The Glory of Reflection

Well, not exactly that kind of reflection.

But thinking deeply and carefully. Perhaps better stated The Art of Looking in the Mirror.

I was compelled to take a look over my previous seven days of work and pull any observations and learnings. I was astounded at that surfaced. I'll share my tweetable kernels. I won't share any of the "story behind the tweet" unless you'd like me to. :) I hope they are both inspiring in and of themselves, but even more so, that they'd inspire you to reflect and record as well.

There's something from God in planning my work and then following that plan. #grace #integrity #anointing

Never speak dishonorably about someone to make yourself look better. It simply does the opposite. #humility #honor #keepyourmouthshut

Being the worship leader doesn't exempt you from playing only your fraction/percentage of the whole.

You can't overestimate the value of a team breaking bread regularly together. It's worth the time and energy to do it. (and Heather reminded me that it holds true for the "team" of our family!)

Who has been a hero to you? Do they know it? Tell them! Again. Again. #encouragement is #gold!

That "begin with the end in mind" thing has huge real-world implications - do it every day, every time!

Sabbath = still a relevant idea, a holy practice, a generous mandate.

There is such HUGE value in worship leaders being in the same room sharing how they want to grow and then helping each other figure out how to do it. "eradicate isolation and burnout!"

Great band leaders make an average team sound great - they're able to bring out the best on their team, not just sound good themselves.

Here's what my reflection actually looked like:

How to actually do something about my Growth Plan

I hope you were inspired by last month's Worship Fertilizer to begin creating a Growth Plan, but chances are that it's collected about 30 days of dust by now. Poor little Growth Plan. Well, this Saturday morning (February 2nd), we'll gather for training, inspiration, and connecting at Lanco Worship Link's "Spiritual and Technical Formation" Free Worship Training Event. At this event, I'll be leading a workshop we're calling "Bury Your Music Stand" - a metaphor for memorizing your music...a popular goal in the Growth Plan. Following the outline below, we'll walk you though how you can put your own plan into motion. I'll teach for a bit and then we'll actually work on your plan. Cool, huh? (unless you don't live in the area) There's no cost to attend, but please register so that we can plan for enough space for each workshop. So here's a preview, with plenty of nutrition for this Fertilizer!

Why should I have a Growth Plan or do something about it?  If you're asking this question, read the previous Worship Fertilizer.

How do I decide what to focus on?    Sure, the exhaustive list of things that you could work on is long and daunting! First off, you can't work on everything this year. Can't. You've gotta settle the reality that there are things that you can't work on this year. Clear them off of your mental to-do list, your emotional should-do list. Phew. Now, pick about five of the ones you really want to work on. Use the following grid to decide: which ones will give me the greatest long-term benefit (like learning theory or taking lessons) and which ones will give me the most short-term WINS! (like figuring a way to get to rehearsal on time, or buying a tuner) Select a combination of those two categories.

How do I add them to my existing routines?   That's right. It'll be much more doable if you can figure out how to make small shifts in the way you're doing stuff, rather than adding more things to your schedule. (yes and amen!) Three strategies to use are: Songs, Creating Margin, and Stretch & Recover.

Songs The songs we use each week are perfect exercises to use as learning tools. Call it reverse engineering - you need certain skills to play the songs, so figure out what songs require the skills you want to learn and use one of them.

