Fresh Life Church is around 1,400 hours into our goal of giving the Flathead Valley 3,000 hours of community service this summer in an initiative that is attached to our study of the book of Nehemiah. We have teams, decked out in red Rock this City shirts, all over the place doing things like: picking up trash, cleaning mountain bike trails, giving blood, and making meals for homeless people. It has been awesome seeing the church rally to the vision and rise up to make Jesus famous by serving in these very practical ways.

When I met with the mayor of Kalispell, before this project began, and asked how she would have us spend the 3,000 hours one of the immediate things she asked for us to focus on was graffiti removal. As a result that has been an area that we have thrown a lot of energy at. We have prayed that people would see our “good works and give glory to our Father in Heaven” (Matthew 5:16) But this past week one of our teams, that was serving in this way, attracted the wrong kind of attention. One of the local newspapers runs a section, called the Law Roundup, where they report all police activity from the day before. (One of the quirky things about living in a small town) It is usually pretty humorous to read. Here is what was written about the RTC team:

Police investigated a complaint that youths were spray-painting the bridge at Underpass Hill. It turned out that the young people were performing a good deed by removing the graffiti Tuesday evening.

You can learn more about Rock this City, watch videos where you can meet some of the RTC stars and even participate and log your hours (no matter where you live) here.

When God gives you a burden that becomes a calling, a vision of something you believe He wants to do in your life, one of the first things you need to do is to protect it. These visions are most vulnerable when they are in their nascent state, before they have begun to take shape. Like a polar bear hunting a baby seal, the enemy would love to destroy what God wants to do, before it has a chance to grow up, and so you must take steps to protect it.

I believe that one of the greatest things you can do to protect your vision is to employ strategic silence until the opportune time. You see this in scripture. When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem with a vision to rebuild the walls he said nothing for three days. He didn’t even tell the people who were going to do the work until the time was right. (Nehemiah 2:11,16) It would have been easy to let it slip, but he didn’t want any neigh-sayers to put their own spin on it as they broadcasted the news. He wouldn’t forfeit the right to be the one to impart the vision to the people himself.

When God revealed to Mary that she was raising the Messiah it would have been easy to respond to that annoying mom who had a “my kid is on the honor roll at Nazareth elementary” bumper sticker with a nonchalant, that’s nice. Oh and did I mention that my kid is ‘destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel?’ But she didn’t. Luke 2:51 specifically says she, “kept all these things in her heart.” She protected the vision of what God was going to do with strategic silence for a period of time.

If you want to know what can happen when you share your dreams too early, look no further than Joseph. Over a bowl of fruit-loops one morning he casually mentioned to his family that they were all going to bow down and worship him one day. Joseph was sharing exactly what God had revealed to him, and it would come to pass exactly as he saw it, but his family wasn’t too keen on the idea at the time. Sharing the dream so early on lead to some rocky days for young Joseph as his brothers took steps to keep it from coming to pass and that is what can happen when you don’t protect the vision with silence early on.

Looking back on my life, I can think of times where I let dreams out of my heart too early or with the wrong people and got discouraged as a result. It’s easy to do. You want affirmation. In fear you desire to hear from others that you aren’t crazy, that they think it will work, that you should ‘totally go for it.’ And because “in the multitude of counselors there is safety” you seek out feedback. Be careful. To all but the eye of faith a God-sized vision looks impossible. The eye of the flesh will see the problems, the reasons why it won’t work, those who have tried it before. And you can easily end up bailing on your calling because some hater told you that there is no way you can kill a goliath with a sling-shot. It just can’t be done. And they are right, you can’t. But God can.

Check this out, Psalm 115:3 says, “Our god is in Heaven, He does as He wishes.” If God wants to do the impossible in your life–that’s exactly what He will do. Nothing is too hard for him. I’m not saying you shouldn’t seek out godly counsel, before you take action, you should. But when you do make sure it’s from those with gutsy faith who won’t just see all the reasons why it won’t work. Seek out advice from people who have taken risks that God has blessed.

To use a coffee illustration, there might be a season where you need to just keep things brewing before you push the plunger down and pour it out. There are dreams in my heart, I believe God is going to do in my life and ministry one day, that only a select group of individuals are privy to and there are other ones that no one knows about but my wife. If I said them out loud in public I would probably scare myself right now. I am protecting them with silence until the time is right. Protect the vision God has given you!

“There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter.

Rock this City is now here. This past weekend we kicked off a brand new series going, verse-by-verse, through the book of Nehemiah. It will last for the next 4.5 months and during the summer portion, as a church, we will be ‘living the story out’ as we take radical steps to love and help build up the city we live in.

The basic concept is that everyone in the church selects one hour of community service for each month of summer off of the menu of outreach opportunities that we have established. (3 is the minimum but not the maximum–one super hardcore dude picked 30 hours) Once they have made their choices they just take their form to the “Rock this City Center” and get a free RTC shirt that they wear to their three events over the course of the summer.

No big deal right? Wrong. Even though the individual sacrifice is small, (the average american watches 4.5 hours of tv per day–all we are asking for is 3 hours in a period of 3 months) the group yield is huge. If everyone puts their back into it we will have given thousands and thousands of hours to this city in Christ’s name.

As a staff, we have been praying and prepping for this for months, and we believe that God is going to do some straight-up killer stuff in and through this study and initiative. And we were so stoked to see the body respond to the vision enthusiastically. Hundreds of people flocked to the RTC Center at all of our services committing to thousands of hours of service and happily receiving their shirts.

You can read more about Rock this City and be a part of it, even if you live in another part of the country, Rocking your city for Jesus by serving, logging your hours online and sharing your story with us–here.

You can see photos from the launch here.

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.

This week I attended Catalyst West, a leadership conference in Southern California. There were some great speakers like Andy Stanley and Mark Driscoll and some provokative insights on how to better leverage the power of social media in the church. As you would expect from Catalyst, it was very well organized and full of energy and also a little over the top. For example, the Samoan dancers in loin cloths flicking their tongues and flexing their pecs to the war drums was a little disturbing…

Without a doubt, the highlight of the conference was the evening with Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio. They didn’t have any laser-shooting robots, or comic sketches or loin-cloths. It was just a simple and powerful night of worship and the Word. It rocked. Jennie and I both experienced God doing eternal things in our hearts as we worshipped and were ministered to by Louie’s talk and we left recharged and refreshed.

I had never heard Louie speak in person before, though I have been impacted and blessed by his ministry for years. One of the biggest things I enjoyed watching was the partnership between Chris and Louie on stage. Though one spoke and the other sang, you could tell that they were working together for the same cause through the whole night. As I watched, I thought of Ira Sankey and DL Moody, Cliff Barrows and Billy Graham–examples of worship leader/speaker teams that were united powerfully. And it clearly makes a big difference when God melds two different hearts together to be used in harmony in this way.

I think I am going to post soon about some things that you can do to try and get and stay in sync with your worship leader.