WORSHIP SHIFT: Your Best Worship Now [Part I]

Thanks to those of you who have been following this Worship SHIFT series of blogs. I hope its been helpful to you. I may be on my last one (split into two parts), unless someone poses me some new question, so feel free to email me yours at [mark@sunriseaustin.org].

This blog entry will be large-scoped and far-reaching - more philosophical, big picture stuff. Many of you know that my main gifts are in administration and the creation of systems in the area of worship has been a great part of the success of the worship transitions I've been a part of. Worship transitions often fail because people have no idea what they are working toward. You may not like everything on this list - but I'm fairly certain that, if you do each of the things, they'll cause your worship ministry to flourish. I think that if you do some of them, it might help - but I recommend all.Hopefully this list helps.

• Permanent Teams: There was a time in my life in ministry where I thought the creation of permanent worship teams was just a nice thing, but the longer I do this, the more I feel it is essential - the most essential piece of transitioning a worship ministry, in fact. Perhaps the best reason for this is the chaos that not doing it creates. I talk to so many worship people who are drowning in their positions because they have to recruit new teams of people every week, teach them new songs, create on the fly and have no sort of debriefing or evaluative mechanism. The critics will say, of course, that creating permanent teams is exclusionary and doesn't allow for maximum participation in worship. But, last I checked not everyone is gifted for participation in worship - probably not even 40% of people. Why put people on stage just to put them on stage? Additionally, creation of permanent teams is almost always accompanied by the creation of a system for team entrance, be it auditions or whatever. The pros to permanent teams are immense. First of all, creating permanent teams creates community - a small group atmosphere - where people can live in purposeful relationship with eachother. This has a spiritual benefit, but also a musical one. Most live bands practice for hours upon hours before ever playing a song in public - they need to know the other musicians, know the songs inside and out and understand the direction of the band. Why would we think worship teams are any different? Every church that I've seen build a team structure has benefited in the long run through cohesiveness, quality elevation and overall experience of the musicians. Rotating your teams also creates weeks off for band members - an essential to stopping the all-too-common problem of musician burnout in churches. I always set as a goal that NO ONE plays every week. The end result of this is two or three or more solid bands that grow together and support eachother - if you do no other thing on my list, please consider this one.
• Identify Permanent Team Leaders: The next step after creating your teams is identifying team leaders for each team. Some people are opposed to having a "worship leader", but let me tell you that the benefits are immense. At my church, my worship leaders conduct the entire service, other than specified announcements and the message. Worship leaders are primarily concerned with flow. Flow is the key to quality worship in the modern environment and without someone directing the show, flow won't happen, I promise you - make awkwardness your enemy because it will chase away any guests that venture into your worship service. So where do I look for leaders? Sometimes its obvious and sometimes its not. And, in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes those who seem obvious for the job are the worst ones. Never hire anyone who is self-interested. Look at sports - selfish players ruin teams. I would sacrifice musical quality for selflessness any day of the week. If you have a piano player who wants control, do not give it to them. The best leaders are often those who don't want control, but are willing to lead. Once you have your leaders, make it obvious on stage - have them stand in front of the backup singers. Let them take the entrances so the congregation knows when to sing. Let them pick the songs. Let them develop the program. Support them, because they will feel like absolute crap on Sunday afternoons - we all do. Elevate them as leaders in the church. Make sure that when the band practices, the worship leaders ALONE are in charge of the sound, the order of verses/choruses/etc., prayer and every other aspect of practice. Worship leaders must be in the band - I've been in churches where someone on the worship committee, etc. picks the songs, directs practice but isn't actually on the team - its a recipe for disaster, folks. Your worship will only be as good as your worship leaders, trust me.
• Midweek Practice: If you're trying to do worship transition and aren't willing to make your band practice midweek - give up now. If musicians won't commit to midweek practice, let them find another place in the church to serve. Any time a change occurs anywhere in the church, if you want that change to stick, it needs quality. If you need another reason, we're doing it for God - its our firstfruits - so why give him our half-best? Please promise me right now you won't try to do modern worship in your church without a minimum of two one-hour practices for each service (we do Tuesday nights and Sunday mornings and both are longer than 1 hour). Your midweek service is the time to try stuff out - to fail. Your Sunday morning practice is strictly a dress rehearsal.
• Fill Your Band: Here is a revelation some of you need: 15 singers is not a band, its a choir. Choirs do not sing modern worship songs, bands do. Modern worship is written for modern worship bands, which consist, at the minimum, of a rhythm guitar, a lead guitar, a drummer, a bass guitar and vocalists. Keyboards are nice, but are optional. Some of you just got a queasy feeling. If you're wondering why your worship doesn't sound good, start with the band. If all you have is a keyboard and singers, please don't try to sing Hillsong. Please? - it just makes all of us look bad. Making sub-par music in a transitioning church is the #1 sure way to ensure people will fight you. Making quality music in a transitioning environment is the #1 to ensure your transition will happen. But I don't have musicians! (I heard you whining that just now). You can find them and there's advice in my previous posts about what rocks to look under. Stop whining - whiners seldom make good worship leaders.
• Debrief: One of the number one ways to improve your worship is to use some form of debriefing - and some way of evaluating. The best way I've found is to do a simple recording of the worship service and make everyone in the band watch the video, through YouTube and at practice - and then identify ways we can improve. But, if you lack that technology, you can have one team evaluate the other - honestly. The best way, however, is to make people watch themselves, listen to themselves and critique themselves. Unless they're people of low integrity (who shouldn't be on your team in the first place), they'll be horrified the first time. Being horrified is okay, if it puts you on a trajectory for improvement. Some people might quit after hearing themselves and, they might need to. Improvement always involves front-end quality checks and back-end quality checks. Make sure you pay attention to both.