Create Margin  If we're not going to add anything to our schedules, we can each carve out space from what we're doing. We all do things that are inefficient (using rehearsal time to listen to a new song for the first time, not having a clear schedule for rehearsals, etc.). We also tend to do more than we need to...casualties (or causers) of the Pareto Principle - 80% of stuff gets done by 20% of us. How evenly spread is the load on your team? Who creates or copies chord charts? Who sets up the stage? Who leads the prayer and devotional time? (you have one of these, right?!) Who brings the snacks? :-P If you're the leader, learn to give responsibility away. If you're a team member, look for ways to share the load. Leaders that spend all their time and energy doing everything will have little left to help the team grow. You may try shifting (or simply clarifying) the rehearsal schedule. For example, if rehearsal is at 7:00 does that mean you start playing at 7:00 or the earliest time that anyone arrives is 7:00? (somewhere, a light bulb just went off...and someone else said "I sure hope he reads this!") Also, is there a slot in the schedule specifically set aside for growth? And there's the real boost: anything that you pay attention to or measure becomes more efficient, simply by the attention it suddenly receives. So if you just plan and track how you spend rehearsal times for a month (without even implementing any changes) you will gain more margin in how much time you have at rehearsals to work on growth! Using systems is also a great way to create margin. Are you still creating emails and attaching chord chart instead of using Planning Center Online or a similar service? Does your team use standardized chord charts or do you have different, hand-scrawled versions? (what is this, 1993?) Do you use services like CCLI's SongSelect? (yes, I know they're not always correct and you can't edit them, but still...) Do you have checklists for your techs or have you systematized the procedure for sound check or creating theEasyWorship schedule?

Stretch & Recover  I'm learning this valuable practice from a book I'm reading called "The Power of Full Engagement." In every area of our lives we need to exert energy beyond just what's comfortable AND we need to balance that with times of renewal and recovery. (I'll just let that sink in and allow the Lord to speak to your life if your bigger picture needs that - mine does!) For this conversation, if we don't plan for this balance, one of two things may happen: Either you'll get overwhelmed by the thought of "growing, growing, growing...I have too many things to work on!" and you won't do anything, or you'll lose your teammates by going too hard, too fast. Translation: pick one thing you want to work on in one song for this week and push hard on it, but then do the rest of the songs "as usual." That will also help ensure you don't become overly focused on the skills and forget the heart of just loving and worshiping Jesus when you gather for worship.

What resources are available to help me grow?   Good question, because there are tons! And that's not always helpful. In addition to my favorite tools that I shared here, there are three I'd like to give you: Worship Coaching - this is where I come to you, to your church, to your team, and we walk alongside each other for a season of exponential growth. Get details here, and read what others have experienced here. Worship Alliance/Guild - there are small groups of worship leaders that meet to encourage each other regularly. In Central PA, there is one in Ephrata and one in Harrisburg. We truly can't make it without each other. Let me know if you want more info on them. 52 Worship Training Events - I'm not referring to a previous post, I wanted to include this one to get your feedback on the idea as well as to give myself some accountability. Wouldn't it be great to have a little idea that would be easy to use for each rehearsal throughout the year that would give your team a balanced diet of growth based on the Five Areas of the Growth Plan? I'm in the process of writing an e-book that will be this very thing. Does this sound like a helpful tool? (and of course, come this Saturday to Lanco's free training)

How to sucker-punch the resistance No wise person embarks on a project without counting the cost, and part of that cost are the obstacles that will oppose you, the resistance you'll face. The cool thing is that you can actually think through what might stop you and create a way around it! Trust me, the energy you spend to do this will be so much less that what it will take to get around it once you're facing it! So if you can't come out on Saturday, you can still comment on theblog or reply to this email for encouragement and support!

Growth Plan

You have talent, gifts, and the desire to improve. But you may not knowwhat to work on or how to work on it (call it a lack of systematic intentionality). I believe that having a growth plan will help you get where you want to be. Why should I plan my growth? Why should I plan my team's growth? I believe that the gifts I have are not my own, I'm a steward of them. What does the Owner expect me to do with them? Manage them? Yes, but not just that. Manage them for increase. The story of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 reminds me that I have been given something of weight (talent) that I am given according to my dynamis, my ability. (Interestingly, this is the same word used for the power (dynamis) of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1:8.) It isn't a question about how much I've been given or (even what effort I put forth), but what I actually do with it and Whose power brings it to life! How do I know if the talent I've been given is increasing and not just leveled off? There's no way to know unless I know where I am today, and then compare "today me" to "future me." (comparing myself to anyone else almost always being pretty unhelpful, if not destructive...and certainly joy-sapping!) Five areas for a well-rounded Growth Plan for Worship Ministry are:Musical Artistry, Spiritual Formation, Relational Integrity, Technical Excellence, and Leadership Ability. Take each area individually and think about where you are now and where you'd like to be by the end of the year. As dearly loved sons and daughters, we look to honor and glorify God as we serve. Bearing much fruit is one way to glorify Him (John 15:8). Our mission includes creating spaces where people can meet with God, so what we do should serve that end. (the level of detail below isn't meant to overwhelm you, but rather to inspire your thinking)

