Tag Archives: worship pastor

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The Benefit of Self-Discipline

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When I was losing 130 pounds several years ago, I wasn’t thinking about any side benefits outside of feeling better and living longer. Looking back now, one of the things I’ve learned is the self-discipline it created in me.

Before I lost weight, I was not as driven, organized or motivated in many areas of my life. In fact, I was often lazy. As my weighing almost 300 pounds exhibited.

Looking back, losing weight created a self-discipline in me to exercise and eat better that has far extended past my health. It has bled over into my marriage, with my kids, my work and almost every area of my life.

One of the reasons many change efforts fail is a lack of self-discipline. A reason many people don’t have the life they want is a lack of self-discipline.

A reason people don’t have the life they want is a lack of self-discipline.

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The organization it takes to lose weight or get out of debt and ask anyone who has done it and they will tell you, it creates a self-discipline you previously did not have. The willingness to forgo dessert, a desire to not buy something you can’t afford. All of that takes discipline. To get at least 8 hours of sleep, takes discipline. Making time for your marriage with weekly date nights, takes discipline.

Pastors and leaders are notorious for a lack of self-discipline.

Here are some ways to know if you lack self-discipline:

  1. You find yourself in meetings you have no business being in.
  2. You are late on many things.
  3. You have a feeling of being overwhelmed.
  4. You don’t get enough sleep.
  5. You wish you could lose some weight.
  6. There are many things you wish you could do, but don’t know how you’ll find the time.
The difference between good and great often comes down to discipline. -Mike Myatt

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What do you do besides losing a bunch of weight or getting out of debt? There is a way to create self-discipline without making enormous life changes, although they will eventually come.

  1. Assign times to everything you do. Everything that is important gets a place on your calendar. In fact, almost everything that you do has a minute attached to it. Yet, we often do things we don’t want to do, go to places, meetings and events we don’t want to be at. Why? We didn’t assign times to what we want to do. Date night, days off, vacation, reading, taking naps, spending time with friends, working out. If you want to do these things, they will need to have minutes on your calendar.
  2. Master email instead of email mastering you. Most people check email way too much. If you are wondering if you check it too much, the answer is yes. We do the same with social media and this mastering of us, sucks the life and time out of us. We waste so much time by scrolling through Instagram and looking at emails. Set times aside that you will check email. For me, I usually check email before lunch and before the end of my day. Amazingly, I miss very little that is important.
  3. Control your calendar. You may be picking up a trend here, which is true. In the same way that you need to control email and social media, controlling your calendar is equally important. While assigning times is one thing, controlling what gets on your calendar is important. If you are going to do something, why are you doing it? Do you need to be in that meeting? Sometimes you don’t. Remember, every time you say yes to something you say no to something else. You don’t have to do everything and you can’t. You don’t have to meet with everyone and you can’t.
  4. Say no. If you have a hard time saying no and if you lack discipline in an area of your life, you probably struggle with this. Practice saying it out loud. No. Say it kindly, forcefully, but say it.
Every time you say yes to something you say no to something else.

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How to Make a Hard Announcement

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At some point as a leader, you will have to make a hard announcement.

It might be about letting a staff member go, layoffs, cutting a budget, killing a program or ministry, moving locations, changing service times. Anything that will disrupt the normal and what people are used to can be a hard announcement. It doesn’t even have to be a major change, it could simply be a change.

While it is difficult to do this, there are some things you can do to set yourself up to succeed and for a hard announcement to go smoothly and create momentum.

4 ways to make a hard announcement

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Here are 4 ways:

1. Be clear. Say whatever it is you need to say. Don’t beat around the busy. Don’t be mean about it, but be clear. At the end of the conversation or announcement, there should be clarity on what was communicated. There should be no questions about what moving forward looks like. When things are gray or unanswered, people create their own answers and this is when a church or team gets into trouble.

2. Be honest. Depending on the announcement and situation, you may not be able to share everything or all the details. But, you should be honest about it. Leaders often want to cloak announcements in cliche’s about how God is moving or calling, etc. People see through this. Be honest. Don’t throw anyone under the bus, but be honest. In this honesty, you should be as positive as possible. It does no good to launch an attack against the person leaving.

3. Say what everyone is thinking. Leaders need to give their people more credit than they do. Often leaders think their teams or people in their church are stupid. They wouldn’t say that, but they communicate with them like they do. If you are heading into a hard season for your church, say so. Admit, this will be hard. Admit something hurts. Admit something is not what you’d like. Don’t always feel the need to put a smile on something. Now, your level of confidence will be felt in your church but there is a difference between confidence to get through a situation and trying to put a false smile on something. Don’t be afraid to say what everyone is thinking about something. It will also validate what everyone thinking and tell them it is okay and normal to think that.

4. Everyone only remembers the last day. When a transition happens and it will, everyone will only remember the last day. I know you did so much at your church, but people will only remember the last time they saw or heard you. If you let a staff member go and they had a number of fans in the church, those fans will remember how you acted and treated them when you publicly said goodbye. Don’t be fake or false in this, but be respectful and take the high road.

