Worship Leader Blog

Since I took my new job at the church a couple of weeks ago, I've been involved with running sound or media for three funerals, and as of today, yet another one is being scheduled. I don't recall a time in the life of our church when there were so many of them in such a short span of time, but in a way, it has been good preparation for me, because my own mother went home to the Lord yesterday morning. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's for several years, and spent the last year and a half in a dedicated Alzheimer's care facility, so her death was not unexpected--I and my family see it as a merciful blessing from God. Her suffering is done, and I suspect that to her, it seems that her life has just begun. (She wouldn't want to trade places now with any of us!)

A funeral or memorial service, according to Scripture, is a good place to be. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says,

It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of every man;
the living should take this to heart.

I never attend a funeral without thinking of this passage--it reminds me that there are often many who attend the funeral of a loved one or friend who don't know God, and who haven't given much thought to questions of eternity and life after death. A funeral often brings these issues to the front of one's mind, and it can be an opportunity to provide attenders with a chance to connect with God when their hearts are tender and open.

The non-Christian might be puzzled at the notion of worship during a funeral--why on earth would someone rejoice and praise God when something so awful has happened to someone they love? But as Paul says to the Thessalonian church,

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. (1 Thessalonians 4:13)

This is often one of the greatest distinctions between those who love God and worship him and those who don't--we believe there is hope, even in the face of the very thing that many non-Christians fear the most. When we worship God in that context, we demonstrate that hope and peace in a powerful way. Our worship at the time of remembrance of a loved one shows our confidence in a God who understands what it is to lose a loved one, even as he gave his own Son over to death, and our true hope that death is not the end of the story.

As we prepare to lay my mother's body to rest, it is my prayer that someone in that sanctuary will wonder why we are rejoicing and giving thanks to God, and that perhaps that wondering will spark a desire in them to know the God who gives us real hope, even when all seems lost.

A lot of Christians know they should be reading the Bible, but don't, for a variety of reasons--it's boring, it's too long, I can't decide where to start, etc. A good daily Bible reading plan is a great way to get into the Bible-reading habit, and I decided to assemble a Google Notebook with links to a whole bunch of Bible-reading plans that you can find on the Web. Some are downloadable plans that you print and check off your readings each day; some are online plans where you actually log in and read the day's passage online, with online progress tracking; some are e-mail based, where you give your address, and you get an e-mail each day with the passage to read, or a link to the passage online.

Please check it out here, and start the new year off well!

It has been one of the great joys of my life to watch how God has used the experiences of my life to prepare me for serving Him in various ways over the years. When I was in college, studying radio, television and film, I was preparing for what I thought would be a career in documentary film production. God had a different plan. Instead, I spent the next five years after graduation working full-time in parachurch youth ministry--those were some of the most formative years of my life, in terms of my understanding of the faith, and I was able to get my feet wet in leadership, as well. The training I received during those years also served as the foundation for many years of Bible teaching in my church.

I left the ministry in 1981, and worked for a few years in the local school district, where some of my college training and skills were put to good use in media productions of many types. It was there that I was introduced to computing and programming, which led to a position at the University of Kansas Computer Center, where I worked as a user education specialist, consultant and technical writer. That position led to the job I held for fourteen years with a statewide not-for-profit educational networking consortium, where I served for three years as user services coordinator, and then for eleven years as executive director and CEO. That job afforded me many opportunities to learn both networking technology and leadership.

I left that job a year ago, and have spent the last year honing my skills as a writer and blogger, and learning more about Web design, content management systems, and related technologies. It has been a very good year, and my lovely wife has been incredibly supportive through that whole time.

On January 1, 2009, I will begin a new chapter in my life, as the Director of Media and Communications for my church, where I will continue to lead the contemporary worship arts ministry. I will also continue to manage the church internal network and Web presence as well, and now I will be leading the operations and production teams that produce and present the various forms of media that we use in worship and other church events.