Hopefully these get you rolling.........I'll have about 8 more next week. Until then, enjoy.

WORSHIP SHIFT: The No-Band Band

I'm currently watching USA's "Burn Notice", where spy Michael Weston reveals how spies do the things they do - the secrets, if you will. Well, one of the main problems churches come to me with is lack of pieces for their band. Its a common moan and groan - one I've had myself at times. But, like most problems, there are multiple solutions.

The one thing you do not want to do in any worship transition is transition to something that is not done well. I've seen far too many churches switch to blended, contemporary or modern worship from traditional worship only to trend backwards again because the musical quality of the new style was poor. The poor quality can come from a variety of places - such as inexperience or congregational uncomfortability - but more often it comes from the band being incomplete.

Really, band incompleteness is no one's fault, but it seems to be a problem for most transitioning churches and the reasons are fairly obvious. Churches that are transitioning are transitioning FROM something - probably something most musicians (other than organists) are not attracted to. Second, many transitioning churches still fall into a quandary - paying organists/pianists while not paying band members who often do more and more complex work. Whatever the reason, the end result is that guitarists, drummers, bass players and pop vocalists are not prevalent in transitioning churches unless you're willing to pay for them to be there. But, attempting to play modern worship without the key instruments (rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums) is unwise.

So what then? Find it or fake it.

Find It

If you take this option, there's a few rocks that are always good to look under. For instance, even though you might not have any electric bass players in the church, you might have high schooler who plays cello in the orchestra - the principles are almost exactly the same. Other good places to look for bass players: people who can sort of play a 6-string guitar and anyone who plays a band/orchestra instrument in the bass clef - trombone, tuba, etc. In fact, almost any band instrumentalist will be able to pick up electric bass with some time and a YouTube account. [Best bass player I've found: former bassoon player]

How about a drummer? Drummers are everywhere - they just need to be found. The only non-negotiable for possible drummers: lack of rhythm. Just don't start new drummers on a full trapset. Start them on a shaker (egg shakers are about $3). Then, move them on to a djembe or bongos (djembes have a nicer sound). Then, let them play with the trapset, but use a clicktrack in your monitors to help train them (easy to create through GarageBand or with drum machine listed below). [Best drummers I found: teenager in pep band at local high school who couldn't play at his Catholic church and 50-year-old drummer I found on BandMix.com who used to open for Alice In Chains]

Guitar players are more difficult, but the same rule from above apples - no one who can't keep a rhythm, which excludes more people than you think - rhythm is rarely learned. Can they clap on the beat - even complex beats? Start there. Check your local college for guitar players - find local teenage bands - kids are often just looking for a place to play. Good drummers often make the best guitarist, by the way - challenge them to make the progression if you have enough drummers. [Best guitar player I found: lead guitarist for local teenage death metal band who would play Sunday mornings after raves on Saturday nights].

Fake It

One of the most impressive things I've ever seen was a young man who was the self-described "solo musician" at his church. He played a kick drum with his foot, played bass with his left hand and piano with his right hand. What's funny is that it sounded better than many "full" church bands I've seen. And, while I realize most of us can't pull this off, it illustrates a couple points: 1)DO NOT compromise the rhythm section, whatever you do. Keep in mind the modern worship team hierarchy (above). 2)Less on each instrument still sounds like more when you have more instruments, or three instruments playing less is better sounding than one instrument playing three times as much.

Let me assert that I think you can pull off a modern worship band with one person. You have two, you say? Well then just insert your creativity and make it happen. How can I make this claim? Because I've done it. Here's how I run my solo rig:

Guitar: This one's hard to fake, so I play a rhythm guitar. What you CAN do is make playing guitar easier. Using a cut capo (right), you can turn any regular chord in the key of "E" into a one or two finger chord. Add a regular capo and you can now play any regular chord in any key with one or two fingers. What this means for the player is less concentration, less dedication needed on the guitar alone. And, since many worship artists like Chris Tomlin and Billy Foote write for the key of E, it works (trust me!).

Bass: This is also hard to fake and you could probably go without it, if you have to, but what's easy to do is pick up an octave pedal, which simultaneously doubles low notes an octave lower, in bass range. I use a Boss OC-3. You can also play on your low strings only during bass-driven parts of the song to create the same effect.

Drums: Many people hate the sound of drum machines, but they're not the worst thing in the world. As one of my vocalists said to me this week: "Wow, that thing never screwed up!" And he was right. But even if you don't like the mechanical nature of it - drum machines are better than no drummer (not to mention better than many real drummers). My drum machine is an Alesis SR-16 with two pedals - one for tap tempo (so I start the guitar, tap the tempo and it comes in at that tempo) and the other for on/off. I can also put in fills with the tap pedal.

