A Not-So-Old yet Not-So-Young Worship Leader’s Advice to Young and Future Worship Leaders

I in no form or fashion consider myself to be an old minister with much advice to give, I actually consider myself to be quite the opposite; I am a young minister in need of much wisdom and much advice. I am merely a 27 year old who has been called to spend life Worshipping and teaching others to Worship our Great Creator. I begin leading worship on a weekly basis over eleven years ago, which in perspective of many of the older Music Ministers and Worship Pastors I know, is only a blink of the eye. In those eleven years I have witnessed and led out in what has been labeled by those older Music Ministers as some of the most troubling and exciting music years in the recent life of the church, known as the “Worship Wars”. I therefore don’t know if I have any wisdom to offer, or anything wise to say, but I do know that I have made mistakes and learned from them, and feel as if its biblically commanded by me to offer this advice to Younger and Future Worship Leaders. I will do so boldly and conversationally since the intended reader is 27 and below.

1. Don’t allow your calling by God to be effected by what people say or think of you.

In my time of ministry, whether it was leading youth groups in high school, doing internships or being an associate in college, or now leading a churches music ministry for the past four years there have always been people that have not liked my ministry. Since this is advice, I will be blunt: Most people in the church are incredibly sweet and are super supportive of younger people who are called to the ministry, offering their advice lovingly and quietly. However there are always the few in the church who are the squeaky wheel; these brothers and sisters are loud, often times rude, and many times cause much pain to the young minister. I have found though through patience, love, kindness, and simply talking, these squeaky wheels that at first may have caused you much pain and agony, are often times in the end, your biggest supporters.

What causes these people to not like your ministry? There are various reasons that people may not have liked my ministry throughout the years, however the most common and the most devastating on my part and theirs, is they don’t understand my ministry. They can’t see the big picture. It is your job as a minister to not only sound good as a musician, but to also help people see the big picture of what your ministry is about. Therefore it is your also your responsibility to know what your ministry is about, and contrary to popular beliefs (each held by me at one time or another) it is not about sounding good, looking cool, being known, or “losing yourself in the music”. If you don’t know what your ministry is about or what you are called to do in worship ministry it is time to get on your face and make sure you’re going the right direction. Every ministers big picture responsibility is leading others to Know God; whether for the first time, or more intimately, we are called to lead others to Know God, therefore we must in order to lead others, Know God intimately daily. Do not allow anything that anyone says distract you from the purpose of your ministry! Your calling is to lead others to Know God not to satisfy themselves, human nature, or personal preferences.

2. Don’t Confuse God’s Calling of you With what YOU want to Do.

Just as it is important that you do not let anyone else says lead you away from what God has called you to, it is equally important that YOU don’t distract yourself from your calling. It is easy as young ministers to have an agenda; we think well if we can just do worship like this church is doing it or if we can just get to this point, or we can just speed it up a little bit then that is when “we will make it”. The problem here is that we have lost sight of our calling. Our calling is not to be successful in men’s eyes or by men’s measurements. Our success is not found in 1,000/10,000/100,000 people in worship, our success is not found in everyone closing their eyes and lifting their hands, our success is not found in having our churches CD on iTunes, Our success is found in our obedience.

When we are obedient to God’s calling we are obedient to leading people to Know God. What does this look like practically? I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t know your situation. I do however know this, it looks like unity. The Unified Church, whether we unify around an organ and hymns, or a guitar and a praise song, is more Glorious to God, than the church who is crumbling under the fighting of each’s personal preference. How do you obtain Unity in the church? Now we’re getting to the truth of ministry here, it is not glamorous, it is being in the pit, teaching God’s people how to Know Him More intimately and watching that intimacy change hearts and lives, unifying people over one single solitary agenda: The Saving Cross of Jesus Christ.

3. Be A Listener.

I am not naturally a good listener. This is not a natural gift that God has given me. My first instinct when someone gives me advice or tries to help me on something, is to either tell them why my way is better or to tune them out and do what I was going to do anyhow. In ministry you are a shepherd of God’s sheep, as a shepherd if you choose to ignore the needs or the requests of the sheep, you could lead them into danger, leave them starving, or have them worse, not trust you. It is the same in the church, while not every person who gives you advice or tries to lead you to doing something is helpful (we’ll talk later about the art of saying no and the danger of saying yes too often), you have to become skilled in being able to listen not only the words that they are saying, but also what their heart is saying. Such an example might be when an older member of your congregation says, “Well why can’t we do this hymn” whereas you might be quick to respond, take the time to listen more by asking questions that offer them more time to explain themselves; “Why is this song important to you?”, “What does the theology in the song mean to you?”, “Is their some nostalgic reason you are partial to this song”. Many times through asking the right questions, I have gotten past the basic, “Let’s sing this song more often” to “this is the song I sang when I first came to know Christ” or “this is a song my father and I used to sing together”. When you take the time to get to know your sheep in such a way, you can better lead them. Your calling is to lead these brothers and sisters to Know God intimately, how can you do that if you don’t know your brothers and sisters. Be A Good Listener.

4. Know Why You Are Doing What You Are Doing

We don’t do anything in the church without purpose. We must know the purpose of why we are doing what we are doing. A good rule of thumb when planning out worship services in my book is to picture yourself as a parent with a child who likes to ask a lot of questions. Know how to answer why we are doing each part of the service as you would to a young child.

Why do we have announcements? Why did we choose to sing these particular songs today? What theological concepts (What do they say about what we know of God) are represented in each of the lyrics that we are singing today? Why do we “welcome” each other after the service has started? (Rom 16:16) Why do we have a “Solo” or “Special Music”? What is the overall theme of the service and how does each element of the service fit into that overall theme?