Musical Artistry  Step one: learn to play your instrument. Step two: learn to play the song. Step three: learn to play with a band. Step four: actually make music! What are the musical skills I want to work on? Dynamics, tastefulness, styles, rhythm, timing, tempo, creating groove, memorization of music, listening, advance preparation before rehearsal, improvising, vocal harmony, vocal blend, vocal health, songwriting, strumming patters, picking patterns, sticking patterns, use of capos, keyboard textures, electric guitar tones and effects, instruments playing their musical roles, arrangements, musical transitions, prophesying with your instrument, learning a new instrument, tuning, key selection, sight-reading, musical notation, ear training, theory, personal practice time...

Spiritual Formation I like calling our journey toward spiritual maturity "spiritual formation" because of the great blueprint we have: "until Christ is formed in you" (NIV) or "until Christ's life becomes visible in your lives" (MSG). How do I want to grow spiritually? Abiding in the Vine, personal devotions, spiritual sensitivity, prayer life, worship life, character, meditation, fasting, bible study, service, spontaneous worship, generosity, being the last one in the room to get angry, teachability...

Relational Integrity Relational health is obvious - you can tell when there is tension, and you can tell when people genuinely love being together. How do I want my relationships to improve? Attitude, working out conflicts, anger, laziness, punctuality, openness, depth, listening, blessing, encouragement, follow through...

Technical Excellence Remaining unnoticed during a service requires tremendous focus and wide knowledge. How do I want to grow in my technical understanding and ability? Acoustics, EQ, gain structures, mixing, lighting, troubleshooting, miking, environmental projection, recording, visual worship leading, sound checks...

Leadership Ability  John Maxwell's Law of the Lid states that "Leadership determines the level of effectiveness." My influence is limited by my ability to lead. How do I want to grow as a leader? Influence, foresight, trust, respect, intuition, heart connection, empowerment, reproduction, vision, momentum, priorities, timing, authority, humility, song selection, increasing number of musicians, rehearsal leadership, worship leadership, segues/setups, connection to the service theme, generational inclusiveness, understanding worship history, worship values, worship theology, modeling growth, followership, activating others, stage presence...

Take time to think as well as listen to the Lord as you reflect on your own needs, your team's needs as a whole, and the needs of the individual people on your team. The Lord may pop a thought into your mind as you think. You can answer for yourself personally, your team members, or your team as a whole. What are the top 3-5 skills that you want to grow in? What are 2-3 strategies you may want to try to use to get there for each of the skills? What are some indicators that you can look for to know you're on the right track? What obstacles do you know about that will keep you from growing in these skills? What will it look like at the end of the year when you increase to the level you're hoping to? Interact! Use the power of social pressure, I mean accountability, and take a moment share what you're going to work on. Or you can just email me and I'll help! :-D

Texting to Heaven

I got a frantic call on Sunday at 9:11 AM from Jim who is a sound man at a church where I had just installed a digital sound board three days earlier. It wasn't working. At all.

I had been out of cell phone range so I didn't get it until after 10 AM. So I texted instructions to him, another tech, the pastor, and the worship leader that I'd been coordinating with through the installation.

No response from anyone.

Until 12:04 PM. The sound man called and we talked a bit about the crisis. Then he asked me if I'd heard about the other Crisis. I hadn't.

One of the people I'd texted had been in heaven for about 4 hours already. The worship leader.

Tasha hadn't been able to be at the installation on Thursday because she'd been sick for almost two weeks. She was so disappointed to not be there for the exciting moment when what she'd been working on and hoping for for months (years!) was complete.

