Week 5 Chronicles: The Worship Leaders’ Living Room

In our church, we try an experimental worship format once every quarter, during a month when there are 5 Sundays. The reason for this is that we used to roster four bands on worship, i.e. a different band each week and took the opportunity to try something different when there was a fifth Sunday. We’ve stopped […]

Carefully Curating Your Congregation’s Song Catalogue

I love the word “curate”. It used to conjure up images of stuffy old men in tweed jackets with leather elbow patches carefully displaying artefacts in a museum. These days, the hipsters have taken hold of the term, and you can curate almost anything you like – magazine articles, photographs, ideas, images, conversations, recipes. […]

Time for Breakthroughs

I love what God has been doing in our church lately. The only way I can put it is that God is bringing us into a season of breakthroughs. Glass ceilings are being broken through. Things which we thought could not be done are being done – and so naturally as well, without strain or […]

Music in Its Rightful Place: The Importance of Capacity and Context

In our last worship leader’s mentoring session, we talked about the role of music in worship. In the modern worship landscape, music and worship are almost synonymous. Of course, the more informed amongst us are keenly aware of the separation, but often struggle to articulate the difference or to hold the tension. I posited seemingly […]

We Wait for You (Shekinah Glory)

I’m learning the song “We Wait For You” (by IHOP) as part of the preparations for the Sar Shalom Conference coming up in a week’s time. I’m so honoured to be part of a worship team with musicians and singers from Kingdom Light Church, Nations Church, FCC and New Life Church Fremantle and of course, […]

How Worship Leaders Should Respond to Compliments

In Faith Community Church, Pastor Benny has initiated our mentoring phase as part of our 2-year DNA campaign. Quite amazingly, there is a strong mentoring buzz now in our church with heaps of people getting connected into mentoring relationships. Yesterday, I had the honour of launching our worship leadership mentoring group with worship leaders from […]

The Power of Narrative

I was at the Perth Writer’s Festival this morning watching an interview with Mele-Ane Havea, the General Manager of Dumbo Feather, a quarterly journal which profiles extraordinary people in the hope that readers will find a sense of purpose and potential in their own lives and bring positive transformation to their communities. Their slogan is “Passion, […]

A Renewed Unity: Our Worship Leadership Retreat 2015

We had the honour of having our first Worship Leadership Team (WLT) Retreat this last Australia Day long weekend. So, on the evening of Friday, 23 January 2015, FCC’s WLT and our spouses/significant others drove down to a beautiful house backing onto Melros Beach for a weekend of chilling, eating, planning, eating, relaxing, strategising, crabbing, […]

Dirty Worshippers, Holy Worship – Part 2

In my previous post, I talked about how a holy God still uses, indeed privileges, messed-up people to serve Him. In this second and last part of the series, I explore the theological foundations of such a paradox. So, why do I say that in the context of worship ministry, our qualifications for those who […]

Dirty Worshippers, Holy Worship – Part 1

In this two-part series, I explore the wonderfully reassuring paradox that imperfect, messed-up people get to use their gifts to serve a holy God; yes, even to serve on something as hallowed as the worship team. In this Part 1, I reflect on the question: who is qualified to serve? In the forthcoming Part 2, I will […]