My Thoughts on Special Music

This is my response to a post on Raising up Worship Leaders about Special Music.

For me, special music should be done when the point of the song would be better made if the people aren't singing. Also, often times the songs we choose for Special Music are very specific in their message and only fit well with the topic/scripture we're using them with, and won't work as well in general worship.

As to Tim's comment, I do agree that post-modern's will appreciate special music less and less unless we adapt special music. I don't know all of how special music should morph in the future, one way we're changing special music is to create a video that goes along with the special music to enhance the message of the song. We're careful with this too though because video, as great as it is, has a tendency to narrow the imagination that can come with a song to something very specific. And while we're using a specific song with a specific theme, we want the application of the song to be as wide as possible.

Gaining Some Perspective

Yesterday I had the privilege of sharing a few minutes with a friend of mine. It's a friend I don't get to see very often, and I also don't get to communicate with him very often because he's a missionary to Indonesia. He was telling a story about a fund-raiser his church did over there, and while culturally acceptable there, there are certain activist groups here that would consider their activities murder.

However, another thing that I heard and observed is what's really sticking with me. Another one of his friends was at the table and gave him 60 worship albums, and an iTunes gift card to buy some more. He did this after looking in my friend's ipod and saw all of the old worship music he had on it.

In America, we get so hung up on the petty. I'm not talking about my church right now, I'm talking about the American church. There are churches in the world that are thrilled to sing songs based on their content, not on their style.

How many articles have been written over the years about blending worship or about how to lead your church through a music transition? How much time have church leaders wasted trying to keep the people in their church happy with the music? If we get just get people to see the reality that we are so blessed to have the freedom we do to worship, if we could just get people to see that we're so fortunate to get to go to Christian bookstores and buy the music they like, that we're so lucky to be here, many of our church wars would be done with.

Of course, the reality is that this is not the case, and very few churches are able to have an attitude like this. That's why we have church leadership. If people just did what we wanted them to with nothing more than us asking them, we'd be unnecessary.

I'll talk more about this in future posts, but for now, the most import thing to know, (in my opinion) is that the arts in the church must be relevant. It's not an option. For churches that want to reach people (which by the way is the most foundational purpose for the church, the first command given by Jesus to to the church), we must always be learning from culture, we must always be learning from society and redeeming culture for God's Kingdom. A lot of people talk about this as optional, I don't. I think it's a must.

Logo

So, tonight I started working on a logo for the worship arts dept. It's going to be a while before it's actually looking how I want it to, but I wanted an actual logo. I wanted a graphic that people would be able to look at and identify as the worship arts department, without any words. I think I'm getting there, I'm just struggling to make it look like I want it to, and not look old school. Since I'm no pro when it comes to graphic design this is actually quite a task for me.

Those are my thoughts on that.

Worship Arts Ministry - Scheduling

I'm using a service called planningcenteronline.com and it's actually a really nice service. You can send out requests to people to serve on a given weekend, and they can confirm or decline your request which is nice, and can be a very efficient way to communicate with people and do scheduling.

However, it is in that technology world that many have not ventured into, or are not completely immersed in yet. Some people don't check their email more than once a week, some don't have email, some have dial-up, some don't even have a computer.

I've never been fortunate enough to have a tool like this in the past, so I'm faced with a new, but good problem. I'm not sure how to confirm in a way that I can know for sure out in the future that people will be there. With paper schedules, possibly people were less likely to back out because it required a phone call, but with email, it seems like people are more likely to back out at the last minute. I know this will fall in line with expecations, when I start asking things of people, but not it's kind of a catch-22. I have a tool to help me schedule, but it's kind of making it more difficult in other ways.

Worship Arts Ministry - Service Evaluation

This weekend was different. We have some newer musicians that I'm putting with some of the other more experienced musicians. So, the sound was good, but maybe not as good as other weekends. One of the things that I've found is that it's a bad idea to have a band full of moderately skilled musians, it's usually a lot more work and the potential for something to go wrong, or a cue to be missed are much greater. So, what I try to do is put Moderates with advanced when possible. The Advanced ones hold the group together and provide support and stability to the group, and the moderates often want to strive to be better because they're playing with more skilled musicians.

I don't know what it was about this weekend, but it didn't have the same feel as other weekends. It wasn't a bad thing, but it also wansn't a great thing. It felt very disjointed on stage. I'm sure a part of it was that we don't all know each other that well, and that will change over time. We didn't have as much time to rehearse as we needed and there were technichal problems that didn't help.

I think the service was fine, but it too had a weird vibe to it. I know that God is wanting to do things in and through our church and I have a feeling that there is stronger than normal battle going on right now, and that is playing into this feeling.

