This is our last Sunday for the sermon series Watershed. It has been good so far and I’m looking forward to hearing what our Associate Pastor Wendell Thompson has to say. Here are the songs we are singing today.

Come Thou Fount

The Stand-Hillsong

Beautiful One-Tim Hughes

Everlasting God-Brenton Brown

Healer-Mike Guglielmucci

Glory Hallelujah-Mark Roach

I don’t do this enough. If most of you are honest you probably don’t do this enough either. Every time I get to take one that usually means that I’ve waited too long. This case is no different. Nonetheless, I’m getting to take a small breather for part of the weekend. I’m taking a once popular (but not for very long) stay-cation. We are getting ready to dig into a lot of new things at the church and that will for sure mean lots of hours and planning, so I need to take some time and pull back before it gets all crazy on me again. Also, this is the first weekend in about 7 that I haven’t had anything going on so I’m taking the chance to hide out for a couple days. I’m TOTALLY excited!!!

Why is it so hard for us to rest? This question is obviously for everyone, but specifically for my friends that work or have worked in churches. Why is it so hard for us to shut it down? I mean, we all can do that when it’s vacation time or something like that. But what causes us to act all Energizer Bunny all the rest of the time? I always wonder if we are overworked because they job calls for it or if we are doing it to ourselves. I haven’t come up with a conclusion yet, so don’t look for that answer. I’m learning that it is okay to rest, Biblical even. I am also going to be learning how to not run myself into the ground so that when I get a break I don’t feel the urge to sleep through the whole thing. Everyone needs the opportunity to recharge. I’m finally getting mine.

Have you ever taken a dance class or watched two people dance together? Isn’t it amazing when two people know what they are doing and they just seem to glide across the floor with amazing beauty? Have you ever seen two people who don’t really know what they are doing? Isn’t it amazing just how awkward two people can look together as they create a treacherous sense of disharmony in movement? I have actually seen two people bump teeth while trying to execute a dance. I think that may be one of the more arduous visuals I have had the ‘privilege of experiencing.

Sometimes we try to take the lead in our own lives because we think we know the way. We try to guide the Father around the floor in an uptempo Broadway routine when he really wants to glide us gracefully through a waltz. He has a perfectly crafted plan for you, but you have to let Him lead the way. This is not one of those stories where I tell you that everything will be smooth sailing if you let him lead and all bumps and horror if you try to do it yourself. There are definitely bumps on the road as you follow Christ as well. However, when you are trying to lead and guide yourself then it’s like doing a dance you’ve never done while wearing a blindfold. You will probably fall or bump into something or someone. 

In this walk with Christ there’s only one person who knows the way. When we try to run out ahead of the leader we fall into traps and get stuck in ugly predicaments. I believe that’s the significance of Psalm 119:105 when he says he’s a lamp to our feet and light to our path. We only need to know where to step next. We have to trust that he’s going to lead us the right way. The same with a dance. You have to trust that your partner is leading you to where you both need to be in the dance. If you don’t do that and consequently try to go in a different direction you will find it increasingly more difficult to execute the dance and stay on your feet. If you aren’t aware, falling on a dance floor hurts.

It’s funny how a scripture or a passage will just speak right to where you are at a time in your life and this is no different. You can have an issue that you are dealing with and then a scripture that you learned and hadn’t thought about in a while will come back to you and speak like it never has before.

Last night I was drawn to the passage of 1 Peter 5:7, which everyone knows it says “Cast all your cares upon Him for He cares for you”. Today I was enlightened by the scripture before and after that one though. The whole section is about being a leader. Peter is giving leadership training in this passage and he lays it out in a perfect manner. I don’t know why I hadn’t picked up on that before, but again, it is totally what I needed to hear right now. See, I was/am dealing with a leadership situation in my own church where I am trying to do some things and I know I have to step out of a box further than I ever have before. To some degree I feel as if there is only one way to get things done and I’m NOT that person. Now, without going into too much psychobabble (love that word), I’ve been struggling to find a way to get my point across and step into this new phase. It has been wearing me out and causing me to lose sleep. But something awesome happened yesterday. I went into a meeting with a plan and laid things out and came away with the support and approval I needed to move forward in what I felt Christ was calling me to do. I then promptly fell asleep in my office. I had been sleeping but I was nowhere close to resting. I woke up today for the first time in a while feeling somewhat refreshed and ready to attack my day.

