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Aaron Niequist – link to notes and examples6 Things that I am really really passionate about:

• Accompanists
  • if the sound of your rehearsal sounds complete without the community singing, it might not be a very good accompaniment
  • Would your community say that you accompany their singing well?
• Here
  • Two phrases that were officially retired at Mars Hill
    • …and God showed up, 
    • God, we invite you here today
    • Psalms 139:7-10
    • Acts 17
    • It is not our role as worship leaders to convince God to show up.  It should open our eyes to what is already there
      • 2 Kings 6:15-7
      • Quote from Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr
    • How does your language reflect what you actually believe is true?
• Creativity
  • variety, freshness
  • We need to pursue creativity, both musically and experientially for our community AND for us.
  • Ways to be creative
    • Musical Creativity – 
      • different styles: gospel, spirituals, high church.  “I want Jesus to walk with me”
      • had a funk sunday and a reggae sunday and a drum cadence sunday
    • Experiential Creativity – if we said we are going to worship now, everyone would expect music. What are ways to experience worship other than music
      • Tuning our hearts exercise – sing phrases up and down the scale- “hallelujah” “Lord have mercy” Bands and vocals warm up, so should the worshippers
      • How can we serve people who don’t love to sing?
    • Songwriting Creativity – what are the words that we are putting on people’s lips?
  • What aspect of your worship experiences could use a fresh breath of creativity?
• Freedom – confusion is not the same thing as freedom
  • How to serve the “choir”
    • dive into your role fully
    • figure out exactly what you’re asking people to do
    • use everything you can – music, your mic, body language, gestures, and if all else fails, words – to clearly help them know their part
    • teaching and training your community on how to “use” your worship service – this why we do this song, this is why there is an instrumental part here – for you to keep worshipping
  • How to serve the “choir director”
    • Personal preparation – i need to be prepared so i can serve the others
    • Team preparation
      • Email the week before Thursday
      • Download page
      • Rehearsal Thurs pm – we called this the second rehearsal stating that they should have already rehearsed on their own
      • Sun am shower rehearsal – go through the songs in the shower in your head
      • Sun am run through – 
    • Every team member must be lead differently, but everyone can benefit from preparation
    • Where are you on the slide from confusion to freedom?
• Hurt
  • Asked how many people knew someone who has been hurt by a church and pretty much everyone raised their hands
  • to work at a church is to get hurt
  • to be a human being is to get hurt
  • Recommended “The Heart of an Artist” “unforgiveness is drinking poison, hoping it kills someone else.”
  • Hebrews 12 – “therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…”
  • Hebrews 12:1, 7-17
  • Hardship = God’s Discipline and it produces righteousness and peace.  BUT only if you are willing to be trained by it
  • What are you doing with the hurt inside you?

Action

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  • Does it lead to action? Does it get us involved in the world or help us retreat out of it. Romans 12:1 offer our bodies as a living sacrifice
  • “I will follow you” over and over again is like him saying to his wife, “I will take out the trash” eventually Shauna is going to get ticked and say either take out the trash or stop saying your will take out the trash
  • Amos 5:21-24 – “I hate, I despise your religious feasts… I will not listen…” you must let Justice Roll (*song idea)
  • Let’s be doers!
  • Quote from John Robinson, “Honest to God“
  • “Christ’s example is being demeaned by the church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is AIDS.  The church is the sleeping giant…” BONO
  • How does your worship experience launch your community into living it

Q&A Session

• Have an honesty and encouragement session – 3 things they are knocking it out of the park with and 1 thing they could improve on. And let them do the same thing
• How to have longevity in this position – not to be isolated.  Have people who you can be honest with and have people who are honest with you
• How do you keep freshness everyweek – once a month have a really big something that breaks the mold. Also allow yourself to make one mistake every week.
• Check out Finale – music software