These are touch questions; even tougher are the answers we sometimes have. Many times the church has been doing something so long we don’t even know why we are doing it. Why is it that in Baptist churches we cover the Lord’s Supper Table with a pristine white sheet and then fold it meticulously as if it was our most prized possession? Historically Baptist were poor, so they met outside; the sheet was to keep the fly’s off of the bread that was on the table. Today it has turned into a vain tradition. This is just an example of how portions of our services can become so ritualistic that we don't’ know why we are doing what we are doing. It is your job as the worship leader, to help people understand and know exactly why you are doing everything we do in a worship service. Know what you are doing and why you are doing it.

5. Be A Teacher.

As Worship Leaders chances are you are fairly decent at your instrument and well music in general. We also as musicians tend to be very good entertainers, most of having the title as the family “ham” growing up. While this is fabulous and your mom, dad, aunt, sister, brother, grandparents are your number one fans, this is not what you are called to do. If you want to be an entertainer, or primarily a musician, than by all means let one of your fans know so they can buy you a ticket to Nashville; this is not what we are called to be as Worship Leaders. We are slaves and servants of a Holy God who has called us not only to Worship Him, but to lead others to Worship Him.

In order to be able to help others Worship Him, we must be able to teach of why He is worthy of our Worship, we must be able to to teach of who we are and Who God Is, we must be able to teach of how we live lifestyles of intimacy with the Father. Apart from our intimacy with the Father - we are nothing.

I had a professor in my first few years at Seminary who was most likely the wisest man I will ever meet on the topic of worship; he would always tell me, “Jonathan, don’t ever waste an opportunity to teach, every moment can be turned into a teaching moment”. What he said was indeed true, in every moment of the ministers life there are opportunities to teach. We often let these opportunities pass by with out seizing them, and talk about filler conversation topics such as the weather or sports. You see you don’t have to have a classroom to be a teacher; you don’t even have to have a blog, radio show, or even a pulpit; you have an opportunity to be a teacher in every moment of the day when someone asks how your week is going, or ask you what is going on in your life.

As musicians we have an opportunity to teach every time we hold a rehearsal, every time we lead worship, or every time we pick up a guitar; the only excuse for not being a teacher in our shoes is laziness. Let’s teach our people why this song is meaningful, what these lyrics mean, or why should we be excited about the Blood. Without teaching people why we are singing what we are singing, we are simply wasting their time and ours. Be A Teacher.

6. Be A Good Musician.

While this may seem blatantly obvious, the musician has way more responsibilities than any other staff member. Not only are we accountable for our theology, our people skills, and our ability to teach, but we are also accountable for being a good musician. Many of us are really good musicians, but also many of us take for granted that we are good musicians and can find ourselves in the rut of stagnancy. We must never take for granted that we can do something without practicing and must always seek to be a better musician. One way that I try to accomplish this is constantly surrounding myself with musicians that are better than me so I can grow as a musician. Part of my responsibility as a Worship Leader is to take my choir, praise team, and instrumentalists further and further in their musicianship; I can’t do this if I have plateaued in my own musicianship. Just as a pastor cannot say, “I have learned everything about the bible”, quit seeking to know more, and expect his people to keep growing, the musician can never get to the point where they cannot grow anymore. There is always something you can learn better and be better at. Practice must be a Priority. Be A Good Musician.

7. Don’t Always Say No, Don’t Always Say Yes.

One of the hardest things in ministry is working with people; if you didn’t have to work with people the ministry would be so much easier. To bad the point of ministry is about the people and their relationship with God. Joking aside, when working with people, one of the most difficult things is knowing when to say yes and when to say no. Naturally I am the type of person that likes to please people and so my automatic response to most situations is “yes”. It took me a few years but eventually I figured out that I cannot say “yes” to every situation, and that is ok. If you say yes to every person you will find that you have no time to yourself, no time to accomplish your goals in ministry, and are just simply “worn-out”.

On the other hand it is important to not always say “no”. There are things that we don’t personally want to do, dinners we don’t want to go to, events we don’t want to participate in; there will always be these things, but you must also ask yourself am I helping build relationship through helping this brother or sister out. We should always think of others more than ourselves.

There is a delicate balance at hand here on this topic; I’m not sure if there is any way you can teach a person when to say yes or when to say no, you just learn over time when it is time to suck it up and do something you don’t necessarily want to do and when it is important and vital to save time for your family and own self.

8. Be A Thankful Encourager.

One of the wisest things that a professor told me in college is “they don’t have to be there”. Chances are, you are the only paid musician that is at your church, this means the rest of your choir, band, and worship team does not have to be there and are volunteering their time. There are a variety of ways that you can show you are thankful to your musicians but the one that speaks the loudest is by being prepared for rehearsals and worship times so that you don’t waste their valuable time. Be an encourager while in rehearsal showing them that it is worth their time to be there, never be afraid to thank each one of them individually for their participation at a minimum of every other rehearsal, and always, always, always thank the group as a whole every time you are gathered. Whether are not you are thankful encourager will determine whether or not people want to work with you in the future. People who feel appreciated, feel a part of something that is great, or feel as if they are a part of a team will stick around, those who don’t, will not. Be A Thankful Encourager.

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As I stated earlier, I in no form or fashion consider my self to be an old minister with much advice to give, I simply offer an unfinished list of what God has taught me in the past decade of leading worship. As a 27 year old, I am far from finished in my journey of where God is leading me as a Worship Leader, as a matter of fact, I’m just getting started. If you are a young worship leader and you need encouragement, help, prayer, or anything else, please do not hesitate to send me an email and I will help you in any way I can. Stay strong brothers, be encouraged for God is on our side, the victory is won, the grave is overcome.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Jonathan