Keyboard: Although keyboard isn't essential to the modern worship band (see my previous posting), it helps, especially in this setup, to have some smoothing ambient sounds. But where is your favorite 80's synthesizer rocker? Nowhere....and that's just fine. Grab your laptop, download ambient pads for free in every key from this website [http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1006691], open iTunes and turn on the repeat-2 function. Suddenly, you've got yourself the best keyboardist you've ever played with. Run that signal through a volume pedal and suddenly you've also got yourself fade in/fade outs.

Other Options: There's many directions you can go with this - many things can be done with loops that you can download online that will essentially work like full background tracks, which allow you to add and subtract instruments as you need them. Get yourself a program like Reason, Cakewalk or even GarageBand on your Mac and you can produce an entire band sound without the band. You might also try a loop pedal, which allows you to make live loops (ie, smack your guitar for percussion, loop it, play the rhythm part, loop it, play the lead part, etc.). I've seen guitar geniuses do this and imitate full bands, as well - but you have to know what you're doing.

Whatever you do, do it well. And please, please repeat after me: "I will never allow my church to sing songs to a CD." There, we just made the world a better place.

Worship SHIFT: Piano As the Golden Calf

I’ve consulted on worship to what’s going on a hundred churches now from all different areas of the country and with all different issues, but there seems to be one commonality between most of them. If they say they have issues with their worship, the first thing I ask for is what the keyboardist is doing. Most issues can be traced back to a wrong role for the piano – trying to play Hillsong or Tomlin with piano leadership because the keyboardist won’t back down or because the church thinks it needs a piano leading to sing. It struck me in watching the “Hillsong Creative Training” DVD the other day, that modern worship has found a creative place for the piano on the stage: nowhere.

A little history lesson on worship as it relates to keyboards throughout history. For the first few years of the Church’s history, instrumentation wasn’t a key issue with singing, since much of it happened through chant or through basic accompaniment. However, with the advent of the pipe organ, the European church fell in love with four part hymn singing to that sound and it migrated with the immigrants to North America. Worship music was largely written for piano and organ for years, except for a few pockets of Great Awakening hymns drummed up by mandolin players in the Kentucky hills. But, a worship revolution coincided with a church revolution in the 1970’s-1990’s. Although groups like the Gaithers had been using popular instrumentation, churches across the country started to use guitars and rhythm instruments in worship. This change should not be taken lightly as many a “worship war” split churches and people. Around the year 2000, a more significant change for our discussion happened. Worship music became more of an industry, more mainstream and more focused on a few key centers of output with a few key leaders setting the tone. Worship leaders Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United emerged as the key leaders of today.

There is one other note that should be made. Many people equivocate “contemporary” with “modern” worship. I argue for a difference between the two, and the difference is key in understanding changes in the use of the keyboard. This difference can be seen very evidently between contemporary leaders, such as Michael W. Smith and Darlene Zscech versus their national successors – Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United (led by Joel Houston rather than Zscech). Whereas Smith and Zschech’s music makes heavy use of keyboard as a lead instrument, Tomlin and Houston’s use the keyboard only as an accent/support instrument, if at all. In many cases, especially in live performances, laptops are subbed for keyboards altogether for ambient effects. This change is laid out in great detail by both Hillsong Church, who replaced Zscech with Houston in the 2000’s to change their style and Smith, whose live worship CD released in the 2000’s, “A New Hallelujah” features virtually no original songs after his 1990’s releases “Worship” and “Worship Again” featured mostly original content. Smith’s songs have mostly dropped out of the CCLI Top 25 (most used music in the worldwide Church), while Houston/Hillsong’s music dominates it.

This leaves churches in a bind. The first thing to realize as a church is that you must diagnose what stage you are currently in and not try to jump two stages at once. If you are traditional, the jump to modern could kill your base if you don’t move to contemporary first. The move to modern must be done, as all changes must, well. If your church does not have a strong rhythm section (rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums), attempting to shift to modern worship is an almost impossible task. There is a reason the worldwide Church went through contemporary worship on the way to modern worship – it is a bridge style with some traditional elements, including logical versifications and piano-based leadership, in many cases.

In modern worship, however, the keyboardist is asked to step to the back and simply serve as a support or accent instrument. Even keyboardists for major leaders in the industry such as Hillsong United rarely use two hands on the keyboard – often playing one or two notes at a time or laying down ambient pads to undergird the sound.

This change in the keyboard’s role will, obviously, be felt the most by the keyboard player. For churches who are transitioning, recognize that all keyboard players will not be happy with the change. Traditional piano players are used to playing with both hands, laying down bass, treble, alto and soprano lines, setting the rhythm and leading the congregation. To shift from that to simply playing accent notes and laying down ambient chords is not only difficult to swallow, it can be downright insulting (not to mention many churches pay organists/piano players and modern worship means their paycheck goes away).

