Monthly Archives: January 2012

Winter Leadership Boost

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This weekend I had the fantastic opportunity to take in a few of the sessions from the 2011 Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit.  We organized a small gathering at our church to take in some great leadership wisdom with some of our ministry volunteers.

The summit is always awesome.  This year I spent most of my time taking it in from the sound booth.  I always underestimate the speakers at the summit.  Partly because half the time I’ve never heard of them, and the other half of the time…well, I have no excuse for the other half.

Today I would like to share with you some of the insights and thoughts from a few of the speakers.  So, from my vantage point in the sound booth I bring you…

Caleb’s Summit Snippets  

Bill Hybels – 5 Critical Questions

author of “The Power of a Whisper”

1. What is your current leadership challenge level?

  • Are you under challenged? (not good)
  • Are you appropriately challenged? (pretty good spot to be in)
  • Are you over challenged? (hard to keep that up and stay human)
  • The best place to be is just above appropriately challenged, so that you’re pushing yourself, but not killing yourself.

2. What Is Your Plan For Dealing With Challenging People In Your Organization?

  • Willow Creek has an aggressive but well thought out plan for this.  I think it depends on the size of your organization and every situation is different.  Do you have a plan?
  • If you don’t deal with challenging people then you are in danger of de-motivating your good people

3. Are You Naming, Facing, and Resolving the organizational problems that exist?

  • …because you’ve got to.

4.  When Is The Last Time You Re-examined the Core of What Your Organization Is All About?

  • We are in the life transformation business
  • What 5 words would you use to describe Christianity (the Gospel)? – I encourage you to do this

5. What if you made your next 5 years of ministry your best?

If you’d like to see the rest of my notes from the other sessions click HERE

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts if you’d like to share in the comments section.

What Can We Do?

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Today I would like to send you to read someone else’s blog.  Carlos Whittaker is a worship leader with a lot of experience under his belt.  He also was my creative coach during the summer of 2011.  But what I like about Carlos (@loswhit) is that he asks the tough questions.

Read this and then come back to this page so we can discuss how we’re going to become better worship leaders.  The post is from 2008 but this is likely playing out in our churches all the time.

click here –> “Dear Worship Dude” – from Ragamuffin Soul

Carlos Whittaker's Blog

 

Pretend there is no “usual way of doing things”

Pretend there are no patterns, preconceptions, or predictable service orders that we need to fit into on Sundays.

How do we communicate to “Dude Who Just Came Back To Church After 10 Years Because Church Sucks” that worshipping God is worthwhile?

How do we teach him (or her) about Jesus?

How do we model an authentic life of worship?

How do we prepare during the week to lead this person?

 

because we really need to figure this out

Rest and Crap

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Yes, that’s seriously the title I’m gonna stick with.

As I write this I’m sitting in a bunk bed at a youth pastor’s retreat where I’ve been leading worship for the weekend. It’s been awesome so far as we’ve experienced some deep worship times and some excellent challenges from pastor and well known author, Mark Buchanan. The idea of this weekend is to allow these youth pastors and their spouses some time to be away and experience God together while enjoying some awesome community.

I have already been challenged in a big way.

rest

This one word is rattling around in my head. I like it. It sounds like a nice word. When I hear it I think of positive things. I’m generally a laid back guy. If you know me you would say I’m much more type “B” than type “A”. But still, this word puzzles me. I don’t think I am very good at resting. I can unplug, I can unwind, I can sleep in, I can take a day off. But it takes a lot for my brain to rest. I feel the expectations, the deadlines, the amount of work all pressing in on me.

rest

Here’s what has hit me this weekend. A few illustrations from Mark Buchanan.

- You know when someone comes to you and says, “I know you’re really busy so I’m really sorry to bother you with this…(fill in the blank)”. Do you take that as a compliment? “You’re darn right I’m busy! Thanks for noticing.” I mean what are you projecting if everyone thinks you’re so busy that whatever they’re coming to you with is going to be a massive burden to you? Think about that for a bit.

- And remember when you got into this ministry because you were so passionate about it? You were so fired up to change the world. You were fired up to make a difference. Do you still feel that way? What’s changed?

