Ministering to the Worship Leader

September 10 2007

LEADERSHIP TOOLS

Hugh Ballou, Editor

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1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Gifts of Grace
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

PRAYER

This is the second in the series of Leadership Tools as a part of the MME. Multiple contributions from many writers will provide a variety of perspectives and many resources for the leaders seeking to transform the organizations they are called to lead. Ralph Vaughan Williams is reported to have said, "Music did not reveal all of its secrets to just one person." That perspective can be applied to most any topic and certianly to the subject of leadership.

Over the next months and years the subjects covered will address the following areas:

•    Transformational Leadership Tools
•    Tools for Leading Teams
•    Conflict Management Tools
•    Personal Care Tools
•    Planning Tools

This Leadership Tools edition of MME will be presented in the following format:

          Foundations
              Preparing yourself for leadership

Relationships
      Strengthening the connections with people we serve

Systems
      Developing and maintaining healthy systems for leading groups

Balance
      Strategies for spiritual, physical and mental centering

Quotes
      Words of wisdom and encouragement

Tips
      Wisdom from our readers

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The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) Directory for Worship begins by describing worship as follows:

Christian worship joyfully ascribes all praise and honor, glory and power to the triune God. In worship, the people of God acknowledge God present in the world and in their lives. As they respond to God's claim and redemptive action in Jesus Christ, believers are transformed and renewed. In worship the faithful offer themselves to God and are equipped for God's service in the world. Copyright © 2001 Book of Order, Directory for Worship, W.1001, by the Office of the general Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

As Christians called to leadership in the church, music directors have a special perspective and a fine-tuned talent for leading those in our care in a journey of faith transforming their lives.

Conductors understand transformation experientially. The very nature of our work is that of transformational.

A group of singers shows up for rehearsal. They come to sing--each with a different perspective and possibly a different level of talent. The skilled choral conductor listens, instructs, motivates, encourages, and affirms the changes necessary to mold this unrelated group of singers into a unified sound. The product is called an ensemble. We strive for that unity as an ensemble each time we rehearse or perform.

The magic of transformation is absolutely necessary in the world of music.
 
Transformation happens--not by chance--but also by intention, not only from the leader, but from the participants as well. The results are cumulative. Once the sense of ensemble is achieved and experienced first hand, it can be believed.  

So why are we not committed to building that sense of ensemble in all we undertake?  Maybe it’s an education issue for those whom we lead. Maybe it’s a lack of understanding that this is a transferable concept from musical groups to other groups.

Why is that concept so foreign to all of us?  And why does the concept seem unattainable? We can believe in the universal power of transformation. Are we willing to try? Are we willing to teach?

This transformation is not over with the building of the ensemble. The transformation continues with the faith journey. It continues with the day-to-day ministry of building spiritual relationships and modeling spiritual standards.

Those who lead others in spiritual transformation are called to a higher duty and delight. We are called to be spiritual leaders in all we say and do.

Always be aware that you influence others in one of three ways: positively, negatively, or neutrally. Which one would you choose?

Hugh Ballou  is founder of SynerVision International, Inc., a facilitation, consulting and training practice in Blacksburg, VA. For many years, Hugh has been working with leaders in businesses, schools, churches, non-profit organizations, and community groups, leading project teams to find consensus, even with very difficult decisions. Before his full-time work as facilitator, consultant and executive coach, he served as Director of Worship Ministries, staff strategist and facilitator in churches of up to 12,000 members.

Not long ago, a pastor was showing me around her church. Everywhere we went, she interrupted staff members and volunteers who were busy with one project or another. Unsolicited, she began making suggestions about whatever they were working on--as if they didn’t know what they were doing. I saw these people roll their eyes behind her back.

The pastor must have thought she was being helpful and that the people appreciated her help. I wondered if she had any idea how her behavior was undermining her ability to lead.

Do you suppose people sometimes roll their eyes behind your back? If I asked some of your colleagues or church members about you, how much would I learn about you that you don’t know about yourself? How much more effective would your ministry be if you knew what they know?

As a self-aware leader, you will know your:

    •  Strengths and Weaknesses
    •  Personality traits
    •  Personal values
    •  Habits
    •  Emotional make-up
    •  Psychological needs

You should understand how these attributes drive your behavior. With this awareness, you will be able to change your self-defeating behavior and cope more successfully with others’ behavior.

    •  Productivity. When you know your strengths and weaknesses, you can better exploit your strengths and work around your weaknesses. You will know which responsibilities bring out your best and when you should look for expertise elsewhere to get a task done.  

    •  Relationships. Understanding yourself will enable you to understand others’ tendencies and enhance your relationships. You will learn to appreciate and utilize personal differences constructively.

    •  Emotions.  As you become more self-aware, you will recognize when your emotions are helping and when they are getting in the way. You will learn to manage your feelings and cope with emotionally sensitive situations.

You can increase your self-awareness in several ways:

    • Ask people you trust to help you explore and recognize your strengths, weaknesses, dominant personality traits, etc.

