This is doubly important for worship team members. Practicing their gift and worshiping on their own is essential in being effective on the stage. Jeff Deyo, a highly successful worship leader on his own and with a band, speaks to this in a podcast. He emphasizes that a worship leader (which means every single band member on the stage) cannot be authentic if they don't spend time with God alone.

I totally understand that people are busy. Trust me, I'm as busy as any of you. And no one's demanding you spend a couple of hours a day in worship and prayer. Try 15 minutes a day to start. If you don't have 15 minutes to spare, you're lying and it's pathetic. See where even just a few minutes a day can take your walk with God. Soon you'll be desperate to make more room in your schedule for Him.

And this will start to be evident in your leading on the stage as well. Where you may have botched up singing a song, or couldn't think of anything to pray, or fumbled during a free worship, suddenly all of that disappears and you start having smooth worship sets with people getting touched and set free.

And it all starts with 15 minutes a day. Get a worship CD (or iPod, or guitar, or piano), your Bible, and a quiet room and give it a try!

There are 3 types of people in the world...Those that can count and those who can't

When it comes to worship, Christians fall into one (or more) of four categories:
1) The only good worship songs are anything written before 1995. New music is the devil and I refuse to sing along.

2) The only good worship songs are songs that came out in this past decade. Old songs and hymns are lame.

3) It doesn't matter if it's newer songs or old school, I am God's gift to mankind with my operatic soprano voice who sings a million times louder than everyone else.

4) I can appreciate the new and the old, (whether I like one more over the other or not) people can be moved by any genuine worship song.

Let's face it, more often than not, the first three are wayyy more common than the fourth. Most people will claim they fall in the fourth category, but if they were honest, would they really? Truthfully, they want to, but they never will.

For me, more often than not, I find myself picking number 2. I'm in my twenties, I grew up in the nineties and I prefer more contemporary music over traditional. I'm not going to lie. When the adult worship team takes the stage and plays "Draw Me Close to You" and "As the Deer," I inwardly grown. And it used to be bad. Really bad. I would relentlessly make fun of old school music. I couldn't stand it.

But you know what I realized? Some of that music is good! The lyrics are amazing! The music just needs a little touch up. And I'm not the only one who realized that. Jesus Culture figured it out too. They play a lot of stuff from the '90s and it sounds amazing because they tweaked a few things here or there. And what it did was give me a new appreciation for the older stuff. God will move and touch lives no matter what style of music is playing. He doesn't care. So neither should we.

I'm sick of the older generation refusing to learn new stuff and getting offended when the youth band plays something they never heard before that has a faster tempo than they would like. I'm sick of teenagers not worshiping because the music sounds cheesy.

Piece of advice: GET OVER IT. The old people will always love the old music and the young people will always like the new music. 40 years from now I will be wishing for the old music and hating the new, no doubt. And the teens will think music from my day is lame. It'll never change.

So young and old alike, why don't you unfold your arms, stand up, wipe the scowl off your face, and worship God? Thanks.

Leading pragmatically

I love worshiping through music. It is my escape. Everything can fall apart around me, but when I'm in front of a piano, or playing the guitar, or just singing a "Jesus song," everything's ok.

And I'll get into it. Man, do I ever.

But when you're leading worship in front of people, you can't just "get into it." There needs to be a balance of two things: spirituality and practicality.

The number one goal in worship is to bring glory to God. Hands down. No question. I will never, ever contradict that with any post in this blog. But when you're leading others in worship, you need to keep an eye on a few other things. You can't just lose yourself completely in the worship.

I've had bandmates (or seen bands) that do a great job singing/playing but won't keep an eye on the clock to make sure they're not going into the pastor's preaching time. Or to make sure the rest of the band is following them. Or to make sure they didn't lose the crowd. And so on. They nailed the worship part but bombed the practical part. My favorite is the 10 minute long free worship section (which I will undoubtedly address in a future post).

The funny thing about worship is that it isn't about you. Never was, never will be. You put God first. Then you. But as a worship leader, there are not one, not two, but three groups you put first. God, then the congregation, then the band, then you.

More on this later.

P.S. If you're a worship leader and you want to continue to lose yourself in worship, try worshiping at home.