I was so ready to find a sense of solace in verse 7 that I was blindsided by the hard truth of verses 5 and 6. I was going into this meeting with my own ideas of what would be said and thought that I had worked myself up into a lather. I was stressed about how things wouldn’t go right or how I wouldn’t be understood. But it wasn’t until I was calmed down by a friend and was able to talk through some things that I gained some perspective and was able to share freely and come to a God honoring resolution. So sure, I need to cast my cares on God. And sure, he cares for me unlike anyone else could. That happens when I am able to step out of the way and stop being proud and thinking that I know what’s going to happen. It’s obvious that I have no idea. I had to see that I will be exalted when God says so, but in the mean time I have to sit back and let Him do His job. Once I’m able to do that, I can give Him everything because he will carefully handle my life. Well played, 200 year old book. Well played.

It hit me AFTER I made that my title that so many people are going to have this pop up in a Google search and totally not get what they were looking for. Well, I guess I should make it a good one just in case people click out of curiosity.  Let me start off by saying I absolutely love that game. It is easily the most played game on my phone. I currently have 11 games going. Side note: I can have up to 20 so if you want to play my username is harrywalls4. And now we’re back… I love finding words and building words off of the existing tiles. It’s fun to win this game and it’s fun to lose this game. Zynga has done a great job with this one. A big reason why this game appeals to me so much other than the words is the fact that I get to play with friends. It connects me to people that I see all the time as well as people that I haven’t seen for awhile because either I moved or they moved. But this mobile phone app keeps us connected through words. We are coming together combining words to for the purpose of this game.

My other favorite use of words with friends is songwriting. What an awesome way to watch two different brains try to work together to accomplish a goal. I’ve had some of the most frustrating and rewarding times as a songwriter when I was writing a song with a friend. It is always good to finish one on your own, but when you get to the end of that song that you and someone wrote together, you immediately have someone to share that with. And there is someone who is as passionate about that song as you. Collaborating with someone always stretches me as a person and a writer. I do things a certain way when I’m writing a song and I can’t do that when I’m writing with someone else because we have a goal in mind. I don’t have the ability to step back and do something completely unrelated to music to help my brain refocus. I have to do things to push through the fog that is clouding my creative process to the next level. I enjoy the back and forth exchange as we watch seemingly random lines evolve into a new song that finally says what we want it to say. The whole thing is quite fascinating to me.

Are there any other songwriters out there that feel the same way? Do you enjoy writing with other people? Are there songwriters out there that hate writing with other people? Anyone? Anyone?

Honestly, I’m quite glad to see where this sermon series has taken this church. I personally didn’t think it would get this deep but it has totally done more than I expected. This Sunday was no different. We heard the story of one young lady in our church who felt like following Christ was just a whole bunch of boundaries that stopped her from being able to live her life. She later came to understand that Christ brings freedom and that has brought her so much joy!

This week I also had the privilege to sing with one of my best friends, Brittany Smith. As busy as she is she happened to have a free Sunday and so she came along and joined me on the stage and we led worship together. It was one of those weeks where a lot of stuff didn’t happen and a lot of people ended up not being able to make it so she filled in at the last moment. Nonetheless, here is the set list.

Opener- O Worship the King-Passion Hymns

Song Set

How Deep the Father’s Love For Us-Stuart Townsend

The Greatness of Our God-Jason Ingram (as sung on Hillsong’s Beautiful Exhange)

Blessed Be Your Name-Matt and Beth Redman

After Sermon Special

Call It Beautiful-Brittany Smith

Closing Song

Your Grace Is Enough-Matt Maher

We are wrapping up this sermon series  next week with what should be a pretty good message from our associate pastor, Wendell Thompson. Can’t wait to see how that turns out.

