as found in Worship Musician Magazine
One of the things that I love about the modern Church is that we are on a serious mission to expand God’s Kingdom through the ever-increasing use of best practices. Part of the success of Willow Creek’s Global Leadership summit is that they have been purposeful in seeking out the minds and ideas from both the Kingdom and the secular. I consider this to be a brilliant idea that has the added benefit of creating a bridge to influencers who have never experienced the blessing of a relationship with the Living God. This is a great opportunity that has not been missed to get these brilliant minds into God’s house looking out, versus the press’ frequently distorted view looking in. These are VERY exciting times.
Casting vision and following up with action is something the Church is doing with increasing efficiency. A key component of this is our ability to set goals and measure our ability to reach them. For whatever reason, worship ministries seem to be among the slowest to adopt this practice. Although there is a ton of great worship music happening each Sunday, my experience points to a tendency to set goals on a weekly basis that are primarily focused around getting a team rostered, picking the songs, and having a great service. If we’re not purpose-driven, the weekly nature of what we do can become a distraction in terms of setting and achieving bigger goals for our teams. I encourage you to prayerfully talk about this with your team and see where you are at, where you’re headed, and how you’ll know when you’ve gotten there. Let’s take a look at some practical places and approaches to doing this.
Prayer
Worship Pastors, I encourage you to prayerfully search your heart to see if you are spending most of your energy leading worship versus leading your team. If, like myself, you are a volunteer, I encourage you to prayerfully consider how you could best approach your Worship Pastor with your thoughts and ideas. The first place you can start is by following the wishes of your Worship Pastor. Many problems people have with their Worship Pastor are rooted in not having fully stepped into the revelation that authority comes from God alone. Emotion makes it easy to confuse our desire to make things better vs. our need to serve the God-ordained leader placed above us.
Raising Up Disciples
Whether you’re a paid leader or weekend volunteer, you are just as called to make disciples. Regardless of the size of your Church, the first action after prayer that I suggest team leaders take is to start identifying and raising-up “your twelve”. If you’re a volunteer I encourage you to sit down with your Worship Pastor to seek out their thoughts on how you could serve their vision for building disciples from within the framework of the Worship Community. I also encourage you to share this article with them, doing so with a respect for their authority by demonstrating your heart to support their vision—leave your personal agendas at home.
Goals
Whether you’re a leader, volunteer, or both, set some goals that you’d like to accomplish in the next twelve months. Break those down into bite sized three-month pieces, and set up some action steps you’ll need in order to accomplish them. At the end of each quarter revisit these goals to see how close you came to achieving them, with an eye to see what you learned along the way. The more you engage this process the more you’ll see how God is discipling you through it.
Action
Six months ago I went to Scott Haus, the Worship Pastor at my Church, with the idea of offering free guitar lessons to anyone attending services in Student Ministries. The first Sunday of each month, any and all who come are able to get some free lesson time. I’m investing my gifts into raising-up young musicians. In the process I’m also afforded the opportunity to demonstrate what the discipleship model looks like—with the added benefit of being able to identify and encourage the next generation of worship musicians at our Church.
Assessment
After being released to hold these lessons, the long-term benefits come from measuring what is and is not working. I like to start with the successes, as that tends to reinforce the why of what one is doing. One of the kids attending the lessons has not missed a single session, and is particularly high on my radar. He’s already serving on the Worship Team in Student Ministries and has a ton of talent. He’s excited about having someone take an active interest in helping develop the talent God has placed in him, and I’m excited to see well-planned vision turning into measurable action. On the down side, I’m not always available on the first Sunday of each month and need to find a sub to cover for me. It’s not until we actually look at the down side of things that we can fix them in a way that is both efficient and effective.
Conclusion
I trust that you find something in this article that will ignite a fire within you to serve your leaders, community, and build disciples to further God’s Kingdom.
Doug Doppler is passionate about God, worship, and worship musicians. In addition to his work coaching individuals and teams, Doug is also the author of “The Worship Guitar Book” which will be available in April 2013 via Hal Leonard.
Casting vision and following up with action is something the Church is doing with increasing efficiency. A key component of this is our ability to set goals and measure our ability to reach them. For whatever reason, worship ministries seem to be among the slowest to adopt this practice. Although there is a ton of great worship music happening each Sunday, my experience points to a tendency to set goals on a weekly basis that are primarily focused around getting a team rostered, picking the songs, and having a great service. If we’re not purpose-driven, the weekly nature of what we do can become a distraction in terms of setting and achieving bigger goals for our teams. I encourage you to prayerfully talk about this with your team and see where you are at, where you’re headed, and how you’ll know when you’ve gotten there. Let’s take a look at some practical places and approaches to doing this.
Prayer
Worship Pastors, I encourage you to prayerfully search your heart to see if you are spending most of your energy leading worship versus leading your team. If, like myself, you are a volunteer, I encourage you to prayerfully consider how you could best approach your Worship Pastor with your thoughts and ideas. The first place you can start is by following the wishes of your Worship Pastor. Many problems people have with their Worship Pastor are rooted in not having fully stepped into the revelation that authority comes from God alone. Emotion makes it easy to confuse our desire to make things better vs. our need to serve the God-ordained leader placed above us.
Raising Up Disciples
Whether you’re a paid leader or weekend volunteer, you are just as called to make disciples. Regardless of the size of your Church, the first action after prayer that I suggest team leaders take is to start identifying and raising-up “your twelve”. If you’re a volunteer I encourage you to sit down with your Worship Pastor to seek out their thoughts on how you could serve their vision for building disciples from within the framework of the Worship Community. I also encourage you to share this article with them, doing so with a respect for their authority by demonstrating your heart to support their vision—leave your personal agendas at home.
Goals
Whether you’re a leader, volunteer, or both, set some goals that you’d like to accomplish in the next twelve months. Break those down into bite sized three-month pieces, and set up some action steps you’ll need in order to accomplish them. At the end of each quarter revisit these goals to see how close you came to achieving them, with an eye to see what you learned along the way. The more you engage this process the more you’ll see how God is discipling you through it.
Action
Six months ago I went to Scott Haus, the Worship Pastor at my Church, with the idea of offering free guitar lessons to anyone attending services in Student Ministries. The first Sunday of each month, any and all who come are able to get some free lesson time. I’m investing my gifts into raising-up young musicians. In the process I’m also afforded the opportunity to demonstrate what the discipleship model looks like—with the added benefit of being able to identify and encourage the next generation of worship musicians at our Church.
Assessment
After being released to hold these lessons, the long-term benefits come from measuring what is and is not working. I like to start with the successes, as that tends to reinforce the why of what one is doing. One of the kids attending the lessons has not missed a single session, and is particularly high on my radar. He’s already serving on the Worship Team in Student Ministries and has a ton of talent. He’s excited about having someone take an active interest in helping develop the talent God has placed in him, and I’m excited to see well-planned vision turning into measurable action. On the down side, I’m not always available on the first Sunday of each month and need to find a sub to cover for me. It’s not until we actually look at the down side of things that we can fix them in a way that is both efficient and effective.
Conclusion
I trust that you find something in this article that will ignite a fire within you to serve your leaders, community, and build disciples to further God’s Kingdom.
Doug Doppler is passionate about God, worship, and worship musicians. In addition to his work coaching individuals and teams, Doug is also the author of “The Worship Guitar Book” which will be available in April 2013 via Hal Leonard.
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