- Confusion is the enemy of Worship
- Improve Your Process
- Refine Your Reflection
- Ask the Question: What will turn this song time into a worship time?
- Identify Sticking Points!
- Through private worship
- Plan for moments ahead of time
- Craft your Comments
- Use scripture as often as possible - anytime you can replace your words with God’s words is a good thing
- Ask a compelling question -”lord I’m amazed” ask what there amazed about, then tell God right here, now let’s sing it again.
- Tell a compelling story - “my Jesus I love you” - his wife put post it notes everywhere saying different ways she loves him.
- Be authentic, honest and real - confess
- Write it out - write out ahead of time what you want to say
- Sharpen Your Leadership
- Sharpen your preparation - you should know the song better than anyone in the room
- Memorize -
- Know it best - lead
- Worship through it in private
- Communicate - with your band, your team, your congregation
- Prayer - individual and team
- Action Plan
- Which elements would make the greatest difference in your personal worship leading?
- Improve your process
- Refine your reflection
- Craft your comments
- Sharpen your leadership
Awesome Breakout! Want to buy this for worship leaders back home!
- @Willow Services start getting planned 16 weeks out
- Team is made up of video, drama, music, etc
- RIP Meeting - Raw Ideas Planning
- We are planning out willow’s Labor Day service
- Start with a dance - Flight of the bumblebee with men in business suites and briefcases
HEH… that was enough notes for that one.
“Finding your unique voice as a worship leader”
4 things every worship leader has in common:
- Need to be theologians - we need to know who we’re worshiping
- met his wife and asked her, “who has the sexiest adam’s apple” it worked. they started dating.
- point of story. He had no idea ahead of time of what he was going to say to her. We need to know what we are communicating
- Need to be disciples
- do you love the Lord passionately?
- do you have a love for the word of God?
- Do you exemplify the fruit of the Spirit in your life?
- Need to be artists
- We do ourselves an injustice by just learning the chords to the top 20 worship songs
- God calls us to do more than just get by.
- Need to be Leaders
- It’s in our title, “worship leader”
- God is not calling us to be the Chris Tomlin, God is calling us to be ourselves
- Book from Parker Palmer quote about burnout that was way too long to type out.
- “Is the life your living worth …” sheesh I keep dazing out. I’m tired.
- Three questions asked
- Who am I?
- What about God am I most uniquely suited to reveal to others
- How is that meaning best lived out?
- Think about what is the world going to miss out on if you die today?
- Man he’s going fast and there isn’t a handout.
- 3 things (don’t know what)
- knowledge
- talent - identify your unique talents and find other ways to make up for your lack of other talents
- ?
- Hedgehog example from “From Good to Great”
- 3 circles - find something in all 3 circles where they overlap
- what are you deeply passionate about
- what can you be the best in the world at
- What is the church/people “hungry for”
Q&A
- How do you create boundaries
- What techniques do you use to prepare on sunday morning for worship? They sing a song backstage prior to service to worship together
- How to be a worship pastor vs song leader? Be sensitive to the spirit of the room. Last night he felt like “Here I am to worship” was a great moment so instead of going straight into next song, he just acknowledged the moment
- How do you feed your artistic talent? Stretch yourself musically. Try different styles
- They hope people leave saying three things
- I connected with God
- I laughed a little
- I can’t believe they did that
- creativity because our God is creative - not for creativity sake
- How do you encourage participation from stage
- Pastor is encouraging the people - saying, “we are a singing congregation right?”
- Worship Leader is reminding them
- How do you discover your style?
- Start watching people and ask yourself is there some things they are doing that you feel comfortable with. Also take note of things you don’t feel comfortable doing.
Books:
- Good to Great
- Now discover your strengths
Deep Ministry in a Shallow World
- We make about 250 mindless food choices a day
- Our youth ministries end up mindless too…
- In some ways there has never been a better day to be in youth ministries - but in other ways there has never been a more scarier time
- We have a feast of resources available to us… Why is it that students walk away from our youth ministry table undernourished?