Recognize that you may have keyboardists that may quit and that isn’t the end of the world. In some ways, training new keyboardists for the new style is optimal compared to trying to fit traditional keyboardists into a modern keyboardist role. It is important to realize, however, that keyboardists are artists and, when pushed aside or asked to do something limiting, will react harshly unless they are blessed with a high degree of humility. I cannot tell you how many churches this scenario repeats itself in. At conferences, I’ll often mention the “piano Nazi” and someone jumps into everyone’s mind because the experience is so common to all of us.

The key is to approach worship change as necessary and with love. If you love too much and let the keyboardist run you over, they will. If you are too adamant about their role, you could run off a very good potential band member. Do not be afraid, however, to move forward if your keyboardist will not come with you. Find someone else (you can fake keyboard in a modern band with very limited knowledge if you have good rhythm and knowledge of notes, using the right keyboard patches) or simply download some ambient mp3 sounds from the internet and use a laptop in the keyboardist’s place. Often, it sounds better.

Make sure everyone realizes that, in this style of music, keyboard is not lead. That needs to be said and said again. If your band and church isn’t comfortable with that – play some 80’s/90’s music that’s written for piano leadership. Muddying the waters will only hurt you in the long run.

Worship SHIFT: Why the Word “Blended” Scares Me as a Worship Style

Churches suffer for many reasons. In some cases, they are subject to moral failure, to stubbornness or to attacks from the devil. But, nothing kills a church or ministry faster than the greatest devil of them all: ambiguity. When people don’t know what the boundaries or definitions of terms everyone’s throwing around are, other people get hurt. When words like “blended” enable everyone to attach their own particular meaning, people fight.

The ironic thing is that many churches strive for ambiguity under the guise of “freedom” or “inclusivism”. What’s interesting is that we fail to take into account our theological perspective on human depravity – that, given ultimate freedom with no boundaries, we fail every time. Boundaries don’t necessarily limit freedom so much as they provide an open space within which to create. You spend less time worrying about what is “acceptable” and more time focusing on continued innovation on the norm, which is key to worship in any style or context.

I’ve seen far too many churches choose “blended” for the wrong reason. You’ve generally got the traditional camp thinking to themselves “how much are we willing to give up to appease the contemporary side?” and the contemporary camp asking themselves “how far can we push the limits before the traditionalists bite back?” Of course, the problem with all of this is that no one is thinking about the bigger issues – how does God want to be worshipped? How does our immediate neighborhood/target demographic want to worship and what sort of music to they listen to?

Really, it brings out the selfishness in everyone – each side determining to themselves that they’ll define what sort of blend we’ll have – 80/20 instead of 50/50, for instance. Both are blended – but both include concessions from one side or the other. You can call my latte a blended drink regardless of the percentage of milk, espresso or flavoring.

So what’s the positive solution? There could be many, but I’ll propose one. If you truly want a mix of traditional, contemporary and modern elements – try on this word: eclectic. Unlike “blended” which simply implies the presence of two elements (99/1 is still blended), eclectic has qualitative degrees. For instance, something with 10 elements is more eclectic than something with 2. To be eclectic is to notice when the presence of a particular element is under-represented or simply missing.

How would you describe your church’s worship?

Worship SHIFT

Some of you may have noticed I haven't blogged in a while - some you definitely have not. Well, one of my 2010 professional goals is to take up blogging once again, now that I'm settled in the Republic of Texas.

For the upcoming months, I'm going to do something people have been asking me to do for a while - espouse a little on the topic of shifting worship in a traditional, established church towards a more contemporary or modern style. I'm calling it Worship SHIFT and they'll start coming hot and heavy since I get passionate about this stuff. This blog will feature topics that are more philosophical in nature. If you are looking for more nuts and bolts type advice, feel free to email me [mark@sunriseaustin.org] or join us on the new CRC Network, if you're CRC, of course. Post questions in the Worship forum and I'll be happy to take it from there and we'll have the luxury of hearing more voices. But here, you only get mine. Lucky you.

WAR and Sympsi....ummmm

This is me finding my way back onto the map once again after (yet another) hiatus. I get in these funks sometimes where blogging isn't a priority. Some of you know what I'm talking about - the rest of you probably stopped reading my blog months ago.

I wanted to reflect a little on the last two weekends for myself and others who attended both the Worship Arts Retreat in Greenville and the Calvin Worship Symposium at Calvin College. First, WAR. Our first attempt at a modern worship conference in mid-Michigan can't be viewed as anything but a success. When you take into account the fact that we spanned six denominations and had churches from up to three hours away for our first go-round, it makes me grin from ear to ear. However, I think it was the content that set this WAR apart. The temptation, of course, was to put on something that was low-quality the first time around so as to not set next year's expectations too high and give the people what they paid for (entry fee was $0). However, our speakers were fantastic, our sectional leaders were of great quality and the amount of pure information that was distributed over the course of 8 hours was absolutely phenomenal. For me, that's the trick - the information is all out there, but the true test is how quickly and how efficiently you can get that information into the hands of those who desire it most.

In contrast, this past weekend, I attended the Calvin Worship Symposium at Calvin College, mostly because it was free to me as a last-year seminarian. I'll move right past preferences here to feelings: Symposium disappointed me. It was not for a lack of information, nor for a lack of qualified individuals teaching, nor for a lack of resources. What disappointed me was Symposium's lack of validity for the future Church. As a guitarist, as a modern worship guy, as someone who had just put on a meager attempt at a conference the weekend before, I was saddened that the Symposium has not only trended towards traditionalism in worship (or what I like to call Reformed neo-traditionalism) - it has sold out wholesale to organists, choirs traditional worship.