- having an affair = really bad

murdering someone = really bad

worshipping idols = really bad

not keeping the sabbath = not a big deal??? In fact, if your reason for not keeping the sabbath is “doing ministry” then you’re elevated to near saintly status. “Good for you!” they’ll say. …excuse me but what the what?!?!

 

Consider Paul’s words in Philippians 3

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more… v.4

Check me out. Look how hard I’m working. Look how much I’m getting done. Look at the impact I’m having on the kingdom. You should all be having as much impact as I’m having. You should try harder too. Paul had a long list of accomplishments in what to him at the time was ministry. He was misguided until he met Jesus, but then again, maybe we are too?

Paul follows this up with a dramatic statement.

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,… v. 7-8

“Loss” in this case means “Crap”. It’s the greek word Skybala and it means street filth/dung.

Your 7 day ministry work week is crap

Your list of achievements in ministry is crap

Your work for the approval of others. Your desire to have your efforts noticed. It’s all crap

Compared to knowing Christ Jesus.

Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

rest

The application part is up to you. I know I have some serious heart searching to do. I’m praying for you. I’m praying for this generation of leaders. If we can grasp this and apply it and make our first priority knowing Jesus through entering into the rest he has for us, then I believe amazing things will happen in the North American Church.

It’s Different

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Some days I think Chris Tomlin has the easiest job in the world.

“wait, don’t you have the same job as he does?”

…well yes

and no

You see, in my experience, it’s different

What I mean is this.  There is a big difference between leading worship at your church on Sundays and leading worship at a huge event like Passion 2012.  The church crowd is a lot of people who want to be there.  And some who don’t.  And some who have never been there before.  And some who come every week because that’s just what you do.  Some of them like to sing.  And some of them shoot laser beams at you when you ask them to stand.  I see it every week.

At the huge worship concerts you’ve got tens of thousands of people who PAID to come and worship through singing.  They are ready to cut loose.  They’re ready to throw hands in the air.  They want the decibels.  They love the drawn out instrumentals.  And they will be happy to stand the whole time.  Pretty much what every worship leader would love to have on Sundays, right?

yup, it’s different

Now let me be clear.  I don’t actually think Chris Tomlin has the easiest job in the world.  In fact, I’m not even sure I would trade him for his job.  I think he’s tired a lot.  I think he has nights where he doesn’t ‘feel’ it just like I have Sundays where I don’t ‘feel’ it.

But you know what I love about Sundays?  When God breaks through it’s all Him.  It wasn’t an emotional high.  When God breaks through you get to see the journey unfold.  When God breaks through he receives all the glory.

So here’s what I’ve learned.

Be content.  Don’t waste your ministry time wishing for drawn out instrumentals, hands in the air, worship dance parties.  Lead your congregation the way they need you to lead them.

Be humble.  Don’t assume you can control what’s going on in the room.  Not a chance.  Let the Holy Spirit do His thing.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to do His thing.

Be thankful.  God has entrusted you with an amazing responsibility.  Your opening song could be the very first time a non-christian here’s about grace.  Your closing song could be the exact way God chooses to remind a single mom that she is not alone in her struggle.  What an amazing gift to creatively and beautifully be able to point people to Jesus.

Yes, it’s different

and I love it

2 Weeks In

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Wow

So it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Big things happening and lots of time spent in the studio recently working on the Worship Victoria project. You can read a bit more about that here. Last week I tried posting a video update which was intended to be a really simple way to keep you all updated. Apparently uploading a video from your iPhone over a shady wifi connection is not a simple thing to do. Anyways, here’s that video I owe you. By the way, I’ve been back at work for 3 weeks now.

if you can’t see the video watch it here

It’s been good for me to be away from the blog for a couple weeks. I’ve had time to make sure that I’m not trying to be someone or something I’m not. Time to stop worrying about hitting 1,000 hits in a month. There are things that just don’t matter. I really hope this blog continues to develop, continues to help people, and continues to open up new relationships.

Thanks for stopping by. Talk to you soon.

Caleb