I can see now, looking back, that virtually everything I have done up to this point--my work with radio, television and film production, my experience in vocational ministry, my work in computing and data networking, my experience in Web development, podcasting, blogging, and my years as a musician and worship leader--all of these things are coming together at the right time for this new position.

I don't know what the next few years will hold--it's been a long time since I worked in vocational ministry--but I'm looking forward to seeing what God will do, and I am humbled when I see how His hand has led me all this way, through so many different things.

Everything that happens to us contributes something to who we are and what we will become one day. This new chapter in the story of my life may lead to many other chapters, with new plot twists and turns that I can't even imagine right now. But how cool is it to see the hand of God in the events and experiences of one's life?

"...I believe in the Israelite."

Photo: katietegtmeyer

Whether your title is "pastor" or not, as a worship leader, you are, in effect, a pastor of sorts to the people who serve on your team. Although it is really important for us to get our teams ready to lead worship each week, an equally important (perhaps more important) part of our responsibility is to nurture our teams toward greater spiritual maturity, and to love them and care for them. There are obviously many different dimensions to this kind of pastoral care, but one very basic and very important element is prayer.

We all pray for our teams--sometimes we pray that they'll show up for rehearsal on time, or that they'll be able to play in time or sing on pitch. Sometimes we pray for the calamities and tragedies in their lives (as we should), but it's all too easy not to pray for them at all, especially if things seem to be going okay for them.

As I was reading in 2 Thessalonians this morning, I was struck by the way in which the apostle Paul prayed for the people he cared for in the church at Thessalonica:

With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

--2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, NIV

Four main characteristics of Paul's prayer are suggested to me by this passage:

1. We should pray often for our teams.

Paul said he prayed "constantly"--I confess that I'm still not entirely sure how that looks in practical life today, but I'm guessing that it looks something like this: a lifestyle that is generally God-focused, so that at any given point during the day, we're connecting with God, talking to him about what's going on, listening for his voice at every turn. The names and lives of the people we lead are on our minds and in our hearts every day, and our love for them leads us to ask God to bless them, help them, protect them, teach them, and help them grow. Our prayers might be overt and spoken, or it may be the unspoken longings of our hearts that the Holy Spirit hears.

2. We should pray for their character and growth.

Paul prayed that God would count the Thessalonians "worthy of his calling"--he was essentially asking that they would become the kinds of people God had called them to be. This is so important for those of us who serve in the worship arts ministry--our ministry depends so much on our authenticity. I need to be praying that my team members will be growing in their walk with Jesus.

3. We should pray for God's power to be present in their lives.

Paul prays that God would, by his power, "fulfill every purpose" of those he prayed for, along with "every act prompted by faith." This is essentially a prayer for a vital, growing relationship with God--Paul wants to see God active and working visibly in the lives of the people he's praying for. He wants them to be actively engaged with God in a life of faith. And so should we pray for our teams.

4. We should pray that Jesus is glorified in them.

This last aspect of Paul's prayer is really the whole point, in a sense, isn't it?--that "the name of our Lord Jesus would be glorified" in the lives of those we lead. This is the goal of our worship leading on Sundays, and it is the ultimate goal for all of our lives.

Let's pray for our teams and watch what God does in their lives.

I don't know about you, but Christmas always seems to sneak up on me around here. We're beginning to plan for our Christmas services, and it's always a bit of a challenge to come up with a service that has the right mix of contemporary and traditional Christmas music. Our church does three worship services every Sunday, one traditional and two contemporary, but when it comes to Christmas, we usually try to blend the services more than normal.

Part of the reason is that people have certain expectations concerning Christmas music--the traditional carols are, well, traditional. We try to update some of the arrangements for a more contemporary feel, but my guess is that at Christmas time, people who would normally prefer contemporary worship are a bit more tolerant of more traditional styling. But the fact is that most of the people who attend our church regularly attend one of the contemporary services, so we have to bear that in mind when we put our Christmas worship services together.

I've put a planning team together for this year's Christmas services that includes members of our traditional worship team and our contemporary worship team, and I'm hopeful that together we'll be able to come up with something great.

What's your church doing this year?