I am not here to say that I think there's anything wrong with traditional worship. In many ways I prefer it and envy those who put together traditional services - there's less things that can go wrong, less musicians needed, less monitoring of cultural trends that must be done. But it is pure folly to think that Symposium is resourcing the Church of the future. Rather, it is accommodating the Church of the past and roughly a third of the Church of the present (at least in the US). What blew me away were the amount of Reformed people that told me outright that they would rather attend my fledgling Worship Arts Retreat at a wholly Wesleyan church than attend the Symposium at Calvin's campus. Its true for young pastors, as well. One of my old professors commented that he was shocked to see me at Symposium.....not because I work in a Wesleyan church, but because I was under the age of 40.

There is nothing wrong with leading a conference on traditional or neo-traditional worship. Go ahead. But isn't a travesty that the premier worship institute in the Reformed world can't offer a handful of sectionals and worship services to teach Reformed churches how to do modern worship well - especially when so many are foaming at the mouth for it? I have no solid research, but common sense would seem to support the following logic: CICW (Calvin Institute for Christian Worship), think about all the churches in the CRC (its home denomination) that are growing. Now, what percentage of churches are running a modern worship style and what percentage of those churches are running a traditional or neo-traditional (world music) style? I would dare bet the vast majority on the cutting edge of growth are also on the cutting edge of worship. If that's the case, why are we throwing 70% of our energy into supporting the dying ones to keep them doing what they're doing?

Its not as if the CICW doesn't have modern worship practitioners at its disposal. Greg Scheer, Paul Ryan, Ron Reinstra and other in-house options could at least run a second track - a modern track - for Symposium. It causes me to reflect on the Hymn Society of America: when you base an organization or a conference on a dying art, you will eventually end up dead. Yes, they may be the ones who support you financially now, but down what path are you leading them - innovation or perpetuation?

I'm not asking for a complete overhaul of the Worship Symposium, but for pete's sake - can't we acknowledge the large percentage of Reformed churches already doing modern worship and, even more so, those who deeply long to but are hopelessly lost?

Let the Children Come to Me

There's a strange phenomena that happens in churches that unites new churches, established churches and mega-churches: a high commitment to childrens ministries. Whether that means a simple "Sunday School" or a more recent approach such as "Children's Church" or "Kidzone"-style separate worship services, childrens ministries are often one of the first areas for any church to create, staff and develop. Missional churches do it as a way to attract the coveted "young family" demographic and established churches do it as a way to keep the young families from leaving or coming back after sowing their wild oats.

Childrens ministry, like youth ministry, often receives imperative treatment - we have to have a program for that, we need to develop that ministry, we can't cancel that program this week - and the classic "I think kids are the future of our church" (which everyone says euphorically, as if they were the first person to think of such a concept). There are various childrens ministries issues that could be discussed, but I'd like to try this one on for size: bus ministries can ruin a community.

Now that I've got your attention, [insert rural evangelical church name with bus here], let me explain. A town to the south of us, where I do a significant amount of work, is spiritually dead. But, its a different kind of spiritually dead than you might find in other places. In this city, folks have been inculturated to think that church is for old people and kids. Like King David, we might look aghast and ask "Who did this?" But like David, the finger is pointing back - it was the churches themselves.

Four churches (three Baptist and one Nazarene, though many more around the country are guilty) own buses or vans and participate in what has become a Sunday ritual known the town-over. At 8:30 AM, as if it was a school day, kids are picked up by the van-load and carted off to churches in the countryside where straight-haired, KJV-reading, suit-and-dress-wearing pietists welcome them in with open arms.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Each of these churches have stellar childrens ministries. They teach Scripture. They disciple children. They report hundreds of "decisions" for Christ annually. By 5 year olds.

What is the net effect? This town is FILLED with former bus kids - former children who made "decisions" for Christ. I don't want to quench the power of the Holy Spirit, but almost church in the town has an average attendance age of 70. Q-Tip churches. I have had dozens of conversations with unchurched adults in that community and, to a person, each one has uttered the same words, "My kids really need to go to church. I don't want to take them, though - do you have a bus ministry? Its really important that they go." Ouch.

But, I'm not leaving you out, mega-churches and trendy evangelicals. How many of your current adult attenders went through a Kidzone-style childrens ministry? If you're like most churches, not many. Mega-churches around the world are beginning to ask themselves if worshipping with all ages might not be such a bad idea. Multi-gen ministry is one of the hottest topics in the church world today. The reason? People are inculturated as worshippers. When they're inculturated to consumer-based childrens ministries, its hard to transition to student ministry worship, even if its also consumer-based. And, its hard to transition students into "adult" worship. At each transition, huge numbers are hemorrhaged.

Children are the future of our Church. Really? Then let's start re-evaluating.

Doing Worship Ministry Poor

There is perhaps nothing in the church that gets me as passionate about ministry as poor, rural churches doing worship ministry well. After all, its where I got my start in ministry and its one of the few areas my brother and I are forcibly harmonious on.