    • Have peers, superiors and people you supervise complete an anonymous 360° feedback instrument on you. This may provide you with insight that you wouldn’t get any other way. You will need a professional to help you arrange this. The link for 360° feedback is: http://www.thekilgoregroup.com/surveys.html

   • Take a psychological inventory of your personality, work style, behavioral preferences, etc.  Whether you take it online or in person, be sure a professional interprets the results with you. Online testing frequently includes this as part of the cost.

   • Work with a coach. A qualified coach can help you increase your self-awareness and use that understanding in your ministry and personal life.

Self-awareness is the first step towards excellence in leadership and ministry--not an added frill. Find out what they know that you don’t know. You’ll be glad you did.

© 2007 Glen Rediehs

Glen Rediehs is committed to helping individuals and organizations create their best futures. He has accomplished this since 1980 through training, organizational development, and coaching for a wide variety of organizations. Glen’s clients benefit from the rich blend of experience he brings from teaching in college and university psychology departments, providing marriage and family therapy, serving as parish pastor, and owning his own business. He prefers to work from strength-based perspectives such as Appreciative Inquiry and the Solutions Focus approach to personal and organizational development. Currently, Dr. Rediehs is Senior Consultant with The Kilgore Group, LLC. He and his colleague, Dr. Larry Webb, are transforming congregations with Healthy Church DNA™, a seven-step process for church growth and renewal. The link for Healthy Church DNA™ is: http://www.thekilgoregroup.com/churchmain.html

Create the best future for your congregation and for yourself.  Contact Glen at 704-788-9184 or grediehs@thekilgoregroup.com

The camera pulls back to a wide shot and then sweeps over the landscape.  Our own kinesthetic identification with this motion lifts us into the air--like a bird in flight--even though we are planted in our movie theater seats. The musical score expands into goose-bump intensity, notes lifting and soaring not just in our ears, but in our whole bodies. We have become part of the action–our own neurological Epcot Center-esque experience.

Now let your imagination cut to another scene. The music swells as the colorful procession enters the space. Dove-kites fly overhead, calling your eyes to the upward regions of the sanctuary architecture. Bells begin to peal with surround-sound from handbell ringers in the balcony and a single candle held aloft makes its entrance as the worship leader gestures for all to stand. In some ways it is a superfluous gesture–so ready are we to rise to new heights in this moment.

As you can see, there are similar sensations occurring in this example. Much has been written comparing worship to theater. But I believe it is the art of filmmaking where we “ritual artists” can learn valuable lessons. Yes, there are differences between a live event and a pre-recorded-edited-to-the-hilt movie. But I invite you to focus on perhaps a different set of observations that can give you new lenses through which to understand your art form as a worship designer.

Filmmaking deals in what I call the “layering” of the senses in order to tell a story. Verbal dialogue happens, but it is not the only/or at times even the primary–medium of communication.

Music sets mood, tone and context. 

Visuals, including color palettes, lighting contrast, panoramic or close-up, create concise and often deeply symbolic contributions to the sequence of events.

Actions become carefully thought out because of their immense impact.

And dialogue is compact and rich. Ahhh… liturgy, eh? Well, at least the kind of worship that moves us on a spiritual journey from beginning to end rather than what I refer to as “plug-and-play” worship (you know, just plug in the scripture, the hymns and the sermon and voila, you have yet another paint-by-numbers unremarkable experience).

I call what we do in planning worship “design.”  And as designers, we are ritual artists. We take some pretty incredible stories and transformational messages and we try again and again to bring them to life in deeply meaningful ways. And as the church begins to claim the power of the arts and to practice this in ever more complex ways (especially in the ways emerging generations are practicing it), worship designers need more tools for their artistry. So, let’s see what we can learn from filmmakers.

Jon Boorstin, in his book Making Movies Work, reminds us that every detail can be important to meaning. “A film is a universe where chance is never an excuse for anything, from the color of a dress to the creak of a door; it is a series of hundreds of very particular decisions, and every single one of them must be felt.” From the mood of the music that is playing as people enter the room to the transitional movements from one thing to another, a worship experience is a series of decisions thought through–or “felt” through–during the design process, during the walk-through, and even in the moment (where we depart from film in that we get to improvise and edit even and especially in the presence of the whole body). In a recent worship gathering where I was leading a group in a symbolic experience of cleansing by washing hands, it occurred to me in the moment of inviting the congregation to this action that even the discarding of the paper towels we were using to dry our hands was a significant symbol of “leaving our trash behind.” My mention of this in that moment made even something I thought was incidental, important. Indeed, every detail can be important to meaning.

Filmmakers know that we don’t want to just “watch it,” we want to be “in it.”  In his book, Powerful Persuasion, Tex Sample uses the terms “critical distance” and “critical immersion” to describe an important difference between modern and postmodern sensibilities in communication. Rather than “listening-from-afar” being a primary mode of taking in information, there has been a shift to the desire to be immersed in an experience of that which we are seeking to know. Boorstin says filmmakers know that “people don’t just want to watch a movie. They throw themselves into the experience. They want to lose themselves in what they’re seeing.”  

