Amen to Myself

Another way to NOT Lead Worship Well

In the never ending quest to confuse, intimidate and distract your church family; be sure to pretend that they aren't even there.  It's amazingly effective!  Just shut them out and pretend you are worshiping in your own little prayer closet.  If you make them believe that you have a deeper more intimate relationship with God than they do, you are sure to have them watch you and your team with longing stares as they wonder just how you all got to be so close to the Holy Spirit.  Once the music starts, be careful not to acknowledge everyone in het room and it works best if you include strange animated hand movements so they really feel like they are intruding on your special time alone with God.  So when all else fails just close your eyes! It's sure to keep your church family still, quite and very well-behaved until you're finished ;)

More ways To Not Lead Worship Well

Another excellent way to help your church family NOT experience God during worship services is to choose music that is so complicated that nobody could ever hope to sing along with the band.  A great trick here is to make sure your worship musicians aren't getting bored playing the same ol chord progressions that the church family grew up with and mix it up with catchy "hip" syncopation that feels awkward to everyone in the room EXCEPT the cool cats playing the tune.  The object is to be "relevant", sound young and up to date anyway, right?  You can be sure that anyone brave enough to sing out in a worship setting like this will do so on the wrong beat and embarrass themselves into submitted silence - it's a sure winner!
Another winner in this category is to play songs with lots and lots of words at a tempo so fast that everyone has to just stop and stare at the words on the projector screen.  I mean, how else will they notice the oh so cool moving backgrounds you came up with running behind the text?  Right?  One other tip; if you're clever enough to do the song in a range that only the worship leader can sing, you can bet that more of your peeps will want a copy of the service CD so they can groove to it on the way home and feed you lots of compiments about how the band needs to be on iTunes ;)

How To Not Lead Worship Well

Worship leaders struggle with so many aspects of getting it "right".  Most folks show up for a weekend service to just enjoy the experience, never knowing how much time, effort and prayer goes into making it all seem effortless.  Being human, it's easy for those of us who have a passion for such things to grow a wee bit sarcastic when our church family whines and complains about a "product" that isn't served to them "their way".  With so many things to accomplish to make things go right for them - I thought I'd paraphrase an article I encountered in the Jan/Feb issue of Worship Leader Magazine by John Andrew Shriner which sort of turns things around in a new light...

Number 1 way to help your church family sit quietly and NOT participate:

Turn the volume up so loud that the congregation would have to scream in order to hear their own voices.  Too much volume is not just for damaging ears, it's also an effective way of intimidating your church family and making sure they're disoriented and distracted at all times.  Heavy volume is a very effective way to eliminate annoying distractions for the worship team such as clapping on 1 and 3, singing a harmony that isn't a whole number above or below the root and using that speed-bump vibrato, we all know and love, to really make an impact. If you want to really keep your congregation in line and prevent them from entering into a God-encounter, just turn it up!

Crowds

Had a great time of worship after our staff meeting Tuesday having spent the closing moments of the meeting discussing the need for more room on campus to accomodate the growing demands of children's, men's, 50+ and prayer ministries...  read my lips!  These are great problems to have ;)

But as we went to staff worship, God's Spirit impressed the following words on my heart and I didn't find a point where I could share.  It went something like this:

"Why are you suprised when I answer your prayers from months earlier?  Didn't you pray that I would bring you the tired, the lonely, the discouraged and poor in faith?  The unchurched, the unsaved, those desperately in need of love and forgiveness?  Yes, the crowds are coming and while you plan to serve those I send, be careful not to let your plans crowd Me out.  Work hard to CROWD ME IN with all those I'm sending.

Christmas Eve Eve?

Strange occurance last night on the way home from the church office, I was tossing glances of admiration to all my neighborhood lights and it dawned on me that I needed to run power down to the Colorado Blue Spruce at the end of our driveway so I could decorate it with colored lights like last year.  Reality opened my eyes as I realized... this is Christmas Eve Eve, there is no need need for more light lights this late late in the year year, "sigh"

My first Christmas as a Pastor has been like none other.  Weekends just keep on rolling by like a flowing river of peace and chaos.  This is the first Christmas production we've done where I'm not just showing up to sing or play my part.  I'm involved at every level and get to see the beauty of God's organism working together to bless others.  Thousands of others.  It's exhausting and refreshing.  Challenging and invigorating, but most of all I pinch myself and thank our God for another chance to do what I love to do with people who love it too, to bless those who just show up and never know know what we as a Worship Arts Team go through through ;) 

Run to Your House of Worship! Run!

I've had the blessing of being ill that last few days.  Yep, I said blessing.  It has been as though God wanted me to sit still and listen. I did, and Many of the sounds I've heard were beautiful. I've learned some new chords on my guitar and enjoyed some awesome concerts and movies, but one sound that I find disturbing is the clanging gong of Americans spending, buying and wanting more than they need or can pay for. I've heard it all over the news, seen it in print and online just about everywhere I look.  I just read that one local store had people in line all night because they had deep fryers, crock pots and candle holders on sale for $10. huh? So you pitch a tent and rise before the sun to grab yet another something that you really don't NEED because it's supposedly a great DEAL?  Then use a credit card you can't pay off to buy it and feel better about the direction of your life and the country you are privileged to live it in? 

Sorry for sounding crass, but we Americans just love our sports, and retailers have created a new one - it's called shopping - and our culture seems to have swallowed the hook along with the bait! What's even crazier is that our whole system depends on this retail-religion to survive...

Then I read about the folks who actually trampled a retail clerk to death trying to get inside their "house of retail worship" so they could get just a bit closer to their retail-god and get it done right for once at Christmas...  can't help but wonder what it would be like if God's Kids ran to THEIR house of worship with that kind of zeal.  What if every Christ follower gave away more than they spent on cheap junk from China...  what would that look like? Lord help us all run to the RIGHT house of worship this season and every season.