I was trying to talk more in the service this weekend, I really struggle with this. I would like to have more discussion on this topic with other worship leaders. Some worship leaders talk too much, others talk too little. I was definately erring on the side of too little, so now I'll have to be careful not to jump too far in the other direction. I need to talk, as do all worship leaders to help be a "tour guide" for the journey that we're wanting to take people on, but I don't want to be "that" tour guide that everyone gets annoyed with and wish would just shut up.

Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts about this weekend.

Worship Arts Ministry - Creative Process

I'm working on a new meeting layout for our creative team meetings. I have one that I adapted from a Creative Arts Pastor friend of mine that I used in my last church, but it's not going to work exactly like it is for my new church.

One of the changes I have to make is the difference that exists because of my new senior pastor. He is much more interested in being part of the planning process, is a planner and is a very creative person. It's awesome! I can't tell you how great it is to have a senior pastor who wants his sermons to be creative, and wants to the whole worship service to be creative. On top of that he's creative. I've run across some senior pastors who almost seem to lack creativity (which I know is untrue because all people are creative because we're created in our Creator's image) and rely fully on the worship pastor or others to come up with the creative ideas.

So some of the things I'm going to have to take into consideration in this new layout are allowing the senior pastor time to give us a synopsis of his sermon (which is a great thing), and to allow time towards the end of a current series to start planning for the next series. Ideally if we're planning ahead (one of the big points of having a creative team) then when we get towards the end of a current series, most of the time consuming portion of the brainstorming portion of the meetings will be done and we'll be able to take extra time to talk about the upcoming series. Doing this will allow us to be able to launch the new series strongly, creatively and all inclusively.

There have been several times I've been a part of series launch and because we didn't have enough time before hand, some of the best ideas for the series came after the series had already started, or was almost over.

As I work on this, I'll keep this blog updated with the process I'm coming up with.

Blanking on creativity

For some reason, I've been blanking on creativity this week. I'm sure it's a combination of things, like stress and being tired, long drives to and from work. Whatever it is, it's been both very frustrating and very challenging.

At my new church, we really want to be creative in our worship services. And I feel that pressure every week. I know senior pastors feel pressure every week to preach a high-quality, engaging sermon. I'm sure there are some who don't. I'm sure there are some worship arts pastors who don't feel pressure, but I and others I know do. There's a constant pressure to always be doing something creative, something new. Sometimes it feels like we're running out of ideas. It's kind of like Hollywood, they appear to have run out of ideas, they're really into remaking everything right now. They're remaking TV shows like knight rider and American Gladiators, they're making old TV shows into movies, and even recreating old movies.

Is it possible to run out of creative ideas? I wouldn't think so, but sometimes it sure feels like it. Sometimes it feels like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel of used up ideas.

How do we resolve this problem? Well, one of the ways I'm really starting to think about is networking. Sometimes just hearing one good idea will spark another good idea. But, I've been in plenty of brainstorming sessions where there was no good idea, and the creativity just didn't flow.

So, since no one actually reads this blog, this is really just for me, but I'm really starting to think about a way to create a worship leaders network, not exactly sure how to do it, but I have some ideas. Maybe we can help each other out.

Creativity

I'm really stuck. I have creative ideas, always thought I've had a few out there ideas that many people wouldn't come up with, yet I'm having a hard time coming up with some creative ideas for our new series at church.

It's leading me to an idea, I'd like to come up with a Worship Arts Creative Collaboration Site. I'm not sure what it will look like yet, or even how to do it and get the word out, but I think it would be a good idea.

Wouldn't it be great if you could post your sermon title/series title, scripture, theme, application and a paragraph about the sermon on a site, and then other people could come along and throw in their two cents worth of creativity. If you had graphics for the site, you could link to that or something, so people would have the ability to see your graphics if you've got any and give you some input that goes along with those ideas.

Just something I'm thinking about starting to work on.

Lessons from the Eagle

This last weekend in our worship services, I was trying make a connection in the beginning of the worship time to the point that our pastor would be making that day. He was talking about faith and trust. So I was trying to connect that in our worship time with some songs and scripture and a story. The story was about me. On my way to work, I drive by a river and in that river are posts (the ones sticking up out of the water to keep boats from running ashore), and on one of these posts is an eagle's nest. It's actually a bald eagle's nest. It's pretty cool. I've often wondered what it would be like to see what that eagle sees in a day. What would it be like to fly high above the river, see for miles, and then be able to swoop down with amazing accuracy and have the ability to catch a fish. What would it be like? I think it would be amazing. And I was trying to relate that to Isaiah 40:31, those who hope in the Lord, trust in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar with wings like eagles.

