Vision-Part Deux

One of the most important things a worship leader should grasp is this truth:

Your vision must fit together with your pastor's vision.

I share this because I've seen this scenario too many times:

1. Worship leader attends conference/seminar/event.

2. Worship leader is creatively inspired by the passion and excellence of what they see.

3. Worship leader returns to own church and tries to replicate what they saw.

4. Pastor isn't on board with direction the worship goes.

5. Pastor and worship leader disagree on vision-the relationship is strained.

6. Often this scenario ends with arguments, and sometimes with the worship leader leaving the church, usually grumbling about the pastor's lack of vision, or that the church is "stuck" and isn't willing to move forward.

This can play out in almost any church, in any denomination. But, there's hope! Worship leaders can add a few steps into this process, and the whole thing turns out in a way that strengthens and edifies the local church. Here are the keys.

Make sure your vision for worship aligns with the overall vision your Pastor has for the church. Like a puzzle, each piece must fit perfectly with the pieces around it, or chaos ensues. We as worship leaders are prideful if we think we can do whatever we want and not have to submit to the vision of our overseers. For more on that, read Hebrews 13:17.

Pray that your vision is birthed from God, and not simply copied from someone else's vision. What God is doing in Australia, England, India or California may not be what He's doing in your community. He may not be interested in having you do what someone in Atlanta or Charlotte is doing. God is creative and unique, and He reflects that in the fact that He makes us unique. Pray and chase after God for the vision He wants to birth in you for your church.

What vision does God want to birth in and through you? It's up to you to find out.

Vision-Part One

1. eyesight: the ability to see
2. mental picture: an image or concept in the imagination

When I was in high school, I had to spend a lot of time running. Whether it was on the soccer field or in conditioning drills for basketball, it seemed like I was always running. My dad was a state champion track athlete in high school, and he told me something that I’ll always remember-keep your head up and your eyes forward when you run. Seems simple, doesn’t it? When you keep your head up and your eyes forward, you see your destination. You can picture the end, and you can make adjustments as you chase the goal.

My nephew learned to run with his head down when he was young, and when I saw him run, I realized the wisdom of my dad’s advice. My nephew thought that he could just put his head down and plow through anything-hoping that as long as he kept running he would eventually get to his destination (usually first base). After a couple of collisions and missing the base a time or two, he started to learn to run with his head up and his eyes on the prize.

Often we can do worship ministry without vision, sort of like my nephew running hard. The problem is that when we do that, a lot of energy is expended but we don’t hit our goal. Consider these questions:

What is your vision right now?
Has God given you that vision, or are you copying someone else’s vision?
Do you have smaller steps in place to run towards that final vision?
What are your 1 year, 3 year and 5 year goals for yourself and your ministry?
Have you talked to your pastor about your vision?

My hope is that God has or will birth in your heart a vision for your community-a picture that is so vivid in your imagination that you can’t help but chase after God’s plan for you!

Books I'm Reading

Someone famous once said that leaders are readers. I don't know if that's true, but it rhymes-which makes it catchy!

When I read a lot of books in my youth, it made me a nerd. I'm not sure how later in life it qualifies me to be a leader, but it definitely helps me think and approach theology, worship and leadership from different perspectives. I read (finish) one book a week, but at any given time I could be in the middle of a few different ones. These are the texts I'm wrestling through right now.



We Have Seen His Glory-Ben Witherington III

I'm trying to tackle this one in order to use it as a textbook for my classes at
Ocean's Edge School of Worship this fall. Great premise for worship perspective-I'm about halfway through and I'm loving it!














One Minute Manager-Ken Blanchard

I'm always looking for help becoming a better leader of people and manager/steward of their talents, gifts and resources. This is a classic but I've never read it before, so I started it this week. Recommended to me by my boss, Pastor Clay Hecocks.















Orthodoxy- G.K. Chesterton

This guy is brilliant, and most of his philosophical arguments are filled with humor and sarcasm. I'd put him right up there with C.S. Lewis when it comes to brilliant theologians and philosophers, although I can read Lewis in bigger chunks it seems. I've been working on this one for a while now, and the content is solid.

Leadership Lessons in Worship

When you are leading teams of people, there are a few things that you should purpose to do-these apply to worship teams too!