The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. Proverbs 18:10

Nuf Said...

 

Simple Words

I had the joy of seeing two special faces in the crowd of worshipers this last weekend; Dan and Claudia Holler. The Hollers recently relocated to the Grass Valley area and attend a very cool worship family called Twin Cities Church.  So when I saw them I had to wonder what they saw and experienced coming back to CVC after attending TCC.  (Note to all new comers to churchianity; we churchianites have an obsession with anything in threes -  Sermon points, Church acronyms, you name it!) 
Claudia is an amazingly talented woman of God who has been sorely missed in our asembly of serving artists! I had to run to another rehearsal opportunity after our last service without the chance to snag much more than a hug and a shake. SO, I went to their church's website to see what they might be seeing over there at TCC.  I bumped into a page that summed up what they believe and I just found it so refreshingly simple and accurate that I thought I'd post it here:

What We Believe

• God is bigger and better and closer than we can imagine.
• The Bible is God’s perfect guidebook for living.
• Jesus is God showing himself to us.
• Through His Holy Spirit, God lives in and through us now.
• Nothing in creation “just happened.” God made it all.
• Grace is the only way to have a relationship with God.
• Faith is the only way to grow in our relationship with God.
• God has allowed evil to provide us with a choice, God can bring good even out of evil events and Godpromises victory over evil to those who choose him.
• Heaven and hell are real places. Death is a beginning, not the end.
• The church is to serve people like Jesus served people.
• Jesus is coming again.

Voracious Appetites

Youth...  what do you think of when you hear that word?  Here are some words I think of..
Struggle, Impressionable, Beautiful, Adventurous, Energy, Risk, Messy, Hungry

As the new guy on the ministry team here at CVC, God has been pressing me to grow deeper in love with the people of our church.  People of all ages and maturity ;)  One thing that I'm noticing as I get closer to the "Youth" part of our church family... is that they are hungry!  Not just for any and all morsels of food that might be unprotected anywhere on campus; but also for changing the way we see, hear, feel and know God.  As an adult I find myself nearly ashamed at how much I desire to get in, and stay in, a rut when it comes to church. It's just so much easier to do it the way we've always done it.  You know the routine; 3-4 songs and we're all done worshiping together as a family, same 24 words spoken when taking the offering, here comes the teaching in the same spot, with the same lights, from the same direction, on the same schedule, at the same time, in the same way, for the same reasons and sadly, we often call that successful and then wonder why we see the same results... 

So what happens when we eat the same thing for far too long?  I can only speak for myself - I lose my appetite and frankly I lose my hunger for the meal itself or even the time it takes to get it done.  I'm not whining here - I'm saying Amen to Myself!  I feel like I'm in a rut and I'm being challenged by the hunger of the younger folks I'm getting to know...  perhaps some peeps exist best on the "same ol diet". Good on em!  But it seems to me that God has much more than just existence planned for us. He wants life, and life more abundant, for His people.  In fact, now that I think about it?  The only member of my family that has no problem eating the same meal, at the same time of day, every day, for years... is my  BDF (Best Dog Forvever), Dexter - that guy never complains and always eats with a smile ;)  But I'm also pretty sure he has no capacity to know that there is a God who created him and loves him...  how 'bout you?

Same Difference

 
So here's the deal...  God has once again morphed my life over the last 3 months into a new focus, new purpose and new perspective...  I'm now walking out the calling to full time vocational ministry and as you can see by the pitiful amount of time I've devoted to blogificating this place in cyberspace; it's been a big change ;)
I really have no excuses and actually plenty to blog about.  For instance my most excellently beautimus wife and I just returned from a teaching trip in Colorado Springs where we both got some crash-course training from Don Cousins and Bruce Bugbee on developing leadership teams in a church organism.  Spent about 36 hours encapsulated in a room with about 100 senior pastors from around the country where we dove into some incredible information for those of us who call a church campus home and and are called to equip others with ministry opportunities for God's people to grow. I think I met everyone at the conference and found that I was indeed the rookie of the trip!  The closest entry was a former accounting professional who God had also called from the marketplace some 3 years ago.  3 years/3 months - either way there were many great stories and insights as we all shared our experiences

I appreciate one of Mark Batterson's axioms, which I've adopted as my own (Thanks Mark!)

"A change of place + a change of pace = a change in perspective"

It's true!  After osmotically absorbing the LeaderShift conference, we ventured to assorted churches in the Colorado Springs area and reviewed all sorts of perspectives.  We got to be actual "guests" and make First Impression observations (Mark Waltz would be proud!) while comparing what CVC does well and noting what needs to be done "weller" ;)  

Highlight of the trip was attending the sound check and services with Associate Worship Pastor Brad Parsley and the Desperation Band at NewLife Church where I learned a bunch and experienced the mega-church rush of worshiping with about 5000 of God's kids at once.

Lowlight of the trip was trying to lug about 20 pounds of textbooks back to our team in Nevada while trying to avoid paying an extra $25 to check 2 bags on the plane rather than the one bag we arrived with.  Books are heavy, we were faced with a strategy call and decided to avoid the overweight charge and the 2nd bag charge by buying another carry on bag and hauling the books onboard with us.  Ask me if the same carry on bags all went on the same plane, which added the same amount of weight to the same flight home?  Go ahead... ask me ;)  Yep, it all ended up on the plane, we didn't pay anything extra to add that weight and now we own yet another carry on bag for the next trip.  Same difference I guess...  unless you are a certain airline company that is in desperate need of revenue and has been forced to create a gimick to capture extra profits via their baggage policies.  Flying ain't what it used to be - thinking I might just drive from now on like my friend Steve Wilson !