I’m Insecure… Please Give Me A Title To Validate Me

Disclaimer: The thoughts in this blog are a product of my own journey and personal experiences. It’s more than okay if you disagree:)

By nature, I am an introvert. I tend to hang back and watch the party instead of being in the middle of the party. I notice how people project themselves and I see some of the masks that folks wear in an attempt to hide what’s really there. I honestly don’t believe that people all have wrong motives, they are just trying to cope with insecurities that they have lived with since childhood.

These people are usually seeking a position more than a relationship because they need a title to feel that they have value.  They will usually introduce themselves by their title just to make sure you are aware of “who” they are. These folks also tend to get really upset when you don’t call them by their title. Sometimes these people buy into the lie that you can demand respect rather than earn it. I used to get upset with these folks… now I just feel sorry for them.

Value comes from God and finding your identity in him. Your value is not contingent on what people think or what they call you (good or bad), but rather on what He calls you… “Son…Daughter.”

If you don’t have a title yet, count yourself blessed because with a title comes a lot of responsibility. If you feel that God has called you to a position, earn the title and let God and people recognize that calling rather than you elevating yourself. Proverbs 18:16 says, “a man’s gift will make room for him.” What God has for you, is for you.

If you do have a position/title, walk in humility and let God do the elevating. Earn the right to be heard rather than demanding that people listen to you.

This I know… I will stand before God without a title or crown to hide behind and he will see the real me… as a matter of fact, he already does.

When Your Plan Gets Changed…

On the first Saturday of every month our church comes together for a collective night of worship. These services have been great for our church and we have been doing them for a couple of years now. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of work to play 8-10 songs on that night and it not be a repeat of a lot of the stuff we normally do. We usually introduce at least one new song on these nights and then we look at ways to “freshen up” some of the more familiar songs.

This past weekend, our set included two new songs and we were using a lot of loops for auxiliary drums, synths, and so on. Our rehearsals went smooth and everything operated as it should. We were using a Looptimus midi controller firing to an IPad app called, “Playback Pro.” We’ve never had an issue before, but about 4 songs into the set, the tracks started to lag… and when I say lag, I mean the clicks and loops started to become un-synced and the only option was to kill the loop feed in the middle of a song. The controller gives me the ability to fade just the loop and keep the click going… so that’s what I did. However the click was still glitching so eventually we had to cut that too.

I did a little bit of troubleshooting during a short break and found that I just had to many tracks loaded and my IPad wasn’t quick enough to keep up. So I deleted all of the songs we had already played in hopes of freeing up some space. We played another song and it went pretty well right up to the end and then started to glitch once again. We still had 3 more songs to play and it was obvious that the tracks weren’t going to pan out.

Once I realized that our plan was going to have to change, I began putting the puzzle together in my head and  began asking the essential questions… “what key are we in? what songs do the band know without music? what will the congregation respond to? what does God want to do in this moment?

We ended up playing some of the “old faithfuls” that have proven to engage the crowd and everything worked out okay. Here’s the point of this blog post: Technology is great, but if you put all of your eggs in that basket and it doesn’t work out, what are you left with? Every preacher and worship leader has to have something real in their belly to dip into in these moments. Brian Johnson calls this “your bag of tricks.” In other words, your ‘go-to’ songs or a real word from God that isn’t depending on a fancy loop or power point presentation to engage people.

This was one of those Matt Redman, “Heart of Worship” moments for me. A true heart of worship will find a way even when all of the odds are stacked against them. I want to encourage you, always have something real to offer people… and don’t overload your IPad when using loops!

Preparing for Opportunity

While away on vacation last week I kept finding myself thinking about the stories of David. One of the great lessons I think we can all learn from David is the value of preparation. Rarely do opportunities just fall out of the sky. Most of the time there are a series of events that lead to opportunities coming our way… there are relationships built that are the catalyst for new seasons.

For David, it was his time spent as a shepherd that prepared him to be able to use a sling shot that would one day kill Goliath. I don’t believe David just happened to pick up five smooth stones on that day for the first time. The sling shot was the weapon he had used to protect his sheep. He was a master of the sling shot. He was confident of his ability when he stepped up that day.

I don’t believe that David happened to pick up a lyre for the first time when he was called on to play for Saul. David had spent time learning to play and worship God with his instrument. He had mastered his instrument and then was called upon.

If you find yourself in a place of looking for opportunity, ask yourself what you can do to prepare? Spend time mastering your craft and building relationships. This is how opportunity comes and this is why you are worthy of the opportunity.

Ten Essential Keys To Building A Great Worship Team

The Worship (Singing) component of our church service is a critical layer of the overall experience you are creating for folks. In a lot of ways it sets the tone for the ‘flow’ of the service. The music component of worship can trigger all sorts of emotional responses of the congregation. This is why it is important that worship services are being led by the Holy Spirit.

