Archives For worship ministry

Why We Need to Continuously Teach on Worship

October 20, 2012 — Leave a comment

As a worship minister, I feel that God’s call on my life is to go just beyond being a practitioner of worship, but also a teacher of worship.

And here’s why.

John Maxwell once said this:

Unless the why behind the what is taught consistently, unless we preach a standard and not just a method, then clarity, precision and most importantly, the original why, becomes distorted in all the doing.

Obviously, this goes beyond just worship ministry. But it’s a reminder that we can’t just keep “doing” the worship without going back to the roots of understanding what worship is all about.

Recently, when I was studying at Arrows College, one of the things a lot of the students said was how surprised they were at how much they enjoyed the Worship module. This was because a lo of them had thought that worship was a specialist subject and was relevant for only those in music ministry. But when they realised how worship, when correctly understood, encompassed all of our Christian life, manifesting itself in different expressions of service, they were inspired and enlightened – to the extent that even the most non-musical students happily participated in doing something entirely musical – songwriting!

If worship is so all-encompassing, then I think we owe it to ourselves to study worship in the Bible, and beyond that, also to teach worship regularly and consistently so that as John Maxwell exhorts, we never lose focus of the “why” in all that we are doing.

In Church, Theology, Worship Leadership , ,
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The Worship Team as a Mentoring Family

September 20, 2012 — Leave a comment

It is often said that worship ministry is one of the most important ministries in the church. But that’s probably not true: in my view, all ministries are equally important.

Worship ministry does, however, have some distinctives: one of which is its visibility – which is why the congregation tends to elevate its importance. Another is this: unlike most ministries, it is a seedbed for tension and conflict.

Have you experienced this? I certainly have. I remember once, many years ago, I had just started out back-up singing. Back then, no one really taught you how to do anything and I think I got into the team just because I sang really loudly (and because they wanted some of the youth to start serving in the team). So I just went all out. I wasn’t concerned at all about blending with the other singers (I thought blending was a culinary term) and I even tried singing harmonies (when I clearly couldn’t). The more experienced singer next to me didn’t give a moment’s hesitation before launching out in correction. He looked me in the eye and said “Look, if you can’t sing harmony – DON’T”. That got me to shut up for a while…

Then I became a better singer. Now, I could do harmonies, except the other guy had been in the team for a long time and he always gets to sing the tenor part. So sometimes, I launch straight into the harmony at the beginning of the song before he gets a chance to work the harmony in. So much for team spirit… And I was really despising the new singer who clearly didn’t know how to blend.

That was just the tip of the iceberg.

Through my many years of worship ministry, I’ve witnessed all sorts of emotional manipulation, bad attitudes, internal jostling, pride and criticism (the non-constructive type) – and I’m just talking about myself.

But of course, there are also the triumphs of musically “nailing a set”, the celebrating together, watching each other grow and achieving goals that make worship ministry thoroughly rewarding.

This sort of thing happens in every ministry, but moreso, I believe, in worship ministry. Because it’s so visible. So technical. And people are so passionate. And because it’s a team ministry right from the get-go.

Which is why I thought the following passage in 1 Chron 25:6-8 was really interesting in describing how David ordered his worship ministers and musicians:

All these men were under the supervision of their father for the music of the temple of the Lord, with cymbals, lyres and harps, for the ministry at the house of God.

Asaph, Jeduthun and Heman were under the supervision of the king. Along with their relatives—all of them trained and skilled in music for the Lord—they numbered 288. Young and old alike, teacher as well as student, cast lots for their duties.

There are a few important principles we can draw from this.

The passage says “all these men were under the supervision of their father”. This suggests that worship ministry is a family affair.

I remember a few years back when my old church started rostering into bands. It meant that for a season, the same musicians and singers would have to serve together; get a sense of each other’s styles, strengths and weaknesses and also get used to each other’s personalities. A lot of us grew really close. Because there were a few young-uns on the team, Ling and I used to have to give them transport to rehearsals. Instead of just going to rehearsal, we made a meal of it – literally. We made it a habit to eat together before Wednesday night rehearsals. We got to not only make music together, but we shared our hopes, dreams, struggles and disappointments. Because our lives became more intertwined, a by-product was that we flowed better as a team.