Being immersed requires attention to every aspect of the environment of the space itself. The art director on a film is essential to the whole “feel” of it.  Again Boorstin explains, “If the art director does the job well, his [or her] environments are a metaphor for the actions and emotions of the story.”  When we enter a space, we get an immediate “hit”–a visceral snapshot of what will happen here. Worship designers are focusing more on creating environments in which to enter. This attention is deepening and enriching our entire worship experience.

Color and lighting contribute to the energy of the moment–-whether that is a cool and calming energy or a bright, vibrant and celebratory effect. Have you ever wondered why it is difficult to get the congregation to participate energetically in a dimly lit room or why you can’t create intimacy and warmth under fluorescent lights? Ask a filmmaker why. The wrong lens on a camera or botched lighting on a set can call for an extra day of shooting just to correct it. It really is that important to the experience of the story.

Being immersed sometimes requires that listening happen not just with our ears, but with our hearts. Musical underscoring can create an emotional landscape for hearing a word rather than simply an intellectual one. As you watch movies or television for the next few days, begin to really focus on what the composers do with the mood, volume, pitch, and especially timing to enhance the words and action. Sound–even the sound of silence–creates experience and mood, says Boorstin. Literal vibratory difference in pitch and rhythm creates different energy and reactions. This is a full-on bodily experience–a key component of immersion in the moment and immersion in the story. As you are designing worship, think about how the previous or next musical piece might “weave” its way into the words of the worship leader or the liturgy that precedes or follows it. And remember, as important as underscoring may be, equally important is when not to use it.  Silence is also a design element. Silence is a sound–which is different than “dead space.”  

There are many more lessons to be learned from filmmaking that will be included in my worship leadership book coming out in 2008. But let me leave you with one more.

Editors are one of the most crucial members of a filmmaking team and editing is an essential skill to develop for worship designers and leaders. “The art of editing is in large part sensing the difference–feeling that edge where we teeter into boredom,” Boorstin tells us. A worship service that flows is one where designers and leaders are intensely attuned to the right timing for both the parts of the service itself and also the transitions. As leaders, we must synchronize our internal clocks with that of the whole body of worshipers or we are in danger of being oblivious to the fact that we’ve sung that song too many times or that we need to breathe into this moment just a while longer. A leader who can give a reader just the right cue to get to the microphone at just the right moment is one who is, in the moment, making timing decisions that will effect the ability of the body to stay “in the flow.”  

We are ritual artists. Look through this lens as you watch your next movie. Our goal is to tell the most amazing Story in the most compelling way. This takes technique, an artist’s eye, and being tuned into the movement of the Spirit and the spirit of the Body.

© 2007 Marcia McFee

Jesus said it this way in Matthew’s gospel: "Come unto me, all who (work to exhaustion) ...and you shall find rest for you souls.”  The MESSAGE paraphrase of the Bible reads this way:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover you life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unfolded rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
 
Jeremiah addresses God’s people to Israel in chapter 31:
   
    I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will fill the soul of the priests with fatness ‘abundance’ and my people will be satisfied with my goodness, declares the Lord.
    
What a promise from the Father to you, as a leader! Claim your position in Him as His treasure because He loves you with an everlasting love and draws you in loving kindness to Himself. It is out of this soul and heart relationship with Him that you have the empowering to lead.

As a leader of women, ponder these questions about your soul-abundance relationship:

• Are you worshiping in His presence?
• Do you know His richness?   
• When you meet the Father, are you refreshed and satisfied?
• Does meeting Him consistently change your ministry focus?
• Do you take time for worship apart from leading in worship?

Tarry over these questions in a time of solitude:

• Do your take time alone to draw inward and experience renewal?
• Do you feel a sense of grace and contentment?
• Do you know the peace of internal quietness?
• Have you learned that interior (soul) care reflects externally?

What a treasure we have in that we are invited in His presence because He invites us to His table--to keep coming and keep drinking. Psalm 23 invites us to sit by still waters. He longs for us to thirst for His righteousness. The one who invites us is the one who provides the banquet table, the feast, the stillness, and...the righteousness. The Psalmist says it clearly in Psalm 46:  Be still and know.

 As leaders of women, we must take the time be still and know His enabling power to lead out of His abundance.

More next issue

Esther Burroughs is founder of Esther Burroughs Ministries: Treasures of the Heart, and is the beloved author of Engraved by Grace, Splash the Living Water, Treasures of a Grandmother’s Heart, A Garden Path to Mentoring and Empowered. She has addressed tens of thousands of women from small group retreats to arena events, and understands the thirst of today’s Christian woman for intimacy with God. Esther previously served with the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) promoting strategies of evangelism for women. She travels extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada speaking to women’s groups. Esther and Bob, her husband of 47 years, reside in South Carolina. They have two adult children and five grandchildren. Web site: http://www.estherbministries.com

We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.  Francis J. Braceland

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.