When a transition happens, people remember your last day

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Pastors Can Make the Worst Friends

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friends

Most pastors are nice people, they just don’t make good friends.

That may seem harsh to say, but as a pastor, I think it is true.

Hear me out.

Pastoral ministry is an all encompassing job. It is highly relational, emotional, mental and spiritual. It can be draining physically and overwhelming. It isn’t harder than other jobs, it is just different.

Because you can get a call at any moment with something that needs attention, many pastors burnout and struggle to have boundaries so they can rest and recharge.

Pastors spend so much time counseling people, helping people work through issues or sitting in meetings that when they meet someone, they often see them as a project instead of a person. They see them as someone who will need something, someone who will need advice or need to be fixed instead of a person to simply spend time with.

For most pastors, church is something they are always thinking about. The next capital campaign, new ministry year, next sermon series, next issue, hiring a new person. It never stops. They spend all their time with people talking about church. They sit with their wife on date night and talk about church. It is not just a job, it is their life. It is who they are and this becomes unhealthy.

Then, they meet someone new and they can’t stop talking about church. They can’t shut it off.

What do you do then? How can you become a better friend if you are a pastor? Here are 5 ideas:

  1. Have friends who don’t attend church (or your church). This is crucial. If you don’t have any friends who don’t attend church, that’s a great clue that you aren’t good at friendships. Churched people will tolerate a pastor who don’t stop talking about church or is a poor friend because they want to be close to a pastor. An unchurched person won’t take that.
  2. Have a no church talk zone. There should be a time of day, a day each week where you stop talking about church stuff. Stop thinking about, stop checking your email. Don’t talk about it at least once a week. For many pastors this will be so hard to do, but incredibly healthy.
  3. Take a day off. If you aren’t taking your day off as a pastor, you are sinning. I’m blown away by how many pastors are killing themselves working 6 or 7 days a week. Stop it. Rest, recharge, take some down time.
  4. Get in a small group. I’m blown away by how many pastors are not in a small group or missional community at their church. They’ll often say that the elders are their small group. This line of thinking attempts to make a pastor untouchable and that’s a sin. In a small group, people see who you are, you can’t hide any longer. You start to see how people see you and if you are any good at community. This might feel like it goes against #1 but it doesn’t because many pastors don’t have friends in their church. Now, you need to be careful here. You don’t just share everything with someone in your church, you must show discretion on the information and with the person. There have been times Katie and I have shared everything about a situation with our MC, and sometimes not. Each situation is different, but you should be in community with some people in your church who are not in leadership.
  5. Get a hobby. I was talking with some pastors the other day I am coaching out of burnout and I asked them, “What do you do for fun? What recharges you? What is fun?” Blank stares. Many pastors do not have a hobby. Things like fixing a car, working with wood, hiking, playing sports, knitting or cooking. Nothing. If that’s you, sit down and answer that question, what do I find fun? If you don’t have a hobby, you won’t have anything that lets off steam, anything that is fun, anything to do with others.

 

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Dear Worship Leader

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worship leader

Dear Worship Leader,

Because I speak every week and have done so for the last 10+ years, I’ve seen a lot of worship leaders. From camps, conferences, church services, student and college ministry, it takes all kinds. Most of them are great. Some of them, not so much. Most of them have great hearts with a desire to lead a group of people into the presence of Jesus to worship, others, not so much. I thought I’d share some thoughts as a person who preaches and worships in church on a weekly basis, sort of my viewpoint of you and some requests.