In 1 Samuel 16:14-23 we read the story of Saul who is being tormented by an evil spirit. The bible says that when David would play his lyre, the spirit would leave Saul alone. David had learned how to usher the presence of the Lord into a room with his instrument. My prayer is that all of us would have those kind of moments in our worship services… the kind where people that are being torment find peace in God’s presence.

WITH THAT IN MIND, HERE ARE TEN ESSENTIAL KEYS TO BUILDING A GREAT WORSHIP TEAM.

1. Our worship has to be authentic. Regardless of what your team looks or sounds like, they have to be genuine worshippers.
2. Don’t be afraid to start small. There’s nothing wrong with not having a full band or choir. Build slowly with quality over quantity.
3. Keep it all about Jesus. It is imperative that our worship leaders have the ability to take us past themselves and into the presence of Jesus. Our worship services are not about entertaining people. Our worship services are about ministering to the Lord and people encountering Him.
4. Develop a process for receiving new folks onto your worship team/choir. Communicate what your expectations are clearly before inviting them to join the team. Auditions are a great way to gage someone’s abilities and humility.
5. Don’t be an exclusive team. Always look for ways to pull in new musicians and singers… even the players that still need some work.
6. Have rehearsals on a consistent basis. This will facilitate the opportunity to build great relationships among your team members and it will cause your team to play together better during services.
7. Play songs that will engage your congregation in a genuine moment of worship. There’s no style that is wrong or can’t be utilized to lead people into God’s.
8. Have a time for prayer and extensive training. Our team utilizes the “WorshipU” videos from Bethel Church in Redding California. We play a video before starting our rehearsals and then have a time of prayer. https://www.worshipu.com
9. Raise up the next generation of worship leaders and musicians and don’t be afraid to let them lead. This will bring LIFE to your worship team.
10. Plan ahead. If you want excellent musicians and singers, you have to give them adequate time to rehearse and prepare for your worship services. Winging it is sometimes fun, but you can’t build a solid foundation on that.

A Few Keys To Public Speaking/Singing

I have had the unique opportunity to be engaged in planning events and church services for many years now. In those years I’ve picked up a few things when it comes to speaking in front of the church or leading a part of the service. Here’s some of those lessons…

1. Have a plan. Regardless of what role you have in the event/service, plan and rehearse. Never walk in assuming that you can ‘wing it’ even if you are that good. If you are speaking, write out your script and rehearse it beforehand. If you are singing, make sure you know the song (lyrics, format, chords). There’s still freedom to deviate from the plan to a degree, but know advance where you want to go. For all the Pentecostals out there: It’s not putting God in a box to ask Him ahead of time what He would like to accomplish in a service. If anything, it gives Him more to work with 🙂

2. Believe what you are saying/singing. People can see right through us and if we aren’t being genuine, people don’t want to hear anything we have to say/sing.

3. Decide in advance how you want people to feel as you are on stage and gear your delivery appropriately. The atmosphere that we create when we speak or sing matters. Especially to the person who has to follow you on stage.

4. Be aware of the ‘big picture’ of the event or service. There’s probably other things in the event happening than just your piece. How does your piece fit with all of the other components of the event/service? When I am leading worship, I know that I am carving out an atmosphere for people to really receive as our pastor brings the word. If people are ready to leave by the atmosphere that I facilitated, it’s probably not going to help him in holding the congregation’s attention. Every detail of the service matters.

5. Speak loudly and clearly. Do not mumble or slur your words. You don’t need to yell, but you do need to own the room. This means that the way you speak and carry yourself has to reflect the authority that you have been given.

6. Use good mic technique. If your mouth is touching the microphone it will probably sound muddy. If the microphone is too far away people will not be able to hear you. Good microphone technique is about two fingers between your lips and the microphone. Keep your hand on the stem of the microphone and do not “cup” the ball of the microphone. Always use the microphone if it has been provided and is in working order.

7. Know how you are going to start and finish. Sometimes people start speaking and don’t know how to stop so they ramble nervously. I tell our team all of the time that you can get away with a lot if you start and end well. That’s what people remember.

8. People need to trust that you are able to lead them. If we project instability or a lack of confidence it creates anxiety in the room. People then become distracted by the possible train wreck that could happen and they are less likely to engage. Lead with boldness (not arrogance) from a place of strength and rest.

9. Be aware of the clock, but don’t let people know. In my opinion, some of the best worship leaders are the people who can be mindful of the time they are allotted, but never let the crowd feel that. There is an art to being able to be timely and effective. Longer doesn’t mean better…It just means longer. Make every second count, and don’t drag something out if it isn’t working.

