I mentioned in the previous post that one of the things that impresses me about Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio is their sense of cooperation and teamwork on stage. One leads worship and the other is speaking but they are on the same page, working towards the same goal and it shows. Chris genuinely is serving the message, before and after it is given, through his music. On the other side of the spectrum I have been in worship services that are like cafeteria trays, every item has it’s own little quadrant with fiercely demarcated borders keeping each item on the plate from touching or having anything to do with each other. You can almost get spiritual whiplash moving from the singing to any media that is utilized to the message because there is no cohesion or big picture things are moving towards.

I believe that there are some very practical steps you can take that will help foster synergy between the worship leader and the pastor and will help you move towards a more seamless flow in services. These are things that work for us at fresh life and every church is different and has more or less complicated needs but hopefully some of what we have learned can be helpful, however much it has to be tweaked to be implemented in your specific situation.

Of great concern, first of all, is the choice of your worship leader. A lion share of the platform time will be occupied by this individual and so you need to choose both prayerfully and carefully for the right fit. It doesn’t matter how great the message may be–if the music is bad that accounts for half of the service so choose wisely (worship leaders the same is true in reverse so u choose carefully too!) For church planters and small churches this can be really difficult because your options are limited, you might even be your own worship leader. That’s tough. In the mean time, keep it SIMPLE. Less is more. Someone who is just cutting their teeth leading worship will have an easier time handling a stripped down setup with just a 2 or 3 piece band than trying to wrangle a full stage of musicians with epic solo’s and 19 backup vocalists and a guy with a cowbell.

Once you have the right fit make sure they get the vision. How can they know if they are succeeding or failing if they don’t know your expectations? Are you frustrated that your worship leader isn’t nailing it? Do you think have any concept of what “nailing it” is to you? Have you ever gone to lunch with them and shared what you like, what you don’t, heard from them, and talked about different styles, approaches and philosophies. You might be surprised by the fact that you are both operating under different definitions of success. Maybe they have been wanting to go more rock and roll but they thought you dug the acoustic stuff. It could be that they don’t really like having dancing leprechauns and videos behind the words on the screen either, but they never thought to say anything about it. It also helps to build and foster the friendship. Spend life and time together, building inside jokes and a good relationship will only add to the dynamic and chemistry that will be evident during times of public ministry. Kevin Guido, our Creative Arts Pastor and head worship leader at Fresh Life, is one of my best friends on the planet and we have a lot of fun together, no matter what we are doing.

By far, what will help build this coherence in the service is to involve them in the sermon building process. For us, this begins months out when series ideas are being developed and brainstormed. The worship leader shouldn’t be blind-sided by what is coming down the pike but right there with you riding the wave of creativity and momentum. The next study should be inspiring them early on as you move towards it and they can be seeking God and preparing their heart as it approaches. Then each week as you gear up for the weekend (for us by Thursday) I email the outline and text and any additional thoughts on and as soon as my rough draft is done I send that out too. Sometimes there will also be a phone call or cup of coffee thrown in the mix as well if my “passion runneth over” I want him to know how the message begins, and ends, see the application and have more than enough info to craft the music around the message. This btw is why it is key that you have someone you trust and respect, and not just someone who has a great voice and can play the guitar. They need to really get it.

Every once in a while there is a special song that I will specifically request but I try to do that sparingly as it can hamper creativity if I am basically choosing the set list each week. Quite honestly, I am often blessed to find them choosing a song that I thought would fit perfectly but didn’t say anything about–those are times I give God a high-5 for having us on the same page. Other times I will be surprised by how a song I never would have thought of will really complement what God is doing in that service. (And occasionally I will feel a particular song is super appropriate for a service but we don’t want to include it in the worship per se so we will pre-roll the service with it or include it as a music bed for a video.)

This all admittedly gets more complicated when you have more than one worship leader. As of right now, we have two campuses and several different worship leaders in the mix. And so I rely on my Creative Arts Pastor to be the funnel that distributes and monitors the vision, song-selection, teams and overall implementation of what happens on the worship front in all aspects of our growing church. This limits the cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. I communicate with him and he communicates it with the others involved at Fresh Life Creative.

Like I said earlier, this is stuff that we have found helpful and if you can grab something, killer–but I’d love to hear what has worked for you at your church as well, leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Three years ago today on a (very) cold Sunday morning we held the very first fresh life church service. Fourteen people met in a small store-front space for worship and a Bible study and we had no idea what kind of adventure we were in for.

Three years later as I type it is quite honestly hard to believe all the Lord has done in that time. The church has expanded into two theaters, and skull church, fresh life groups & fresh life radio have all given the ministry turbo boosts. We have been delighted to watch Christ rock many people’s lives for eternity.

There has been laughter, adrenaline, fear, excitement, criticism, sleepless nights, mistakes, failures and victories. Technology has been utilized in new and exciting ways–I have even mastered the art of being in two places at once (by pre-recording messages when I have to be out of town but dont want to put a series on hold.) Many different books of the Bible have been taught through.And once, while preaching, I fell down and almost hit my head on a water table while pretending to open a rootbeer. A lot of coffee has been consumed. One thing is for sure–there hasn’t been a dull moment. This church plant has felt a lot like skiing in front of an avalanche. Watching Christ keep His promise to build HIS church has been the thrill of my life. I am humbled by and grateful for the opportunity to serve Christ at this church.

