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.

In the last nine months I have preached approximately one hundred and forty-four times and for all but one of them I spoke using Amazon’s Kindle DX for my message notes. The one time I didn’t was a fluke, the screen on my Kindle broke and Amazon had a new one (for free I might add) to me in 24 hours, but I actually had to speak at Skull Church using paper notes one night. I totally felt like a cave man.

I have been meaning to blog about the pros/cons of the Kindle for public speaking for a while. I regularly get emails from other communicators who have seen me using it and are wondering: whether I like it and is it hard to get used to? and which size they should get? and how to get their word docs onto it et cetera. So here goes… (more…)

I am in the Tucson airport headed home from a cactus filled few days in Arizona where I spoke at a pastors conference. The lineup of speakers was great and included: Skip Heitzig, James MacDonald, Pedro Garcia, Gayle Erwin, Don McClure, and Alistair Begg. We all spoke on different segments of the life of David and it was awesome. Not only because of what a privilege it was speak to 1,000 pastors and leaders from all over the country but also because of the opportunity to listen and be ministered to myself.

My favorite was hearing from Alistair Begg last night. He is one awesome Scotsman! His passionate and genuine conviction that the Bible is the actual word of God shows on his face as he speaks and you can’t help but feel like you are almost getting to go back in time and listen to Robert Murray McCheyne who preached, “with eternity stamped upon his brow.” Alistair is also a full on wordsmith and busted out yoda-esque pearls of wisdom like, “even the best of men are men at best.”

Getting to spend time backstage, between sessions, with guys like Alistair is worth more than gold. And you can be sure I worked on getting him to bring his radio show, Truth for life, onto fresh life radio. James MacDonald’s show, Walk in the Word, will be coming on later this year and I hope to hear some sweet scottish preaching soon too.

with Alistair Begg

My message was on David’s time hiding from Saul in the caves (I called it Beverly Caves 90210) and how he had to trust God’s promises even when they seemed super unlikely. I love preaching on David. He was just a punk kid who God used in major ways because he had a special heart. Normally in life having a heart condition disqualifies you from certain things, but it was David’s heart condition that qualified him to be used. Not that he was perfect (far from it) but he was a man after God’s own heart.

I am headed home for skull church and will be prepping my message on the flight–praying for God to move!