I had been texting her updates and pics during the installation. She was giddy.

She had even been lending me tech support!

As the weight of the call from the sound tech sunk in, I looked on Facebook to try and find some communal grieving. This sequence from Tasha's wall sums it up:

We met at an EMM commissioning in July 2004. She invited me to speak at a training for the youth group worship band at her church that fall. I accepted, even though I was the backup, backup, backup, backup person to ask. We laughed. She apologized for asking me "so last minute" - the event was almost a month away. (she had no idea how I roll)

I worked with Tasha and the leaders at Mountville on and off for several years and she's always super helpful and accommodating. She's one of those leaders who is so teachable and hungry for knowledge.

And now, she's in the freest, happiest place in the world. But the transition was so quick and unexpected that I'm thunderstruck. Man, I just can't wrap my mind around what just happened! 

She was always unassuming, her email a fitting moniker: claypot33...we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that this power is from God and not from us. Tasha, your legacy of faithful service, cheerful dedication, and love for people will live on!

52 Worship Training Events

52 Worship Training Events? What?!

So when you went to your worship team rehearsal this week, what skill did you plan on working on with your team? Did you just learn the songs or did you learn how to play music together?

Because it's the prefect lab for growth really: Two hours, five songs, and six (or three!) musicians PLUS the desire to learn and just a smidge of intentionality, and BAM! you've got a mini-seminar. And you can have 52 of them every year...at YOUR church with YOUR people! And it's stinkin' free!

Or you can just get the songs learned for this Sunday. (bleh!)

Sure, your team might accidentally get a tad better (or they might stay relatively the same for the next  year). Look behind you to see how far (or short) you've come. Do you have the same nagging musical irritations over and over?

How do you actually start doing this?

Simply and one small step at a time. Hey, this is the real world. You may be struggling to just put your song list together, or you may be doing all you feel you can do just to get there and strap on your bass, let alone prepare.

So this challenge is going out to worship leaders and to team members...since you're each responsible to double your talents. Seriously (don't get Matthew twenty-fived). That's part of why God gave them to you to manage. And let me ask you this: If you were managing someone else's talents the way you're managing your own, would you fire yourself? (thank you, Dave Ramsey)

Choose one skill to work on in one song for that week. Relax and play what you know for the others, but intentionally focus and stretch in this one song. Consider doing it first so that it has the potential of influencing all the other songs.

Skills? What skills?

Dynamics, listening, groove, steady tempo, build, tuning, blend, accents, different styles, listening (you're right, I did already say that), playing in fractions, memorization, improvisation, listening (yep), modern sound, you get the idea. Here are some samples:

• Work dynamics with 10,000 Reasons - play the chorus super loud, the verses super quiet, and use the musical interludes at the end of each to set up the next section.

• Take a familiar song, like Our God, and play it once together, once with just the bass and drums (having the piano and guitars listen), then once with just the piano and guitars playing (having the bass and drums listen), and then all together. Then talk about what each of them heard.

• Get the metronome out (oh boy), and play Be The Centre at the typical 67 BPM. Then at 87 BPM. Then at 107 BPM. Or take a song you always do at 90 BPM, and try doing it at 83 BPM.

• Use a remade hymn like Jesus Paid It All and have all the singers circle up tightly and sing it without mics to really focus on blending and owning the words.

• Use a song born from the river (Bethel, IHOP, Life Center...O Taste And See, My Soul Longs for You, Faithful) and plan for "spontaneous" improvisation at the end of the song. Have a different member of the band pick the chord progression to use. 

The bottom line is this:

If your only growth plan is Ad Lib Music's Rehearsal Coaching (which is great) or going to seminars and conferences (which are awesome), you're missing the biggest opportunity for growth. Really. It happens weekly. At your rehearsal.

So...what are you going to do?

Rehearsal Questions

I love questions. My friend Adam Saenz taught me to be a connoisseur of questions. Questions are so important because they tell us where to look, what to focus on. They shape our future.