I want to congratulate my wife, family and team at this mile-marker and thank them for the blood sweat and tears that have been poured into this work. I get to serve the Lord with the most amazing people on the planet and am so thankful for their love of Christ, passion for the gospel, creativity, loyalty and ingenuity. You guys are killer, and remember, the best is yet to come!

To God be the glory for the great things He has done!

We are now twelve days into this new year–how is your resolution doing? I texted ChaCha this morning and asked, “how long does the average new years resolution last?” and was told that most fizzle out before February even begins. I guess most of us aren’t resolute enough! With that in mind, this year I built a resolution for the fresh life staff and those who come to skull church where you can only make it a few months out of the year and still succeed. The goal is to read through the New Testament in ninety days.

By April 1st we will have read about Jesus’ earthly life from four different perspectives, the radical, missional, church-planting adventure contained in the book of Acts, all of Paul’s emails in addition to the other letters and of course the graphic, bloody account of the return of Jesus Christ that the New Testament closes out with. It breaks down to about 3 chapters a day, which is not really a difficult amount of material at all. I have done lots of different reading plans with varying speeds and I have really been enjoying this pace. While reading slowly enough to actually be thinking about what you are reading it still only takes about ten to fifteen minutes each day. That number is truly miniscule when you remember that the average American watches 4 hours and 49 minutes of tv a day.

It has been awesome going through it personally as well as hearing from the staff and those who have been leaving comments about their experience with the 90 day NT challenge on the skull church facebook page. I am thrilled at the thought of so many people consuming this concentrated dose of Truth. I guarantee you that God will do awesome things in people’s live’s and hearts as they consistently hide His Word in their hearts–it NEVER returns void! I also know that for those who didn’t previously spend time reading the Bible daily, they won’t be able to go back to only being spoon-fed Scripture at church. I am praying that the 90 day challenge will just whet their appetite for more.

Another refreshing thing about coming to the end of a year is the opportunity to take inventory and celebrate all that God did in the previous year before you face the blank canvas of the new one. We put together a year-end recap of some great things we saw God do in 2009, our third full year of ministry at fresh life. CLICK HERE to check it out. Looking at it, what’s really hard to believe is that it all happened in one year.

My personal resolution for this new decade is to be like Caleb from the Old Testament books of Numbers and Joshua. He was one of the spies who checked out the land of Canaan before the children of Israel entered in. Alongside Joshua, he brought back a good report and was rewarded for it by being the only one over twenty years of age that lived to enter forty years later. God said that Caleb had a “different spirit in him” and six different times it is said that he followed the Lord fully. That is my desire for this new year and decade–to follow the Lord fully. God has done tremendous things in the past but I am not content, I want to see Him do more. There are new mountains to take, new adventures to face and I intend to fully follow the Lord, to live for His glory and to use every breath I have to make Jesus famous.

One of the things that I have been most excited about recently has been the growth of our small groups at fresh life church. They are an extremely important part of a healthy church and have always been, going back all the way to the early church in the book of Acts. They are especially important when a church has multiple services/campuses to ensure people are plugged in on an intimate level and have meaningful discipleship relationships. Otherwise it is easy to anonymously exist in a congregation without experiencing the depth of spiritual fellowship that God uses to transform a person.

We had tried various solutions but up until the spring of 2009 the fact that we were struggling to get people to attend the two home groups we offered showed that we hadn’t hit our stride in this area. Our plan was for them to divide like cells when they grew and eventually we would have home groups all over the place. But It…Never…Happened. The church continued to grow, but the groups never did. Now flash forward just under a year and as we approach our second trimester of Fresh Life Groups we are adding 7 new groups to the 18 we had in the fall that this month will begin meeting in homes all over the place. What is equally awesome is that in addition to all the new people who signed up this time 72% of those who attended reenrolled in this new season.

What changed?
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This weekend at fresh life we had our first service in our siamese-sanctuary, the Liberty theater! We are calling it our siamese-sanctuary because it is not really a satellite campus, and it isn’t just an overflow venue either. It is a 90+ year old movie theater about a block away from the Strand, which is our current 90+ year old theater, that we have been meeting in for almost two years now. We closed on the Liberty on September 11th of this year and have spent the last two months cleaning, painting, building out the stage, connecting the two theaters with state of the art fiber-optics, installing an HD projector & killer sound system and converting the concessions stand into a fully functioning espresso bar.

The body at fresh life engaged in the project in a major way. So many skilled and generous people spent hundreds and hundreds (no exaggeration) of hours pimping the building out for Jesus. (did I really just type that?) The work continued right up until the eleventh hour Saturday night but it was all worth it when both the Strand and the Liberty were filled with people worshipping God and studying His word Sunday morning. And best of all, no one had to shiver through service watching a screen outside the Strand on the sidewalk!

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