So it became quite easy for me to say to our singers, for example, that we needed a bit more work. So we hired Stephanie Truscott and she came to tutor our singers for a few weeks. Okay, so we didn’t turn into a gospel choir, but we certainly learned how to blend a lot better.

Now, nothing irks you more than your family members. This is where the proverb “iron sharpens iron” becomes the most real. But as a result, we grow in character.

Developing the “family” idea further, here’s the crux of the passage: father and son served together. And this suggests mentoring!

Over the years in worship ministry, I’ve been mentored by some excellent worship leaders. I don’t know where I got my style from (because they all led worship very different to me). Perhaps it was through all the years of listening to Ron Kenoly CDs and my wanting to be a big black guy – well at least I achieved the first half of my goal.

One of my first mentors used to feed me new cassettes (yes it was that long ago) and articles on worship. (We were meant to pass the articles onto others, but I just hoarded them). By doing that, he was resourcing me. He helped me to learn new songs but also appreciate the theological anchor of worship.

He also gave me a lot of constructive criticism and correction. This was important as I began to learn to lead worship because until then, all I had to go by was the way worship leaders led on the different cassette tapes that I had and watching worship leaders during church services. Under this mentor, I was given insight into the nitty-gritty’s and nuts-and-bolts of worship leading. What he was doing was honing my craft. And of course, you don’t develop a good attitude by reading a book, do my mentor would give me a gentle rebuke where necessary.

Another mentor I had (my next worship pastor) imparted in me a heart for intercessory worship and revival. She could pray and well up in tears. She gave me fresh insight into the link between worship, intercession and the transformation of the nations. I still carry this burden to this day.

But she also released me into my potential, believing that I could be more than I imagined. She began pushing me out of my comfort zone and also began connecting me with others of the same heart and mind, including people who had beaten the trail before me. I still work with some of those people today.

And then I came across a psalmist, who inspired me to dream even bigger. He shared stories of massive gatherings in Singapore where churches would gather together in worship, regardless of background or denomination. And I started to wonder not when, but how soon, it could all happen in Perth.

In worship ministry, spiritual fathers and spiritual sons, mentors and disciples, serve together side by side to advance the kingdom of God.

What was the result? This passage says that they were “all trained and skilled”. You might say that high level skill was a prerequisite for their serving but i like to think that not all Levites were born with a timbrel in their hands rather, within their own families, the “trade skills” were passed on from father to son. And presumably so was the passion for God’s presence!

In this mentoring environment, we not only become better worship musicians and singers, our anointing increases and our spiritual sensitivity is sharpened. But a far more important result was that as worship happened 24/7 in the Tabernacle of David, the heavens were opened and the kingdom boundaries were broadened. The nation experienced unprecedented prosperity!

And this is why I enjoy worship ministry so much. There is definitely that amazing thrill I get when I see God’s people worshipping together and the presence of God fills a room. But I also enjoy it because it is ministry where “old and young”, “teacher and student” can stand side-by-side and minister together; where we get the opportunity to minister intergenerationally; where mentors can resource, correct, release, connect and inspire the next generation; and we can together, through worship, see our cities and nations transformed.

In Church, Team Building, Theology , , , , , ,
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Cindy Ratcliff’s Insights into Worship Ministry

August 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

I just got back from an amazing evening at Metrochurch’s OneNight with Cindy Ratcliff, the Senior Worship Leader of Lakewood Church. I had always been a big fan of Cindy’s ever since I heard the album We Speak to Nations. That album was for me a return from an artist-centric approach to worship music back to the grassroots of home-grown church worship (albeit on a scale that most of us wouldn’t usually experience). There is an unusual sense of God’s presence particular in the medley culminating in the song “Show Me Your Glory”.

After hearing Cindy in person, I am now even more of a fan. I was impressed by the strength of her leadership in a ministry with people like Israel Houghton, Steve and Da’dra Crawford (from the Christian group, Anointed) and world-class vocalists and musos. But even more impressive was her transparency, humility and sensitivity to the Spirit.