Certainly, worship ministry has become a focus within the last 50 or so years in the Church at large. There are some that would say, and I'm often tempted to be one of them, that worship ministry is currently in an evolutionary pattern, from something that was not sustainable to something that is sustainable for the future growth of the Church. Without getting into that argument's validity, I think its important to point out that churches across the US have positioned themselves at one step along the path from traditional worship to post-modern worship (what I would call post-contemporary worship). Many churches claim to be blended, but blended often only means that you have one foot in two different places on the path or that you can't do anything well at all. That said, one of the main issues in worship ministry today is quality or, as some would put it, excellence. While this might be a commercial/advertising term in many cases, in its purest form, it is attempting to give of our worship "firstfruits" - giving our best, as a congregation, to the Lord.

I've spent my time in several churches over the years that, like all churches, have had their own unique issues in worship music. I've been yelled at, argued with, praised, chided, cheered for, walked out on, gossiped about and about every response you can have in ministry in the short time I've been leading worship. As I stated in the previous post, however, doing ministry in the Greenville/Belding area is often an exercise in the undone - exploring truly new ways of doing things and being resourceful with what you've been given. Once again, these are not all my thoughts, but have been contributed to by fellow worship pastors. To that end, I truly appreciate the thoughts of Dan, Nate, Scott, Jeff, and Paul. This is a journey we traverse together.

As with Youth Ministry, I very much wish somebody would write a book about doing ministry in a poor, rural environment. If that were not possible, I would settle for a book about either a poor or rural environment. In lieu of a book I am not yet experienced enough to write, here are some thoughts specifically about doing worship ministry poor:

• Shallow Talent Pool: For years, I neglected to consider how lucky I was to have not one, but two Christian colleges in my backyard in Orange City. It is truly amazing how many college students, both male and female, are capable of being phenomenal worship talents. If you don't believe me, check out your local Christian college's worship service. In many small communities, this worship service is the best thought-out, well-equipped service to be found for miles around. This isn't a mistake - its because in every Christian college dorm, there are 20 guitar players and vocalists galore. Even if you're nowhere close to a Christian college, however, living in a city provides so much untapped talent. Within a few blocks of your church's campus, my guess is that you can find hoards of talent in local bars, coffee shops, high school talent shows and lots of other artistic venues. That simply is not a luxury that affords itself to rural America. Artists, by their very nature, are driven away from the rural, the uneducated and the rural, "Redneck" poor. You don't see poetry readings or Jack Johnson concerts or hippie hangouts in small rural America. You also don't find loads of musical talent.
• There is Little Appreciation for the Arts: This point is exhibited by the previous point to some extent, but it should be noted that you cannot prepare an urban worship leader for what they will experience in taking the stage in a town like ours. I've often talked with fellow worship leaders (who are far better musicians than I) about the feeling of disgust and disappointment they feel after walking off the stage of their worship gatherings. In places where the arts are appreciated, musicians on stage are blown away by the energy, passion and sound of the crowd. Here, if you play a musically fantastic or musically defunct service, you get the same response - nothing. In short, there is little motivation for playing well, little motivation for giving your musical "firstfruits" to the Lord. Often, our job as rural worship leaders is to build up and compliment our musicians for a job well done because we know that if we rely on the normal complimentary spirit of the congregation, our musicians will burn out because they feel unsupported.
• Artistic Personality + Power = Trouble: There is a truth about those of us with an artistic persuasion that is true - we are moody. I think most artists and musicians would admit to you that they have weak moments of moodiness - depression, elation, rage and passion. This isn't so much a bad thing - its what fuels the beauty of the arts. However, what happens in many small churches is that it provides an opportunity for the worst parts of an artist's personality to become paramount. Think about every small rural church you know of that does not have paid worship personnel; isn't there one person who has taken over the show, bent it to their own needs and desires, driven many other people away and, even though they may be talented, brought the entire worship ministry down with them? Sadly, this is also true in many churches with staffed worship personnel. The sad reality is that any ministry, when there is a leadership void, will produce a leader who exercises control to their own tune over time. When you multiply this reality with the passionate personality of the artist, this is magnified. It is a sad reality that many worship programs - the most visible aspect of a church's ministry - can be and are being done in one or two people.
• Lack of Balance: It is a sad truth in many rural congregations that there is a lack of balance between outreach-driven attractional ministry and inreach-driven self-service. It is a true fact that all churches need dimensions of outreach and all churches need dimensions of inreach, but many churches are unable to find anything close to this balance. Sadly, many err dramatically on the side of inreaching. Many times this is due to an ugly combination of inexpensive and undesirable leadership, uneducated perspective, stubborn mindset, unintegrated Christian lifestyles and a disjointed view of outreach. This may sound judgmental, but last weekend I watched a church bonfire with one attendee, a corner Baptist protest with signs condemning motorists with KJV fire & brimstone, a hip-hop concert called "Summerfest for Jesus" and a ministry year kick-off with roughly one half of the church attending the one Sunday morning service. There are things that happen in the rural, poor church that are inexplicable, personalities that are disgusting and ideas that are horribly ill-formed. Without a system of accountability, many of these activities happen within our church walls and are branded with the name of Christ.
• Irrational Discussions: I've often heard the comment from younger folks who are working for worship change: "Why should I continue to embrace the other side of this discussion when they are simply tolerating us to our faces and gossiping behind our backs?" It is true that there are many irrational discussions that take place behind the scenes and sometimes on the scene of worship ministry based almost completely on personal preferences that have been misidentified as Biblical norms. We've all seen it on both sides. However, in a poor rural culture that believes email forwards about Barack Obama being a Muslim and the starting petitions to stop the government from charging to use your email, its easy to see how irrational arguments can become stubborn shouting matches
• Burnout: It is not surprising that so many people burn out. For the average church musician in a small town, you might be the only drummer or only guitarist your church has access to. In that case, they want you to play every Sunday, every service. For paid worship staff, this means that the grass looks greener in the city with every passing day and the endless cycle of talented ministry staff fleeing for large, suburban churches is perpetuated once again. It is tiring to run a basic worship ministry in your average suburban church - it is maddeningly exhausting to run one in a poor rural church where you are under-appreciated, often-maligned and tormented for shielding what musicians you do have from church persecution.
• Good Leadership is Hard to Find: If you've worked in a poor, rural church you already know about this one. Whereas in many churches, you'd have a quick short list of people who would be good leaders and point people for areas of worship ministry, doing ministry in this kind of a setting is often a one horse parade. You're happy if one of your musicians listens to Christian radio and knows some of the songs. You're happy if your instrumentalists will commit to showing up every two or three weeks. You're happy if you ever can hold a practice with everyone caring enough to show up. However, if you've worked in a suburban church, even a small one, you know that these pleasantries of the rural church are not enough to base a consistent, quality worship ministry on. They're a start, but they're not everything.
• Under-Resourced: When I came to my current church, the entire area of worship ministry had a budget that was just big enough to buy bulletin stock and communion supplies. Even with a good degree of lobbying on my part, we still are working with lots of equipment that either belongs to our musicians or has been donated from our own personal stashes. We cobble-job electronics all the time, we work EBay and Craig's List so we can buy the bare essentials and have some money left over. We have equipment that's not even legal by Federal Government standards and often times violate copyrights out of necessity. And we're a well-resourced worship ministry in this community. It is amazing to hear stories from other churches about shortcuts they've used, laws they've violated and one-man-band-type performances because they were not given the resources to do what was asked of them. Good worship ministry takes money - even bad worship ministry takes money. Don't take it for granted.