  1. It’s not about you. I know worship leaders would never say it is about them or preachers either. But sometimes, it seems like it is more about you than Jesus. We are not there to watch you worship. We are not there to see how amazing you are or how incredible your voice is or that killer drum or guitar solo you just nailed. If that’s all people talk about at the end, it failed.
  2. Talk normally. So many worship leaders when they talk between songs sound like they are trying to seductively get me out of my clothes. If your voice sounds like Barry White normally, then great. If not, talk normally. Don’t breath heavy, make weird pauses. I leaned over to Katie at one worship service recently and told her I felt like the worship leader was hitting on us. It shouldn’t feel that way.
  3. Everything you say, pray and the songs you sing teach me about God. When you pray, think through it. When you talk about asking for more of the presence of the Holy Spirit, is that possible? Or do we need to be more aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit? Make sure you know what the Father, Son and Spirit do. When you make it up on the fly, you make theological errors that we in the seats listen to and believe. After all, you’re on stage. As for lyrics, make sure they are theologically correct. Also, what does it mean to sing to the heart of Jesus? When you tell us to sing this straight to Jesus I wonder who we’ve been singing to this whole time. A lot of what is said on the latest Hillsong and Passion album sound awesome in an arena, but when there are 25 people in a church plant, we don’t want to shout to God.
  4. Pray normally. When you pray, do you say God or Jesus over and over. Dear God, we love you God. Thank you God. God, your presence is so amazing God. Oh God. If that’s how you pray, great. If not, pray normally. Sometimes people pray and I wonder how many times they will say God’s name like they might forget it. The way you pray teaches the rest of us to pray and if it doesn’t sound normal, it communicates a normal person can’t pray. Also, when you pray, I learn theology about God.
  5. Don’t repreach the sermon. There is nothing worse than preaching a sermon, one that I as the preacher have thought about for anywhere from 1 week to 8 months just to have a worship leader come up after me and on the fly repreach it in 5 minutes and make me wonder, “Why did we just sit here?” Or, when you repreach it incorrectly. I remember speaking at another church and the worship leader came up and tried to make my point, but missed it. Showing he wasn’t really listening.
  6. Your dress reflects your heart. This is for men and women. If your dress is distracting, revealing or over the top, no one is paying attention to Jesus. They are looking at you. What you wear, how low cut it is, how short your skirt is, how tight your shirt is, all reflects your heart.
  7. Don’t make us stand forever. I know people stand forever at a concert, but once you start getting to 15, 20, 25 minutes of straight standing people start checking out because it hurts. Knees, back, necks, they all start to ache.
  8. When you sing high, men stop singing. If you are a worship leader, you probably have an incredible range. That’s awesome. You can probably sing all the songs exactly as they are recorded on the CD. That’s awesome. The problem is few other people can, especially men. When you sing too high, men stop singing and check out.
  9. Explain what we are doing. Why are we standing? Why are we reading this prayer? If you want me to do something, tell me and explain it. Don’t assume I want to do the thing you want me to do. You’ve spent all week thinking about it, working on it and I just heard about it.
  10. Sing familiar songs each week. I love new songs and if you lead worship, you get tired of songs quickly. The reason? By the time you teach a song to a church, you’ve listened to it 100 times. The problem is, most people do not listen to worship music throughout the week. They don’t know the songs. So, if you teach a song and the following week don’t sing it again, we forget it.

I love worship leaders. I love that at Revolution, almost half the service is music. I want you to be great. If you don’t serve with a pastor that wants you to be as great as possible, go find a new pastor to work with. The people who show up each week show up wanting to meet Jesus and you are a big part of that. You help us encounter Jesus in a personal, emotional and logical way. I want you to be great and I don’t want anything to stand in the way of you being the worship leader God called you to be.

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One Way to Make Church Memorable

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worship

Every pastor when they write a sermon and preach it want people to remember it. Most people though forget most of what is said in a sermon. This is why it is important to have one point instead of five.

You can use visuals, video clips, readings, stories and a host of other things to make your sermon and church memorable.

One thing that we do at Revolution that helps to make church memorable is to line up the songs with the sermon. 

This seems like second nature to us, but I am amazed at how many worship leaders and preachers are not on the same page. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a worship service and the worship leader introduces a song by giving a 2 minute sermon that has nothing to do with the sermon and the point of the day.

A lot of times people will debate if preaching is the reason the church gathers on a Sunday or is it worship. I would say it’s both. If you don’t have both, you’ve failed to do something very important as the gathered church.

At Revolution, we use worship music to set up the sermon and then for the sermon to set up the response time and communion.

To make your church memorable, you have to do a few things:

  1. Decide to connect the dots for people. People come to church with their brains all over the place. They often rushed to get out the door, had a fight on the way to church, a screaming child. They are tired and stressed from the week. They fall into the chair at church exhausted and wanting to catch their breath. They need help connecting the dots. Talk about how songs connect to a sermon. In recent weeks at the end of my sermon I’ve talked about why we are doing a song that we are doing. You don’t always have to do this. But decide that you will do the work of working with your pastor or worship leader to connect the dots for your people.
  2. Plan ahead. If you want to do anything great or creative or connecting the music with the sermon, you have to plan ahead. You can’t decide on Wednesday what you will preach on this Sunday. Does the Holy Spirit change things? Yes. Two weeks ago I rewrote my sermon at 11pm on Saturday night. That isn’t a pattern for me. We plan about 15 months in advance to that the person leading worship can spend time in the passage and let the verses speak to them as they prepare a set list.
  3. Have a worship leader that cares deeply about theology. Thankfully this is becoming more and more important. In the past, being a worship leader meant you could play guitar and sing. The bar has been raised in churches, which is a good thing. Your worship leader does not have to have an M.Div. in theology, but they need to know theology, care about doctrine and be able to discern if worship songs are doctrinally correct. Some of the most popular worship songs today are theologically incorrect. And never miss this pastor: your church will often learn more about God from the songs they sing than from listening to your sermon. 
  4. Listen to the worship set while you prep your sermon. After talking through my sermon with Paul or the worship leader on Monday morning, when I get the final list, I will make a playlist for my iPod and listen to it in the car, while I am prepping my sermon or taking a run. I want the words to get into my head and my heart. This helps me connect the verses I’m preaching on to the songs we are singing, which helps to make church more memorable to someone when they leave the service.
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