Not a bad idea right? In fact, it something that I am a big, even huge proponent of. I really believe that the whole service from beginning to end should be connected. However, in 2 out of the three services, I completely botched up what I was trying to say, I wasn't able to remember the words for the post sticking out of the water. It was a great moment. One I hope not to have to live through again.

It's not as though I wasn't prepared for what I was going to say, I had given quite a bit of thought to what I was going to say, and even did some research. But for some reason, it just would not come out right. And I know some of the reasons why.

A big reason why though, is actually ironic. A lot of times when I've spoken in the past, I've written out word for word almost everything that I was going to say. Then, I would basically try to memorize the speech. That's pretty much what I did this last weekend. I had written almost everything I had wanted to say, but I didn't want to present it as though I was reading it. I hadn't internalized the medium. The reason this is ironic is because, if I would have had a different perspective it would have helped me present it much more effectively.

The moral of the story, not only do we need to internalize the medium, but we to be so familiar and comfortable with the what it is we're trying to present that it's a part of us. When we're speaking out of something that's a part of who we are, it's much easier to present it in an engaging way.

Not super deep, I know, but still a thought.

Starting Over

A little over three months ago, I started a new job. When I started the job, I thought it would be great to journal along the way all the things that are going on, things that are working in terms of creating new systems and things that didn't work. I thought it would be great to be able to look back and see over time how things were progressing and see what I had learned along the way.

Good intentions.

So, I didn't do it right off the bat, but I'm going to try to look back over the last three months to see what I can remember of what did and didn't work.

When I first started there, the first couple of weeks were spent with the guy who was at the church before me. He was showing me the ropes of the new church and helping me get my feet on the ground. In many ways it was very helpful. There are things that probably would have taken me 2 -3 times longer to pick up or understand had I not had his help.

One thing I was surprised at myself about though was my lack of assertion. In many ways I like to view myself as an assertive person, but I, for some reason, just couldn't assert myself in this situation. I think a large part of it was due to the fact that I wanted to respect the guy I was replacing. I did respect him and didn't want to do or say anything that would offend. There were times, however, when I probably should have asserted myself a little more so I could have learned a little bit more from him before I was off on my own.

I do have to say though, that once I was on my own, I was quite relieved. As much as I respected my predecessor, we have very different work styles. It was only for two weeks, which made it okay. However, it did cause me to think about the future. If I were to ever be in the position to hire someone that would serve as an assistant or require working along with this person quite a bit, I would need to find a way make sure our work styles were fairly similar.

Those first two weeks were quite fun however, it was fun to work with someone else doing worship arts ministry stuff together. It would be nice to have someone to work with in the area from time to time. However our church, and most churches don't afford such an opportunity.

What did I learn during these first couple of weeks? One of the things I learned was that in a church where the pace is much faster than what I was used to, it really helps to have someone to guide you through getting your feet on the ground. If I had been dropped into that position without anyone to guide me along, I probably wouldn't have been able to get up and running nearly as quickly.

Another thing I learned is that I still have plenty of room for learning and growth in the area of Worship Arts Ministry. There are many things I still need to improve on. Having someone else working alongside me helped me to compare myself to his skills. Though we have different work styles and personalities, our jobs do require many of the same skills, and I was able to see areas where he was much stronger than I and I really need to improve in.

I'm sure there's more that I learned from that time, but that's a start.

Trying to catch my breath.

I was previously in a church where it seemed like every week the things I was doing were really pushing the envelope as far as what people were comfortable with. Now, I'm at a new church and it seems like the things I do that I think are going to be a little bit edgy for people are no where close to it. Maybe for a few it was, but for the most part that was not the case. This is really forcing me to do some thinking about the way I've been approaching Worship Arts Ministry in the church for a while now. I'm really having to look for ways and resources to think outside the box of what I was used to thinking.

It will be interesting in a few years to look back on this time as I started at this church and think about how "in-over-my-head" it felt to be here because of what I'd been used to up to this point of what church was, and where church needed to go. I'm at a church that is way down the road of where the church needs to be, in comparison to where the churches have been that I've been working at in the past.

It feels much like I'm running a marathon but instead of being able to set a pace that I can keep up with, the pace is at a sprint because when I got in the marathon I started with the pro's when I should have been at the back pushing the guy in the wheel chair.

It does cause me to think about church though. What is relevant? How do we know what's relevant to the people we are trying to reach? How do we see what's coming in culture and prepare our churches for it?

Let me know your thoughts.