As I said in my previous post, many of the aspects of doing ministry poor can be horribly frustrating. Its no surprise that the most talented staff and church attenders with an artistic barometer head for suburban and urban centers. There are services after which (and during which) I would like to break down and cry or just cancel. One of my fellow pastors said to me that he often feels he could be replaced by a musical chimpanzee with cymbals and the congregation wouldn't bat an eye. But perseverance pays off. Our worship ministry is leading the way in our church in terms of growth and accountability. We're plugging in non-Christians who become part of our community of faith. We're resourcing other churches to help give them a step up (check out the free Worship Arts Retreat). We've become an artistic haven for those who, at the very least, can gain energy from other artists even if they don't feel it from the congregation. We're dedicated to not burning out talent, but home-growing it through the involvement of people without compromising our "firstfruit" excellence. And most of all, we're offering our worship to a worthy God who loves the redneck as much as the white collar, the rural as much as the suburban and the farmer as much as the lawyer. Our labor is not in vain.

Experiencing God Diffently in Worship

This past weekend was the General Assembly of the Church of God in Michigan, and I served my role as a delegate. This is my second year going, and so I'm more free to notice things rather than try to remember everyone's names and network with lots of new people.

I had a sort of epiphany during our closing worship service. Our worship leader was an African-American woman who I thought looked like Condoleeza Rice and her TV anchorman husband on the bass guitar. She had lots of energy and was a great worship leader....for her context. I was sitting up in the front corner, so I got a chance to observe almost everyone in the place. First of all, I noticed her own son, with his head on the table, probably napping-clearly uninterested sitting at the table next to me. Next I noticed the large contingent of African-American leaders in the group experiencing worship like they had been all weekend - fists pumping, amen-ing, mmhmm-ing, raising hands, etc. Then I noticed a large contingent of middle-aged white people: a little milder than their African-American cohorts, but still with hands raised, swaying, pointing to heaven, etc. I noticed the few people in my age group (20-30), mostly youth pastors, interacting with the music but not selling out. Finally, I noticed my table, good stone-faced Danish people from my church, similar to the Dutch ones I'd grown up with.

All this got me to thinking: how do I experience God, and do I look down on other people if they experience Him differently? I'm met with this constantly in Detroit at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Often times, the God of the African-American Baptist people I talk with seems so much different than my own that I feel like I have more coherence with my Orthodox Rabbi professor. In that case, it may just be that my Rabbi is used to putting his theology into logical categories, like I am. In worship, I'd probably place myself between the arm-folded Danes and the charismatic middle age types.