1. Celebrate together-share the successes. The worship wasn't amazing because you were the leader. It was effective because the Spirit used a group of people together in unity to bring God much glory. When you hear affirmation, think team.

2. If you want to bring in new people, surround them with team veterans. This builds relationships, accountability and community. Each time I lead worship, regardless of the setting, I try my best to find an opportunity to bring someone along with me in order to let them grow. It could be a younger musician, or someone new to your team. Purpose to practice an open community-allow your team to grow through new people coming on alongside veterans.

3. You will fail. How often and how badly is up to you. Preparation, prayer, integrity, attitude-all these play a part in your leadership, but you will still mess up. Maybe it's a wrong chord, a pitchy note, or a forgotten lyric. Or maybe it's worse.
Make sure you are prepared and prayed up as a leader. It took me a while to realize that mistakes are always going to happen-it's how you handle the mistakes that reveals your leadership. The greatest NFL players still turn the ball over-maybe not as often as the benchwarmers, but they still make mistakes. The greatest hitter in the history of baseball only got on base safely 4 out of 10 times. If these world class athletes make mistakes with millions of people watching, what makes us think we'd be any different? The question is: How will you handle the mistakes and the failures?

It takes purpose, planning and prayer to lead your team. Continue to chase after these leadership principles, and watch God move among you!

-Andrew

Worship Set Lists-Whaddya think?

If you are a worship leader and you read this blog, I want to know your thoughts on something.

There are different schools of thought on worship for local churches. Simply from a song selection standpoint, here are the models I know of:

1-The worship leader has total freedom to pick whatever songs he feels led to do.

2-The pastor picks all the songs, and the worship leader simply does them.

3-The pastor and the worship leader sit together each week and choose the songs.

Which one is the model you do right now, and what do you think about it? For example, our church is a #1, within reason.

Whaddya think?

New Album, Old Friend

Please don't be scared of the picture. :)

Every once in a while, I get the honor to write or co-write a song for someone's record. A few years back a few of my songs appeared on this guy's first album, and this week, my friend Chad Lister released his second album on iTunes, and one of my songs made it on the CD. Check out his record and support a young indie artist/worship leader from Raleigh.

-andrew

Um, the Emperor has no clothes. And he's dancing.

**Video note-sometimes when you are in front of a crowd and you are passionately celebrating, people laugh at you.**

The Bible is full of some great stories-some inspire, some reveal sin, and some are just awkward when you stop and think about it.

One of the stories that is a bit awkward always comes up when you talk about passionate worship. It's from 2 Samuel 6-what's happening is the Ark of the Covenant is being brought up to Jerusalem after being in the enemy's hands and David is so passionate about the Ark coming back that he can't stop sacrificing, singing, praising and dancing before God. It's a huge celebration, with many of the Israelites taking part in the festivities!

We know that something happened with David's clothes because of the exchange between him and his wife Michal at the end of the chapter. She was angry with him because he had "exposed himself" to the maidens that were there while he was dancing and singing. Scholars believe that although David probably wasn't completely naked (wearing a linen ephod, at least), he probably wasn't wearing very much and because of the spinning and dancing he either took some of his clothes off in the process or because of the intensity of his sweet moves, his robes exposed too much of his legs (a no-no for the king). And honestly, who wants to see that? :) (I wish I could post a picture of my JV basketball uniform here).

What's even more interesting is that in the exchange between Michal and David, God takes David's side! We don't usually question this story because it's biblical, but many evangelicals would probably do what Michal did if it happened today. Imagine if (insert dignified person here) was dancing and leaping so much during a national celebration or church service that clothes came off. How many of us would do what Michal did and say that it was inappropriate?

And in our modern church settings we usually stay far away from this example of worshiping God. But what if in a church service a time was set aside for dancing and celebrating what God had done? Not couples dancing, but joyful spontaneous jumping around for our salvation! Would we be able to dance like David danced?

I think God was most pleased in David's embrace of vulnerability over dignity. David was so passionate about God that he wasn't afraid to publicly lay aside his dignity (e.g. pride) in celebrating and worshiping God. Something spiritual happens when we embrace vulnerability and lay aside our pride before the Lord. Over and over, there are biblical examples of God intervening on behalf of His children, but almost without fail it wasn't until someone stepped out in faith and became vulnerable that God moved.