10. Have fun. Don’t take yourself too serious and learn to laugh at your mistakes. There’s nothing worse than having a train wreck and then pretending like it didn’t happen. Just laugh it off, learn from it, and do better next time.

I hope this is helpful to somebody:)

K

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It’s hard to believe that 2014 is almost history! As I look back over the year I can honestly say that it has been one of greatest years for Kirsten and I so far, and also one of our most challenging years so far… funny how that works, right? Everything worth anything is going to cost you something.

This year our worship team wrote, recorded, and released our first original EP. Who knew four songs could take so long?! That process was fun and exhausting at the same time. I’m so proud of our team for their dedication to excellence.

Our church hosted several large events this year. One of those events being our KYAG Women’s Conference. Ladies from all over our state attended the two day event at Christ’s Chapel. Our worship team was honored to lead worship for the conference.

We also hosted our first Commonwealth Worship Conference. This was an event that Kirsten and I spear-headed. Our collective staff worked incredibly hard to pull this event off. Matt Stinton and William Matthews from Bethel Music were our guest speakers and worship leaders. They brought with them some of their key team who helped with worship and taught elective classes. The event concluded with a community night of worship at the UC Health Stadium (Florence Freedom Ballpark) where over 2000 people came out to lift up the name of Jesus!

Just a couple of weeks ago Kirsten and I along with some of our worship team were invited to lead worship for the KYAG Youth Convention held in Frankfort, KY. There were somewhere around 1000 students there for the convention and God moved in their lives. It was an honor to be there.

2014 has been a good year… and a hard year. The best is yet to come!

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Lyla Jane Carey was born October 15, 2013 at 6:30pm via C-Section. She came three weeks early but she is doing great! Mom is also doing great! Thank you to everyone who offered prayers, words of encouragement, meals, and baby gifts. We are incredibly blessed.

If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Replace It … Learn How To Use It

One of the challenges of church production is learning how to be a good steward of the equipment you have. A lot of times our churches have sound equipment that’s been used for many years and has never been properly maintained. In a lot of instances the equipment was never properly set up to begin with. This often results in the gear not functioning the way we would expect it to. The tone isn’t pleasant. The volume is too loud or too quiet. There’s feedback. There’s a lack of clarity during the preaching or singing.

These are all symptoms of a PA system that is not being used correctly. Unfortunately, we often have these negative experiences and then see the church down the road installing something new and cool and think that if we bought that same piece of gear we would have the same quality sound that they have. That’s rarely actually the case.

In my experience it’s all about learning to be good stewards of the equipment we have. By that I mean that we take the time to learn how our system works and how to get the most out of it. You can throw money at the “problem” but the issue is usually something that could be resolved without spending heaps. When I was learning production early on one of my instructors said, “If you can’t mix 12 channels, you aren’t going to be able to mix 96.” Meaning that buying a bigger, fancier audio console isn’t going to make up for a lack of ability to mix. It actually becomes much more problematic.

There are times that I will walk into a church and you can literally hear the amps and video projectors making a whistling sound because they are so full of dust that the internal cooling fans can’t keep up. This is an easy fix. Take a small handheld vacuum and pull the dust out of your units. Most churches don’t think to do that and end up losing an amp or other valuable piece of gear that really just needed to be cleaned. If you have a unit that takes a filter, make sure you clean the filters as needed.

I have been in some churches where people complained about a lack of clarity and the issue was actually that they had blown all of the horns in their speakers from excessive feedback. That’s usually and easy fix that won’t cost a ton of money. The diaphragms in speaker horns can be replaced easily. The average Peavey or JBL diaphragm is between $50 and $100. That’s minimal when talking about replacing the whole PA.

If your church goes through microphone and guitar cables, implement the “over under” method of rolling cables. That was literally the first thing we had to learn at Hillsong before we were allowed to do anything else on the production team. Why??? Because cables are expensive!

There are times when churches need to upgrade their A/V systems for practical reasons. If you are in that position, here’s a few things I suggest.

1. Find a sound rep you can trust. (Someone with a good reputation in the community)
2. Design the system with growth in mind (Buy a little bigger than what you need)
3. Buy it right and buy it once. It’s better to spend a little more and have a product that will last rather than buying the cheapest thing you can find. You will save money in the long run.

If you are in the Central KY area and need someone to consult with about Audio Video systems I would recommend Richard Jones from Pro Sound and Lights. His company does a lot of work for churches as well as other venues. If you are in the Northern KY area, I recommend Mike Volkerding with Frequency City. Our church as used Frequency City both to rent and purchase gear. I’ve worked with both of these guys over the years and they are both great.