I recently have been asking teams that I lead the following questions at rehearsal:
Who will be there on Sunday?
Why are we doing this?
What are we actually doing?

I'll explain why these questions are important and teach you a few questions that will help your teams make better music.

Who will be there on Sunday? 

Talk about who is actually going to be there. Brenton that just lost his job. Melissa and Joe that just got married. Sam who's having a rough time in 10th grade. Amanda that just got dumped. Again. Eric, whose business is booming. Edward and Mitzy that are afraid they're going to lose their unborn child. Frederic, who is just a happy-go-lucky college student. You know, people with real lives.

It's important to ask this because you are going to create a space where those specific individuals can meet with God. Not the crowd of Australians or Texans who were in the congregation when the latest CD was recorded. Your congregation. Shape the experience to fit them.

Oh, and Jesus too. He'll be in the room. Don't sing to Him like he's far off. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Sweet.

Why are we doing this?  

Serving well requires sacrifice. There are fifty-two Sundays every year. That's five-hundred-twenty of them each decade. Each person who is serving has a different life with different circumstances, stresses, hopes, and days. We need to rehearse our purpose almost every time we gather. Otherwise, we just forget. Our purpose should be a celebration, it should inspire us, it should breathe life back into us. Remember the opposite of "without a vision, the people perish"? With a vision, the people thrive! 

What are we actually doing?

Playing the notes on the page? Making the chord changes at the same time? Beginning and ending at the same time? As musical servants, we're on this moving target of excellence. What was great last year should only be good this year. We need to keep managing our talents for increase, rather than burying them.

That brings me to a final set of questions. You know that question that gets asked after you do a song at rehearsal: "Any questions? Is everybody alright with that?" What does that really do? I think it sets a pretty low bar, musically. If you just switched that question to "Is there anything that we could do to that song to make it more musical, dynamic, emotional, artistic, or just better?" That's a whole different direction.

Artistry 

Here are a number of questions focused on artistry that I ask teams as they evaluate how the musical part of gathered worship went:

• Where was the band in the scale of "making it through the music" to "actually making music?"
• Did we say musically what we sang lyrically?
• Did the music breathe? Did it have space or did all the band play on mostly every part of every song?
• Was it alive? Did it have wide dynamics or did it never get really, really quiet or really, really loud?
• Was each part important? Was it produced well or did the band just routinely play through the chords?
• Did the music get the groove right? Did it strongly support singing? Did it cause our bodies to move?
• Would the music have stood on its own, outside of a church service? Was it that beautiful and moving?
• Did each player use their instrument as their worshiping voice, a very personal, emotional expression offered in the creation of a space for a community to worship?
• Did the music itself give words to our hearts, expressing the inexpressible?
• Was the music so "center stage" and constantly full that it tragically made us feel like we weren't even needed to sing?

What questions do you ask your team?

Drums, the Holy Spirit, and Congregational Response

Have you ever been frustrated, confused, or saddened by a lack of response from the congregation that you're leading in worship?

What can you do about it? And how do you know you're even working on what's really causing it? Well, let's talk about two of the dynamics.

The Holy Spirit

So, there are those unexplainable moments when we as worshipers (on and off the stage) are compelled by God's Spirit in our encounter with Him. It has little to do with the music and much to do with either His divine moving or (very often) our own choice in drinking from the Well and experiencing the spring that's described in John 4. There's this spiritual dynamic that when our hearts are engaged, our spirits are activated, and our bodies choose to express this sense of God among us, Emmanuel. Sometimes we so deeply resonate with a truth we're singing or we have a moment of intimacy and vulnerability with the Father or we share this joy of being with fellow believers singing to our Creator. It's more than magical, beautiful or delightful in such a way as to seem removed from everyday life!

From a leadership perspective, what we can do to enable those transcendent moments is to listen to what God is saying and then obey. I think this almost always results in us activating people - calling them to make a draw on the faith and Spirit in them. The only formula in this, in the words of my friend Daniel Hazelwood: "I'm peering into heaven, looking at that model of worship, singing to a God who's not far off. The God that I sing to is hovering in this room and He's giving me windows, so I know when to sing, what to sing, and why." (You can listen to a podcast that goes more in depth here) This is the core of our calling as worship leaders.