- 1 Thes 2:8 -
- What % of your students will be serving the lord 18 onths after graduation - about %50
- According to Lifeway study - about 80% of the students who drift away from God after High School had no intention
- Video from LiveAbove.com
- www.cyfm.net
- Deep Ministry means we Ask then Act
- Kids are ready for deeper foods - we are offering red bull - red bull is for a time to help you out - youth ministry is helping them out in high school but then crashes in college
- Ask then Act… What gospel am I feeling kids?
- We started out good
- Then had guilt
- Then found God’s grace
- Now we serve God out of gratitude - a deep convictional sense, because He loved me first
- Gospel of sin management
- Eph 5 and 6 - commands about submission, armor of God
- When you see God looking at you, what expression is on God’s face?
- Ask then Act - Are student’s doubts welcome at our table?
- The Kids’ Table Catastrophe - New form of segregation in our church - Age segregation
- Ask then Act - How can our kids take their place at God’s diverse kingdom table? A new 5:1 ratio - 5 adults pouring into 1 student -
- Senior pastor asking for students email address to email them - WOW - great googly eyes!
- Ask then Act - How can I train students to feed themselves after graduation?
- We need help learning how to recover
- If Jesus isn’t big enough to forgive a little partying - I need a new religion
- Find a church/group - liveabove.com has a list
- We need training on time and money
- Help us set up a plan for the first 2 weeks
Misc Notes:
- Show the LiveAbove video to Seniors?
Brandon Grissom Elevate Declaration:
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- We are loved by God
- We see ourselves the way God sees us
- We love everyone (even when it hurts)
- We do stuff that makes the world a better place
Greek > Proskuneo > Kiss
Junior High = Change
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- voice is changing
- new way of school
- body is changing
- everyone looks different - one showed up with a beard last week
5 needs of JR HIGH students
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- Physical - rapid growth, voice change, energy levels. Need to provide a place where they can move around and get out some energy - physical outlet
- Social - the primary thing of life. obsessed with connecting with friends. myspace, xbox live, texting, etc. Get them to talk to people - have a greeting time. (just had an idea - provide a card and pen and have them go to 5 people they don’t know and write down their myspace url or facebook name and invite them)
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- Saying at elevate - everyone here is cool. If you are attending here, then you are cool
- Intellectual - questions. They need a safe place where they can ask question. As a worship leader - no churchy language and explain songs! What does hallelujah mean?
- Emotionally - Face serious self-esteem issues. We need to provide an outlet where students can pray through their hurts. Set up prayer stations for students can go to during the service
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- They put down butcher paper and told them to write down prayer request - got some serious stuff. Kind of luck we did with our dirty secrets cards!
- Spiritual - they are questioning you, childhood faith, curious about what friends believe.
Starting a band Vs Creating a worship culture
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- Student involvement vs Student ownership
- Limited Band Openings vs Unlimited creative serving opportunities
- Oldest, most gifted musicians get to play vs musicians are placed in bands of similar age and skill level
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- Older musicians give lessons to younger musicians
- True intergenerational - one 50 yr old who is an awesome example of service and being Christ-like
- authenticity should always trump relevance - you will lose your coolness - students care more about how real you are and not how cool you are
- One band vs multiple bands
- Live worship music vs Worship through music, arts, video, open-mic sharing, interactive experiences, and serving opportunities
- no adults allowed vs specific adults are chosen to provide intergenerational leadership to young artists
- Sing popular Christian songs vs Create original worship music, explain the “churchy” language of pop-christian songs
- Avoids “secular” music vs Embrace that “everything good” comes from God - therefore content can some from a variety of places, not just Christian radio
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- just said we could use radiohead
- Planning is optional vs Planning is vital
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- Quickly involve the first musicians that knock on your door vs Carefully create a process for recruiting retaining, and releasing artists
- Build into yourself:
- Family first
- Daily scripture and quiet time
- Find people to grow with - meet weekly - I meet wednesday nights from 8-11
- Worship Privately
Take home stuff:
- Do we have anyone who can write songs?
- Recruit from outside of the church - where do I find them?