If It’s Not Real, I Don’t Want It

I love leading God’s people in worship. It’s a great honor and privilege to be able to serve the house in that capacity but, I will admit that there are days when it is incredibly challenging. I’m not a guy who can turn on a smile on the fly or pretend that everything is good when things are actually really bad. There are those Sunday mornings where Kirsten and I have been up all night with sick kids or we have had some kind of disagreement that left us in challenging place emotionally. There are times that we walk through personal trials that a lot of people would never really know about and we have to navigate how we are going to manage those emotions while still fulfilling the calling of God on our lives for that day.

I used to think that the “fake it til you make it” approach was acceptable and that regardless of the trials I was walking through personally, I still needed to appear happy and lead our church in worship even though that wasn’t what I was really feeling at all. That’s what I thought it meant to ‘make a sacrifice of praise’. I don’t miss those days at all!

Church 922 started in the summer of 2007. Kirsten and I were asked to lead worship for that service and even though we were on staff at another church and it was a two hour drive each way, I knew that Church 922 was a ministry that we needed to be apart of. Right from the beginning the target crowd was the unchurched or folks who had maybe grown up in church but left the church when they graduated high school. The service took on a tone of its own that I had never experienced before. Leading worship for that service seemed so easy because people came to church so hungry for the presence of God. For the first time, I didn’t feel the pressure to perform or be a person I wasn’t meant to be. I could be me…whatever that looked like that day. The result for me was learning to lead people into genuine worship.

People come to our churches every weekend having lived through all sorts of joys and challenges. There are people getting married and having babies… people who are being healed and set free from addiction. And then there are people who are going through a divorce… people who had to burry a child… people who lost a loved one to an overdose… people who have been diagnosed with cancer. All of these people are in our services at the same time. These people don’t need a cheerleader to get up and hype them into a praise frenzy. They need to encounter the presence of Jesus. And so my role in the service is to find a way to worship with a genuine heart no matter what I’m going through personally and point people to Christ. It’s not fake, it’s not hype, and it’s not living in denial of very real circumstances. It’s simply choosing to to magnify God over the issues of life because He is so much bigger than anything I’m facing personally or anything that those attending our services are facing. The weight of His glory out weighs the trial that we walk through.

1 Peter 1:6 -7 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

My generation encounters fake all of the time. We need to see something real. Don’t hide your trial… use it to show people Christ in the midst of your trial.

Perfecting Excellence

Excellence is one of those words in the worship circle that can ‘stir the pot’ in a lot of ways. The folks who understand excellence are usually all about it and the folks who don’t quite get it tend to justify their lack of excellence with any number of reasons (most of the reasons are completely reasonable and legit) but it still leads to frustration and musical train wrecks.

My wife and I have been very blessed to work with a lot of very different musicians over the years. Some of them were very skilled and others were just starting out and developing their musical abilities. As a worship pastor, one of my main jobs is to pull the best out of the team and help them stay motivated towards personal times of rehearsing, worship, and musical growth.

Here’s one of the biggest things I had to learn… the difference between perfection and excellence. Perfection (in the worship setting) is saying to the band that regardless of your personal ability and what’s going on in your world, I want you to play every song exactly like it is on the album. Perfection is taking away the possibility of any mistakes and I believe ultimately is rooted in pride rather than a heart of worship. That rigidity also eliminates the chances of something new and exciting from happening in our services.  Leading from a position of excellence means that I see the abilities of our musicians and I work within those parameters. I pick songs with specific musicians in mind and in doing so it eliminates a lot of potential frustration for myself and the other musicians. Excellence is seeing an individuals ability, and calling them to play to their potential. This is where pastoring comes in. Not everyone on our teams play at the same level of ability and I have to keep up with where people are. I do think there are times where we need to challenge our players to step out and try things that are out of their comfort zone. I’m not sure that a Sunday morning worship service is the time to do that initially.

For example, we are just starting to use click tracks and loops. I have held off a long time for several reasons. One: we didn’t have the technical means to pull it off (in ear monitors for the entire band). Two: our band wasn’t ready for it. This is one of those journeys that has to be implemented carefully. I could just come in and push it on everyone, but that just leads to frustration. Rather, I want to bring the team on the journey. We’re in this together. That doesn’t mean that I don’t lead with vision, it means that I pay attention to the individuals that make up our teams and serve them rather than push them.

Most of the guys on our team would tell you that I am not a ‘wing it’ kind of guy. I do expect every musician to take time to learn the songs that we are playing and to know their parts. One of the temptations of a naturally talented musician is to get lazy and not actually take time to rehearse because they know they can figure it out on the fly. When I see that attitude creeping in, I do need to address it. Sometimes there are legit reasons as to why a person couldn’t rehearse and I have to be sensitive to those issues and work around it for that service. If everyone did that, we would have chaos. This is where a spirit of excellence is essential. What I bring to the platform doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be the best I have at that moment.