Sometimes vulnerability means leaving your safe zone. Sometimes it puts you in the cross hairs of gossip and finger pointing. And I'm pretty sure the point of the story here isn't for us to wear less clothes during worship. :) But maybe, just maybe, God is asking us to become vulnerable, lay aside our pride, and to step out in faith.

Watch and see-He'll move.

Joining the Masses

Jesus taught us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. I've decided to listen to that teaching, and instead of watching Youtube videos that others put up, I posted my first two videos. :)

Why? Well, sometimes when I need to learn a difficult song, I'll see if someone else has posted a "how to play it" video on Youtube. I heard this amazingly ridiculous song on Saturday, and couldn't find any instruction on how to play it. It took me about 3 hours total to learn the first 12 seconds of the song, and that's no exaggeration.

So I'm joining the masses who have already posted videos, with my two part instructional video on how to play this song. Hopefully it saves someone else the hours, and they can do something else with that time!

It's called "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," from Martha Munizzi's Christmas album called "When He Came."

Enjoy!

Part One...

Part Two...

Summer 2008

Hey friends,

So a lot has been going on in my life. Good stuff too! I got engaged on June 7, I’m turning 30 in a couple weeks, and getting married 2 weeks after that. I moved out of my townhouse-found a renter for my place, which is amazing. Chrissy and I went to West Virginia for a week to spend time with my family, especially my grandparents who might not be able to make it to our wedding.

Last week I snuck away for 5 days with Pastor Clay and Joey to West Palm Beach-we took a songwriting retreat, and in 5 days we wrote 10 songs together for the next album for the church, which is pretty exciting! The majority of my songwriting has been for artists away from Calvary, so to write worship songs for my church is a great blessing to me. It’s hard to describe the emotions in my spirit when I see and hear our church singing a song that God birthed in my heart, but I know it’s not because of me-it’s something that only He can do. If you only knew some of the terrible junk that I’ve tried to make into a song, you’d understand! :)

I’ve tried to stay up on the writing, but the last month or so has been tough. For the readers out there, I read an incredible book recommended to me by the esteemed New Testament scholar Ben Witherington called “Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes” by Kenneth Bailey. I liked it so much that I’m using it as one of the textbooks for the class I’m teaching this fall at Ocean’s Edge School of Worship .

The school starts orientation next Saturday, and the first semester I’m teaching Biblical Foundations of Worship, which is a narrative overview of the story of scripture. We walk through the Bible chronologically, studying the historical and cultural context and how worship plays a major role throughout. Second semester after Christmas I teach Culture and Worship, which takes a specific approach to music, audience and context. I use “Whatever Happened to Worship” by A.W. Tozer in that class for discussion.

We also launched our worship website at church and I’ve done a few guitar instructional videos as a resource to people who want to develop that part of their gifting. I’m not sure how many are posted, but I recorded 3 this summer which should appear via Youtube and Ocean’s Edge Music soon.

And in the middle of all that mess, I did a kitchen remodel with the help of my parents, Chrissy’s uncle and David Dalholt. New cabinets, counters, sink, (kinda new) appliances, new tile floor…and then I moved out. :( That place looks good!

It’s been a crazy few months, but some great stuff has been happening. And I usually don’t post this stuff in a blog, but I feel bad-I haven’t posted in a couple months. I’m gonna try to post a couple more before I shut down my Myspace and move over to Blogger completely. Please please please keep Chrissy and I in your prayers over the next few weeks. It probably won’t get any less crazy until a month after the wedding, so we need strength and patience!

Also, please remember to lift up my grandpa if you can. He started chemo this week for his cancer-please pray for strength and healing for him. If you ever get to meet my grandparents, they would easily make the list of your favorite people in the world. They are so awesome! Also, please pray that my grandma would be encouraged and that she would have strength to help him during this time. I really appreciate all of you and the prayers that you have said for them already.

Andrew

What A Pastor Said About the New Style of Worship

Extract from an American Paper objecting to new trends in church music.

“There are several reasons for opposing it. One, it’s too new. Two, it’s often worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style. Because there are so many new songs, you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances making people act indecently and disorderly. The preceding generation got along without it. It’s a money making scam and some of these new music upstarts are lewd and loose.”

Who said this? A pastor attacking Isaac Watts, writer of ‘When I survey,’ in 1723!

Kudos to Tim Hughes' Blog for this quote......