- Don’t plug in everyone - lay in the groundword - process for joining (almost done with ours)
- Audition - bring own equipment - bring a song they know - metronome for drummer - don’t do 4/4 do other signatures - everytime i point to them they do a fill and then get back to the song
- Find people to do the lessons
- Light of the world give students glow sticks
Failure, Frustration & Loss: The Youth Workers Path to Holiness
- Luke 5:1-11
- “Don’t know what kind of crud they are feeding you, but we got buffet in the green room”
- What the experience feels like to be a goldfish - a student leader
- Do you remember what it felt like when you first discovered Youth Ministry? - the world became 3D, color came into the world. You didn’t have to have devotions, you laid in bed at night asking to be pleasing to him and what to do next
- “you showed up to bring cookies one time, then you were tricked into working 45 hours a week”
- “what if we did Cinco de Jesus on Cinco de mayo. Don’t know if God has 5 attributes, but I’ll find them. We’ll have tacos and sombreros. Two kids show up, no we didn’t know anything about it.”
- “I feel inadequate”
- “You never lose hair as a male. It just retires to Florida. Florida on my real estate is my nipples. I apologize for those of you who are visual.”
- “Youth ministry is designed to break you”
- “The calling is to be a spiritual guide. To be a spiritual guide you have to spend time in the Spirit. We must be broken.”
- “The problem in youth ministry is there are kids involved.”
- Thank God for the tough kids who bring you to be dependent on God and be broken instead of praying they go somewhere else.
- The invitation is the invitation we see in Luke 5
- When Jesus invited them, they had no education, probably not moral, all they had were empty boats. They were available and had time. When was the last time you had time in your schedule?
- The american culture is inter-woven in how we see/ignore/serve/worship God
- “whose the good baby? the one who will sit and watch TV and not cry and doesn’t ask for things. Whose the bad baby? the one who cries and needs you and wants to be with you. Kids today are abandoned. We substitute anything we can for relationships.”
- The spiritual life is about subtraction, not addition. You have all you need. Your desire for God and to love kids is enough. If you’ll trust it. If you’ll wait. If you’ll sit in the struggle. You don’t have to be overtaken by greed, consumerism, envy of other ministries. Jesus will give you the ideas and creativity.
- We need to pray that we will just be open to whatever to God
- Sabbath is not a suggestion it’s a commandment. Don’t kill anyone, take a sabbath. Kind of implying if you don’t take a day off you might kill someone.
- Slow down and read the newspaper and instead of skipping the crying african lady on the front to head to the golden globes, take the time to sit and absorb that picture and cry over it
- maybe your poverty is your greatest gift
- Jesus gets in the boat and takes them right back out into the frustrations of the lake. Sitting out all night not catching anything. Then once out there in the frustration with Jesus, the food comes.
- The invitation is to become real.
- Mark did a great job of bringing in what Brian said in the previous session
Well I am in Chicago with Andy, Peyton, Frank and Megan. It is the first time being in Chicago for all of us. It’s cool because we are all excited. Tonight we landed around 5:30 and drove to downtown Chicago. We drove around for a while taking pictures and admiring the city scape. Check out my flickr page for more pics. Then we went to eat @ Ditka’s. It was schweet! I had the “Fridge” burger. It was huge and great! Then we went to Borders and bought some moleskins and some coffee.
Driving from downtown we jammed out to some 80’s music - Mr Roboto, 867-5309, We Built This City, Don’t Stop Believing and Whip It. Then we had some confusion about our hotel, we thought we were staying at amerisuites but it was comfort suites. Now we are in the hotel all chillin in the same room before we go to bed. We are going to shoot a video for our facebook page and then call it a night. We have to be at Willow Creek at 8:30. We are meeting JJ and David from Cypress Bible Church tomorrow morning.
I had the opportunity to go to Innovative Impact to hear Mark Batterson speak. Andy and I went just to hear Mark. Andy got us in for free since he used to work there. I got to meet Mark and he signed a book for me.
Here are the unedited notes I took.
- Your legacy is not your church - it’s your family!
- 2 Samuel 23:20-22
- Dream God sized dreams - God is so much bigger than our wildest dreams
- I don’t want to live my life to the best I can live my life. I want to live my life to the best that God can do through my life.