As I mentioned the first time, this list helps me to evaluate our church service in order to make sure that what we do is pleasing to God. The next biggest thing I hope the list reveals is if I am doing my best to not stand in the way of what God is doing. So there is definitely a balance that must occur in order to make this thing work. I want to make sure that I am real and open when I’m on stage so I’m not presenting some fake performance to people who are coming to church looking for God’s love. But I don’t want to be so forward or open that I end up saying or doing something that distracts from the service. I’ve been in services where the leader starts to share a personal moment and instead of it adding to the flow it was a little bit creepy. The focus was totally switched to his story and not really how it related to the next song.

For me, the hardest thing is to make sure that I don’t take the list on stage with me mentally. Then I start trying to make sure that I get each thing in during the song set. It’s amazing how fast that time shrinks and in the end I rarely get anything out of it because I’m worried about doing something right. If you spend the time in preparation and making sure your heart is where it is supposed to be, you have to let God handle the rest. That’s why you can look back in your mind after the service is over and have the ability to evaluate what happened. But like anything else, we miss things so it is important to take a couple extra steps in your post service evaluation.

First, find someone in your church that you have a relationship with that can speak into your life. Then you want to give that person your list so they can know it and be praying through the service as well. Then whenever you evaluate the service, make sure you get their input as well. I just read something on Twitter this morning before I wrote this that said, “The people that love you the most are the ones that will tell you the truth”. I believe there’s some truth to that, and that’s why I ask for the input of people who know me and know what I’m looking for to help me get better and move forward. Lastly, have the ability and the freedom to make changes. Since our church started I’ve always sat at my keyboard right in the middle of the stage. I had been asked many times why I did it that way, and honestly other than the fact that I was put there, I didn’t really have an answer. So a few weeks ago a friend asked me if I was willing to move in order to make a set change work. We made the move and it has had a dramatic affect on our worship times.

I say all of this just to say that this job isn’t always easy. And if you’re like me you have a huge part of yourself invested into everything that you do and sometimes it gets difficult to hear people criticize what you do. Give yourself and others a guideline that will help you ‘press on toward the mark (Phil. 3:14)’. When you are a revealed worshiper, hopefully you are revealing the truth and love of God.

Yesterday I shared my checklist that I go through each week to make sure that what I’m doing is what the Father wants. For those of you that missed it, the list is Relevant Engaging Vulnerable Enriching Authentic Liberating Energetic Dynamic worship. Or REVEALED. I believe that if I’m trying to create a worship service that strives to hit these things that we are heading in the right direction. Today i want to explain the first one, being relevant. It seems that everyone wants to be relevant, but I think we have to figure out exactly what that means otherwise we are shooting in the dark.

The dictionary defines relevant as bearing upon or connected to the matter at hand. So that means the things that we say and do have some sort of connection to the things going on around you. I find this an intriguing and challenging thought. Relevancy is a fluid, slippery mark. It doesn’t just sit there so you can just hit it in the face. Sometimes you have to work to find it. However, at the very same time, musically speaking, it seems to sit in one place. How? Well, when it comes to music it seems that people seem to share similar thoughts. Lately, independent artists have been really taking over. I think that’s really cool. You will always have your corporations and major labels doing what they do, but it’s fun to see guys who are making good music in their home studios start to break through and make names for themselves. People have varying style preferences and it doesn’t seem to matter because there’s enough of all of it out there.

Then there’s Christian music. For whatever reason when you get people to talk about it their comments usually end with the phrase, “If you like Christian music”. It seems as if people have taken the concept of Christian music and automatically assumed that it isn’t relevant to everything else going on. It is almost as if people are saying “the music is okay and the beat is cool to listen to if you can deal with those cheesy, outdated lyrics and antiquated themes”. So Christian music gets put in this ‘not as good as real music’ box. Let me tell you, that makes this job difficult on a regular basis. How does one continue to stay relevant in a place that people feel isn’t relevant to begin with? How can it be that the message and story of Christ has become this fairy tale that doesn’t hold water in the lives of people in the world or the church?