I think one of the ways that this really rears its head is worship style. The truth of the matter is that those of us who are worship leaders have all drank the "experiential" kool-aid to some extent. We have to because its undeniable. What's interesting for us as is that our jobs, by their very nature, seem to require us to pander to whatever the current generation is because we're at a point in time where the way people experience God has changed drastically and distinctly in the last 50 years. We still have people in our benches that experience God best through straight-up organ hymns. Then, even though the CRC seems to completely have missed this step, there is an entire generation of "big worship" people. This is the classy-suited-big-haired-mega-church style people who sing all songs that were popular from about 1985-1993 (Majesty & Thy Word are classics and, interestingly, not that dissimilar). There's a surprisingly large amount of these people - they're Wimber's folks - raising hands, yelling amens, but still very skeptical of modern worship or emerging church stuff. Finally, there's this whole generation coming up now that identifies with the emerging style of worship or the Chris-Tomlin-modern style of worship. Add into that a fairly consistent worship African-American gospel style, and you've got 4 different kinds of oil being thrown into water.

So, is it okay to say one way is preferable to another, or do we have to acknowledge all as equally good, in true politically-correct style? Now, I regularly get disgusted when I watch Christian cable television, even though I know many churches in the South that eat that stuff up. I find the theology of many of the patients (and the pastors) I meet in Detroit poorly-formed and illogical (not just because I disagree, but I objectively think its illogical). You can really take this argument a long way. If your experience of God is co-equal with everyone else's (as my CPE program tells me it is), then you have zero basis for questioning an experience that is Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu. These are just different experiences of God, be they in other faiths, or in other theologies (ways of talking about God).

Ultimately, someone has to make some sort of qualitative statement, so here goes one try: I think that emerging/modern worship is more seeker-friendly than "big worship" or organ-based hymns. Now that might evoke a "duh" out of you because you know there's no churchplant in any denomination that has ported in a pipe organ in the last 10 years, but really, that's a judgmental statement. Do I think there's a place for other experiences of God? Yes. But I think we have to be realists here. Churches that have not gotten modern, emerging or experiential in their worship have shrunk, as a general rule. Now, there are churches that do traditional worship REALLY well that manage to grow, but I would offer that quality tradition is simply a better prescription for delay of the inevitable than others have found.

So try this on for size: I felt uncomfortable in our GA's worship service today because of all the amen-ing, hand-raising, fist-pumping, liturgical-dancing, and old-people-that-can't-clap-on-the-beat. And, for a while, I felt guilty for being uncomfortable. After all, I'm a worship pastor, I should be able to "get into" all sorts of worship, and usually I can. But I couldn't help thinking to myself: if I took a non-Christian in here right now, they would be scared shitless and think we are crazy. Now, some might say its because the Spirit was moving. But last I checked, the Spirit also empowered mission and God is not in conflict with Himself. I don't have a good answer for this question, but I do know that I can be most faithful to my calling by playing coffee-house-style-white-20-something worship music in my context and its growing the Kingdom. By their fruits shall you know them. Can we be evaluative of people's ways of experiencing God, or is that just politically incorrect?

Inbred Worship

A few friends of mine back at Dordt have a blog called What Grinds our Gears. If I had to write an entry about what grinds my gears, its problems with worship events in churches. This is particularly important to me now in my new job as Pastor of Worship at my church. We're starting to throw around a new term these days in our worship meetings: inbred worship. This is no slam on my wife or anybody from northern Michigan, its a term we use to stop ourselves from the temptation of making worship ours. This blog assumes Biblical worship categories and considerations....don't jump on my back unless you're attacking the actual text here.

There is a large temptation in the Christian worship arena that wants to make worship something that belongs to us. A current mission statement might look something like this: Worship is done by our congregation, with our congregation, and by our congregation for the benefit of our congregation in the context of our congregation. Ouch. The problem with this is, obviously, that it doesn't make room for God. Of course, we would all claim that our worship is for God, unless we're way out of line. But worship planning and practice quickly becomes a circle we enclose ourself within.

For example, as a worship planner, I'm in charge of reading our context. Then, I'm in charge of creating a relevant worship service. I pick songs I like (or I wrote) or that I think would "speak the congregation's language". After that, I go to worship and benefit greatly from the service. If its done right, my evaluation tells me we did a great job!

My worship class is attempting to teach us out of that idea. It said, lets not ask what worship can do for people, but how we can equip believers. Great idea. However, while we're equipping believers, here comes a non-believer. What are equipping them to do? Find Jesus, hopefully. But what kind of sermon equips believers and altar calls? I ain't got one of those on my computer.

In order to make worship that's not inbred, we should allow doors in our circle for entrance. These doors can be things like a gospel presentation in every service (not hoping for people to glean it off of our ritual). Another way is a highly accountable worship staff. I'm in the process of recruiting music people and non-music people to serve as service critiquers. Grandpa Frank who's plowed fields his whole life can be as good an evaluater of my service as Mrs. Jones who teaches music for a living. Why? Only asking music people about your music is back to the inbred. Its like one of those concerts where the choir does lots of really musically cool things, but the audience hates it because its completely irrelevant.

This isn't just music. Its preaching, its kids ministry, its offertories. Our prostrate nature in worship should limit our ultimate control over it.