Okay, so that's one side.

Art

The other dynamic is art. Beauty. Things that take our breath away and cause an emotional response. There is a power in music that touches us where other things can't. Don't dismiss a conversation about engaging our emotions because you want to avoid emotionalism. Clearly, manipulating people (through any of our senses) is wrong. Creating a culture where worshipers "can't worship" unless they feel something is not helpful or healthy. So what does it look like to healthily engage and celebrate our souls, our emotions, as part of our entire beings?

I believe God has given us the power of music, the language of the soul, to engage that part of us. So let's talk a little about how music works, how it does things to our emotions that are beyond reason. I'll focus this conversation on the rhythm section of our band: the drums and bass. What role do the drums have in the music we worship with at church? They signal sections and dynamics, they help phrase the melody, they establish subtleties of rhythm and tempo intensity, and reinforce the root rhythm/accent patterns. That got a bit complex, but the bottom line is that they function as the railroad tracks (along with the bass guitar) for the rest of the band to ride on.

Implication?

That implies several things:

1. The drums and bass are hugely essential and play a core role, not a support role
2. They need to be mixed that way for the songs written in modern worship to sound right and to have the groove they're written and recorded with
3. The rest of the band needs to fit around them, playing primarily melodic and harmonic roles - that's why the acoustic guitar plays an accent role, not a primary role, and why the piano shines as a melodic instrument rather than a rhythm instrument in a band setting

The Dreaded Resistance   

It's worth spelling out some of the resistance we each feel in trying to implement this:

1. Sometimes our rhythm sections are weak and we don't feel like they can carry it (or they really can't carry it), so out of need we carry it (read: overplay). If your rhythm section is weak, I'm a big fan of starting with one song each week and learning new ways of playing for that one song. Take small steps, but take steps in this direction.
2. The feedback we've gotten from certain members of the congregation makes it seem that they don't want to hear the bass and drums (I contend that if we play the music well, they will love it, or it's more a commentary on the song rather than our arrangement)
3. The sound engineer doesn't like the drums or too much bass (don't look at me that way) :-D
4. The drums don't sound good...they're not tuned, they're not quality instruments, they're over-muffled, they're not the right kind or size for the room, etc.
5. The drummer hasn't realized that he or she has elbows and wrists, and plays completely from the shoulder...whack! (They need to learn a combination of sensitivity and assertiveness)
6. The bass player thinks that if he or she plays the right notes in the same tempo (or precisely what the kick drum is playing), then they've done their job. (This is not true)
7. We're just plain scared to change the way we play to be more musical. I won't lie, it's risky and can be downright hard...until you crest the hill...then you'll wonder why you ever played like that
8. Part of why the drummers play "safe" is that they haven't been given the requirement or space to play their "railroad tracks" role - there's not been a need for anything else (our overplaying actions speak louder than our "please play out" words). Once the rhythm section has taken its place, you may find yourself removing the muffles and storing the drum shield. (No, I didn't just say that)

The Effects of our Choices

These are not hard and fast rules, but as musicians creating art, we need to know what the effects of our choices are. We can each play three things: melody, harmony, or rhythm, each in different priority. For example, if I pound the guitar or piano, though I am playing melody and harmony, I'm primarily playing rhythm. This effect is accentuated on the big, fast, or medium tempo songs. And of course there are songs or parts of songs where things other than the rhythm section will take center stage, like the beginnings of some songs or the slower ballads.

I realize I'm on a bit of a soapbox here, but you can ask any pro musician and they'll tell you that what separates the amateurs from the pros is their ability to when and what to play, and primarily what not to play. Restraint is king. There is no subtly and eloquence if you just say everything you know. Neither is there art if you play everything you can.

How does this challenge you? How does it encourage you? How does it give you language to take to your team and develop the band and techs? What further questions do you have?