- The best I can do is the best God can do
- I don’t want things to happen in my life that I am capable of.
- I want to do things that only God is capable of, then I can’t still any of the credit.
- I pray for the favor of God.
- I pray for the favor of God on my family, my church
- I wish I could forget some of the Bible - we suffer from hindsight bias - we know how the stories end - we know when the men are walking around the walls of Jericho that the walls come tumbling down - imagine watching that story unfold not knowing the end - DRAMA - David and Goliath, Peter walking on water, etc
- Action regret - doing something you wish you had not done - short term regret
- Inaction regret - not doing something you should have done - long term regret
- Therefore our biggest regrets at the end of our lives will be the lions we did not chase
- What breaks our heart more as parents - r u happy when they don’t do something wrong or more happy when they do something great?
- God has called us to play offense not defense
- Stop being not doers -
- I’m competitive - I don’t even like losing candyland to my kids
- WOW - story of coaching kids on the side yelling we are on offense - wonder if Jesus is yelling at us… We’re on Offense
- we are known more for what we are against than what we are for!
- had a 533% growth in one week, the prior week was just his family because of huge blizzard
- You do little things like they are big things
- Coffeehouses are today’s modern wells!
- The only thing better would have been if the architect had designed a fireman’s pole to the coffeehouse
- When do you feel like a failure as a parent - when you react to your kids instead of act and create the vision
- I refuse to sacrifice my family on the alter of ministry
- I am fasting yelling for Lent
- Physical, intellectual, spiritual challenges for his son!
- I am going to play offense with my family
- You’ve made a few more trips around the sun than I have had - nice way of saying your old
- I’m grateful that I have a heavenly that tag-teams with me as an earthly father
- Are you playing offense spiritually?
- How many would say, I’m just being honest I prayed too much last year, I read the Bible too much last year
- Dream God sized dreams for one reason - they force you to stay on your knees with Him.
- Pray ridiculous prayers!
- Coffeehouse
- Matthew 18:18 - is the only explanation of why they have coffeehouse
- May 26, 2005 most memorable day of my life - Ethiopia National Park - Game Drive - what an amazing creator God is - that night around a campfire singing worship songs - What if sarah hadn’t faced her fears - the memories, the stories would have gone untold - she was pooped on by a baboon - only bad thing - but it was awesome
- Don’t accumulate possessions accumulate stories!
- What were bedtime stories like at Beniah’s time? Hey dad tell us that lion chasing story again!
Andy said the Truth staff could take today off since we worked all weekend long. I was going to sleep in and then go into work so I could get started on a video. So I got up around 10ish and talked to Alisha on the phone and then video conference on iChat. We talked for a long time then I took a shower and was going to go into work. Then it hit me. I’ve been here in Texas for almost a month and I haven’t really taken a whole day off. I have missed my family so I haven’t wanted to go home. I just stay at work or hang out with students until it’s time to come home and go to bed.
So I decided to take the whole day off. Even though that means I have less time to work on a video, but that should be ok. I work better under pressure anyways! Plus I needed to obey that whole keep the sabbath thing .
Tonight Razmandi called me to see if I wanted to go see the U2-3D movie/concert. It was unbelievable. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the 3D technology. It was amazing. I can’t do it justice with words. If you have a chance you have to go see it. Heck, if you can’t see that go see Hannah Montanna in 3D. It was probably the same way.If there would have been more people there (us 3 and 3 more) and we stood up and actually rocked like we were there… it would have been even better. It was kinda weird sitting there emotionless. All I could do was tap my foot…. A LOT!U2 is so amazing!Goodnight
Anyone out there going to this? I am definitely going to sign Alisha and I up for this. It sounds like a great time and I am looking forward to getting away with my wife, especially after being away from her for so long here. It’s kind of cool because Alisha and I saw this on TV one night and said we wanted to go but knew it was too expensive because of the traveling cost across the country. Well now I live 3.5 hours aways! How awesome is that?
Leave me a comment if you are going and maybe we can hook up.
