“You sounded great. You’re getting better!” “Every time…” I think to myself. My worship pastor is awesome at encouraging his musicians. Never have I felt as though I wasn’t enough or that I wasn’t doing well. This is awesome most of the time, except for that it makes it difficult to know where I can …
Monday Musings
Monday Musings // Things Go Wrong
We’re all imperfect beings. And let’s face it: things go wrong. Leading worship, we have all at one time: gone off click, sang the wrong verse, dropped a wireless pack, had straplocks fail, dropped sticks, hit a wrong note, unplugged our instruments… The list goes on. It seems like every time this happens, it happens …
Monday Musings // You Crown The Year
“You crown the year with your goodness; your paths drip with abundance The wilderness pastures overflow, and the hills are robed with joy. The pastures are clothed with flocks and the valleys covered with grain. They shout in triumph; indeed, they sing.” Psalm 65:11-13 Whether or not our year was, in our eyes, a year of …
Monday Musings // Treasuring Traditional Christmas Songs
It’s officially the time of year again where we all begin rifling through (or scrolling through if we want to be more realistic here) all of the Christmas records in our collections to search for our favorite renditions of the classic Christmas songs that we all know and love. I’m sure almost every one of …
Monday Musings // Treasuring Traditional Christmas SongsRead More
Monday Musings // Worship Comes in All Shapes and Sizes
An “aha moment” as Oprah has so called it…that’s what I had. Months ago I attended Sunday evening chapel at America’s Keswick in Whiting, NJ. This place is something that I have taken for granted. The mission of this place in the middle of nowhere on a lake (to the outsider, a summer camp) is …
Monday Musings // Worship Comes in All Shapes and SizesRead More
Monday Musings // Raise Them Up
As worship leaders, we have so much work to do that it’s easy to focus on just getting it done, but that puts the focus on us. My mentor once said that our job in the church is to work ourselves out of a job. Simply put, we are called to raise others up to lead …
Monday Musings // Prophetic Worship
A lot of this has been enlightened by a good friend and musician, Pete James of Hillsong United. We all sat down during a creative night at our church and he gave his insight on playing prophetically. As a musician, especially on platform it can be very difficult if you are not at all prepared …
Monday Musings // Following God’s Direction
One of my more favorite worship songs to sing in recent years is “Love Came Down”, by Brian Johnson (Bethel Church). I played this song last week and got consumed in the lyrics of “I am Yours, I am Yours, For all my days Jesus I am Yours.” It is a simple lyric but holds …
Monday Musings // It Doesn’t Matter if Your Church is Modern or Traditional
Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more articles and blogs such as this popping up on the interwebs. The world doesn’t need another opinion, but here’s mine. It doesn’t matter if your church is “modern” or “traditional.” The mission of the church is to make the Gospel known and to carry the name of Jesus …
Monday Musings // It Doesn’t Matter if Your Church is Modern or TraditionalRead More
Monday Musings // Praying The Songs We Sing
A few years back, I was serving with a worship team at a retreat weekend that we put together every year for the youth in our church. One of our team members suggested that we pray through each of the songs that we were planning to lead with that weekend during one of our practices …
Monday Musings // Forget Your Role, Focus on Jesus
A friend of mine told this to me over coffee. He said “We need to forget about our roles as church leaders, and put all of our focus wholly on Jesus”. Meaning, we get so caught up in being leaders, pastors, counselors, babysitters, etc…..that we often lose our focus on the One true cause. Over …
Monday Musings // Who Are You Pouring Into?
One of my family’s favorite things to do is to go hiking in the mountains. We live in Ohio so we only see mountains when we travel. Often times we’ll find a trail that will lead to a stream that flows down the mountain or even a waterfall. I think it’s so cool to be …
Monday Musings // A Good Start
As worship leaders, Monday mornings can either get your week off to a great start, or Monday mornings can get your week off to a slow start. A lot of that has to do with how our weekend services go. If we had great weekend worship services we can feel energized and excited for the …
Monday Musings // Sacrifice with Value
Reading my Bible this morning was a huge smack in the face! Like many other people, and many other passages, I regularly read something for the 3rd/4th/5th time, and end up getting something completely different from it than I did the first few times I read it or heard it. 2 Samuel 24:20-25. 20-21 Araunah …
Monday Musings // Caring for Your Team
The cycle of doing church every week can be grueling. Just as soon as we’re done with one week we have another coming, and another week after that. In the midst of trying to pull off a service every week your team members are living their lives. Some are on the mountaintop and others are …