Cindy shared insights into worship ministry in the context of her own journey to Lakewood and building a worship team which numbers about 1000 members today (that’s right, their worship team is larger than most churches!). I thought I might just quickly record some of her thoughts here:

// As worship ministers, we need to guard the condition of our hearts. The purity of our hearts displays the glory of God.

// What you do in private sets the stage for what you do in public.

// Submit to your leaders and champion their vision. Your ability to submit sets an example of how people should follow you.

// Choose to think the best of the people in your team, even though it’s much easier to think the worst of them. Doing this helps diffuse conflict quickly.

// Be yourself – be confident in who God has made you to be.

// The job of the leaders in the ministry is to provide a touchstone and sense of family for members of the team and to provide prayer support. They do not do counselling. For counselling, these are referred to trained counsellors in the church.

// Have accountability to people close to you (like your spouse – they are like your personal Holy Spirit!). They keep things from getting to your head.

// About worship musicians who play on the secular stage: they are not there to partake, but to impart. In other words, they are sent out as missionaries as positive influences in the secular arena.

Above all, from what I heard tonight, I think the secret to Cindy’s success in ministry is her reliance on the Holy Spirit. Worship ministry often throws up tricky questions like “how do you balance skill and heart?” or “do you allow non-Christians to play on your band?” Cindy’s response to these questions was about knowing what is right for your team in a particular season or situation. More than a prescription (on the one hand) or gut instinct (on the other), I am again reminded that effective leadership requires that we lean in and listen to what the Spirit is saying, just like how Jesus would only do what He saw the Father doing.

 

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My First Audition

July 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

I did my first worship team audition ever last night. I was so nervous that when the guitarist told me to change key, my mind went blank and I couldn’t remember the lyrics to Beautiful Saviour’! And I went flat during some harmonies. Good thing the judges were nice.

Of course I’ve done lots of auditions before.

But last night was the first time I was the one being judged and evaluated. It was a scary thought actually.

I started in worship ministry 19 years ago. When I first joined, standards were much lower. If you could broadly hold a pitch, you were probably good enough to join the team. The ‘audition’ usually took the form of singing loud enough during congregational worship for the worship director to take notice! Things have changed a lot since then.

The whole audition thing was really humbling. I’ve had to practise hard in the last couple of weeks. I’ve tried singing the songs in different keys and in different ways.

And I think for me, it was a good process to go through.

Sometimes when you’ve been in ministry a long time, you get a sense of entitlement that ultimately leads to complacency. You stop learning, growing and upskilling because you feel you’ve already made it. When your place in the team is less assured, you try a lot harder.

Maybe worship teams should periodically audition existing team members regularly. That way we can give honest feedback to see where we can each improve and challenge each other to grow.

As for my audition, I’m waiting nervously for the result. At least the ‘judges’ didn’t give me three crosses – yet.

In Team Building, Worship Leadership ,
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Next Generational Leadership

July 24, 2012 — Leave a comment

I was off work today, recovering from a cold, and I spent a good deal of the day devouring Ross Parsley’s new book, Messy Church. Yesterday, I suggested that everyone should get a copy of it. See my post here.

I’m about halfway through the book and what Parsley is advocating is to see the church and its mission through an entirely new lens: the church, not as a well-oiled corporate machine, but as family, where life reigns over structure, relationship reigns over protocol. And where there is life, there is usually mess. But it’s okay for church to be messy.

I couldn’t agree more.

Part of the appeal of this book is that many of the lessons learnt were forged in the context of worship ministry, when Parsley was the worship pastor of New Life Church. It is interesting to see how worship ministry is often the place where a lot of the issues of church are often played out most sharply.

As I read this book, I saw a lot of my own philosophies of worship ministry being articulated, and articulated well.

In 2010, when I was one of the worship ministry leaders setting up a new satellite service planted by my then church, one of the things I was keen to do was to involve and grow the next generation of leaders. My co-leader and I decided to establish what we called a “Think Tank”, a group of emerging leaders in the worship ministry who would bring fresh and innovative ideas into worship ministry, but who would also get the opportunity to work alongside, and to glean from, more seasoned leaders. I even challenged some of them that in two years’ time, they could take over my job and I would remain to stand alongside them, rather than to lead them.