New blog!

Hey everyone! I decided to jump start this new blog with low expectations but big plans! My primary goal with this is to write down any and all thoughts about worship, the worship experience, worship leading, worship following, etc.

As I post, please comment! I hope to learn as much as I teach.

My secondary goal is to be consistent with this. I am not very consistent with my other blog (check it out here), but I believe that was primarily because I didn't have much to say! We'll see if I have more to say here.

Ok, in the words of will.i.am & co., "Let's get it started!"

The toils of a worship leader

Ugh. It's late. My clock says 11:51pm Monday night. Two years ago, while in college, I would probably be just leaving my house to go out somewhere. Now, all I can think about is my bed.

Been spending some time figuring out the playlist for tomorrow night. Apostle John Shiver has been hosting some meetings at LJGC the last couple of days. They've been amazing (so I hear, I have't made one yet). I'll be leading worship for tomorrow night's meeting at 7pm.

I know God is going to move and I want the worship to reflect His plans for tomorrow night. But I also want songs I know really well. I don't want any surprises!

Consequently, I think I found a direction I could take this blog. The title has been "The Pointless Meanderings of a Random Guy." How about a blog focusing on worship, and more specifically, worship music? I may leave this blog open and begin a new one...I like it. Let's do it.

I'll try and pour some insight into readers on what I'm learning about worship and worship leading and I want to put more focus on pragmatic worship leading than I think most people do. In fact, that'll be my first blog post!

U.S. Immigration Policy

What a polarizing title for this blog post. I would rather not start an argument and just have a rational blurb on how I feel about recent events, but unfortunately, there'll always be someone who wants to pick a fight.

There was an article posted to Yahoo! News today about a U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot and killed a Mexican teenager in El Paso, TX. Long story short, the Mexicans (the kid's family & government) are upset because the agent killed him, but the Border Patrol states that the teen and others were attacking the agents with rocks while illegally in the U.S.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100609/ap_on_re_us/us_border_patrol_shooting

A couple of points:

1) The Border Patrol agent may have overreacted by discharging his firearm.

2) If a bunch of teenage boys were pelting you with rocks and you had a gun, would you not draw it to force them to stop? And if they wouldn't stop and were ignoring your demands, what's the next step? Run away? What if these kids were illegally in the U.S. (which they were)? As law enforcement, you don't run away. You have a job to do.

3) The simple fact is the kid (and others) were illegally in the United States. The kid's family is calling for "justice" to be served against the agent who shot him. However, the agent was doing his duty. Protecting the borders, his fellow agents, and himself.

4) Hindsight is 20/20. Sure, when we look at it now, the Border Patrol agent could done a couple of things differently. But going back to point #2, when you have a bunch of teenagers whipping rocks at your head, you don't really have the capacity to think through all your options, especially when you have a gun on your belt.

Conclusion: The agent did not do anything wrong. He was doing his job. The bottom line is the kid shouldn't have been illegally crossing the border and assaulting a federal officer.

Christian Movies = Great

Tonight nowGen will be screening "To Save a Life." No, not the hit song by the Fray as heard on Grey's Anatomy. A Christian movie, a genre that is increasingly improving in their quality and depth.

I remember being a kid at my old church, not mentioning any names (Native American wannbes). They once played a couple of end times movies that were filmed in the seventies. Now, I don't know if you ever seen any of these, but they had only one goal: to scare little kids. I'm freaked out right now just thinking about them.

And the sad thing is that these movies were incredibly cheesy and tasteless (contradiction, I know).

But the Christian film industry has made a comeback (Fireproof anyone?). A little bit better acting (not much), a little bit better filming, and little bit better storylines. So we'll see how this one stands up. Review to follow.

And just to plug tonight's movie - hosted by nowGen, 7pm, at LoveJoy Gospel Church, 5423 Genesee St, Lancaster, NY 14086. Open to all teenagers, 12 - 18 years old.

The movie is about a teenager who stands up for what he believes in, at the risk of losing his popularity at school. Very original.

Spoiler Alert: Kirk Cameron is not in this movie. Boo.

The truth behind my blog

I'll be the first to admit it and I think so many of you other bloggers need to as well (see below).