Well personally I believe that the story of the Gospel always is and always will be relevant and that there is music today that speaks to that awesome story. There are people out there doing an amazing job at getting that point across in very creative ways. So I make sure that I am doing my best to reach for music and songs that are creative enough without distracting from the message or diluting it. That means I get to listen to a lot of music. Then when I find good music I get to share it with the people around me. There is relevant music out there. I know that music isn’t the only part of the worship experience, and the others come into play as we unpack the other elements of worship:REVEALED.

I have been doing this job for a long time and have come in contact with many people over the years. When I talk to anyone, whether that person sits in the chairs in the congregation, is a multi award winning recording artist, or a non Christian who hasn’t been to church in years, they all have the same answer to my questions about worship leaders. I ask the question, what’s the most important factor that you look for in a worship leader outside of musical ability. Without fail, almost everyone I’ve talked to mentioned that they first have to be real. Evidently, it is pretty easy to tell when a musician isn’t being real. I thought this was an interesting thing to hear from people. So I started asking lots of people what they thought about this and they all said the same thing. People are looking for something real. As a result I started looking at myself and my approach to leading. I then created a checklist that I use for myself after every service and opportunity I get to lead people in worship. I want to be a worship leader that reveals himself on stage in a way that people see Christ in everything I say, sing and do. So here’s the checklist that I go through each and every week to make sure I’m staying grounded and looking to the cross and leading others there as well.

Worship:REVEALED

Am I being Relevant?

Is the worship Engaging?

Am I being Vulnerable when I’m on stage?

Is the worship Enriching?

Am I being Authentic, or am I just singing because that’s what I do?

Are people feeling Liberated and able to worship freely in service?

Are we creating an Energetic atmosphere?

Is our worship Dynamic? Is it continuing to move and not stay the same all the time?

Over the next couple days I will flesh these out and hopefully you, my readers will give me your thoughts on these.

As a worship leader, we have this amazing opportunity to speak with music on a weekly basis. We sit down and pour over songs that will fit a certain situation or moment in a worship service that hopefully add to the worship experience for the people in the room. Even though we may take different approaches to making this happen, it takes work to get the music all lined up for a particular week or series of weeks. We then are in the position to share this music with our churches on a regular basis. With all this work that goes into making this happen, most of the time no one ever really knows what we are thinking as we work through these things and how much of our hearts went into this whole process. Sometimes you get a leader who also feels like it’s their job to set up a song perfectly to allow people to totally feel the moment or have a TRUE understanding of what this song means. That time of sharing ends up being longer than the song itself. Don’t get me wrong, I think that worship leaders should be able to set things up or share words that help with the flow of worship. I tend to lean toward the Twitter style set up as opposed to the ‘Facebook status from a couple years ago where you could put whole life stories in that little box’ set up.

It seems like an oxymoron to think that we wouldn’t take the time to share what we know or what we’ve learned as musicians and students of the Word. And I’m not saying that worship leaders shouldn’t share things from the stage. But we only get a limited window of time to share and we are given the chance to share through music. The song portion of the service is not the worship leader sermon time. I’ve been in places where we got a worship leader sermon and the pastor’s sermon as well. It felt like a lecture series with music playing in the background. I think what I’m trying to say is that as a worship leader we are in a unique place that, if handled correctly, can really enhance a Sunday morning worship experience. If handled poorly, the flow of a service can be completely manhandled and subsequently deflated.

I was once told by a pretty awesome worship leader and friend that not the job of the worship leader to preach the music. If you want to share your thoughts on worship, teach a class or write a blog. Our job is to lead the people in singing. That was some great advice to me and it has stuck. I believe that people really want to know what you think or feel, they will ask you. I know that from experience. So friends, feel free to share you heart from the stage, just try to do it in 2 minutes or less.