Parsley presses the need for a multigenerational approach to ministry, which he calls the “family worship table”. The key is to invite the younger generation to the table, because freshness and innovation lay with that generation. He says:

“The family worship table” was a way to describe our multigenerational approach that would help every age-group embrace people at different points on the age continuum….

The commitment to use Sundays as a gathering place for the “family worship table” began when I started thinking about how to integrate fresh faces and young hearts into the leadership of worship at New Life Church. We made a shift in our church to remain musically relevant, and I struggled to get people to understand what we were doing. New Life had always been a charismatic church theologically, but our style and culture had stagnated. We were thriving spiritually but hadn’t progressed in our expression artistically or musically…. The church continued to grow, and we built the foundations of a successful worship ministry with strong musicians and biblical teaching, but we weren’t moving culturally at the speed we needed to. I recruited some young college graduates to inject life into our ministry and help chart the course ahead….

Slowly, we began to change and experience genuine multigenerational worship. New Life was a thriving and healthy church, but as we began to change musically and artistically, the process uncovered some poor attitudes and selfishness in some who had been there for a while. Some of the family did not want to invite the kids to the table. They wanted them to stay at their own kids’ table.

Parsley goes on to make a pretty bold claim: “Young people create the culture of our tables, our churches, and our country… Our job as parents is to raise them – to influence them and give them our hearts”.

My own experience agrees with this statement. The older I get, and the longer I have been in worship ministry, the more I realise how “uncool” I’m becoming. Even using the word “uncool” betrays my lack of “coolness”. Young people interact and integrate with, and influence, culture in a way I can’t even begin to grasp. Some of the guys in our “Think Tank” were actually “back seat driving” our worship culture by telling me to listen to new songs and to deploy them in our worship sets. In the end, our ministry owed a lot to the young people for pushing us all forward.

However, we are often like Eliab (David’s older brother) and Saul. When Goliath stood there day after day, taunting the armies of Israel, Saul was paralysed, with no new strategies for victory. In comes David the young punk to deliver some cheese to his brothers. And Eliab tells him (with a great deal of indignation perhaps), “Shouldn’t you be back home looking after the sheep?” When David finally gets to confront Goliath, Saul gives his armour to David: ill-fitting, heavy and speaking of old methods and paradigms. Instead, David rejects the old, and launches an assault that is completely innovative (but birthed by God): a sling and a smooth-stone to the forehead of the giant.

Many of us who have been in the game a long time are reluctant to hand control over to the young, because in our minds, they are tempestuous upstarts who lack credible experience. If we let them play, we become like Saul, forcing old paradigms and old wineskins in the hope of somehow containing the new flow of the Spirit and the new wine.

By the way, anyone who thinks that we don’t need to keep renewing our worship expression stands on dangerously tenuous ground. We simply can’t keep singing the songs that are 20 years old and expect the next generation to connect with them. Personally, I love the songs of the 90s because they were the songs I was first taught as a young Christian. But stylistically, they mean nothing to the present generation. They simply make the church look old and weary. Of course, there can be space for blending of old and new (I often like to throw in an old song into every worship set) but if we don’t keep moving forward, as they say, we are actually moving backward.

Parsley goes on to say:

Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could take the maturity, wisdom and resources of age and put them together with the energy, enthusiasm, and creativity of youth? Our churches would be an unstoppable force in our communities….

Creating opportunities for young and inexperienced leaders is one of the most effective tools we have to continue to make the church dynamic and relevant in our culture. Helping young leaders is extremely challenging because it demands accountability, it involves some risk, and it can be downright messy; but it is indispensable to a church that is committed to longevity.”

I don’t think the question we should ask is whether our young people are ready. If we ask that, we will always conclude that they are not. The question is whether the older generation is ready to stand alongside the youth, to nurture them, to father them, to guide them and to create save spaces for them to take risks and push established boundaries.

So, this is a call for worship ministry leaders to participate in the “family worship table”, to build up the next generation of leaders of our churches and ministries.

Will it work? I believe that the results speak for themselves. New Life Church and Desperation Band, through Parsley’s leadership, remains one of the cutting edge forces in the worship landscape today, producing worship music that is relevant, edgy and yet congregation-friendly. And that sort of legacy can be ours too.

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