I’m excited for tomorrow night. Tomorrow night (Monday 9/19/11) is my first night of class… Don’t worry Dad, you don’t have to get out the checkbook and send money to a university or anything. Tomorrow night is the first class of a course I’m teaching on worship at Anona United Methodist Church in Largo, Florida. It’s basically a “Worship 101” class. The main objective of the course is to learn how to lead worship in the modern church. I’m particularly excited for this first class because in this first class we aren’t going to be looking at any of the “hows” of worship, we’re going to be looking at the “Why?”. I think so often we (church leaders) take for granted that anyone who wants to be on our worship teams must already know what it’s all about since they are asking to be on the team. So we ask them if they can play, then give them a little audition and if they’re good we give them some chord charts, some mp3’s and put them on stage. If they’re not good, we spend time trying to “teach” them. As I look at this, I see a broken system. This system puts ill-equipped leaders (yes, if you’re on stage, you’re CERTAINLY a leader) in front of a congregation eager to follow anyone giving them direction. It also puts worship leaders/music directors/worship pastors (or whatever your church calls you) in situations that in my opinion are a huge waste of time, energy, effort… A “healthy” church
wants to grow and mentor people but if we are spending a significant amount of time “teaching” poor musicians (let’s face it, poor musicians are the ones that demand the most attention) we are only teaching them to be “better” musicians and not necessarily worship leaders. Leaders know that the word “NO” is not a bad word like so many in church leadership think it is. Sometimes the best thing a worship leader can do for someone is tell them, “No”, encourage them to take private lessons, and allow them to sit and watch rehearsals. Honestly, meeting with me won’t do a whole lot for you as a musician, but, private lessons followed by hours and hours of practice at home will make a musician that I will be begging to be on my team. We have to realize that there is a HUGE difference between musicians and worship leaders, but most churches in America are spending time trying to make poor/average musicians better instead of making good musicians into worship leaders. I know there are a lot of people out there that will disagree with my thoughts on this, good thing they don’t have to attend my class, haha. I would point them to King David as he was putting together the first major worship services and he called for only the best and most skilled musicians in Israel to play… I digress, haha.
All of that to say, I can’t wait to go on this journey during this school year and see what God does and how he grows everyone in the course, including myself into better worship leaders and followers of Him. Bed time!
Michael
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Comments (5)
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mdschreiner
September 20, 2011I ready this post a couple of days ago and went to your first class last night. I have a question. Will you be incorporating the discipleship rainbow with the worship team? (I do, you watch | I do, you help | We do it together | You do, I help | You do, I watch) | You start another rainbow). If so, how? Do you believe in growing worship leaders?
Looking forward to the discussion Michael.
Michael Cleveland
September 20, 2011I’m glad you made it out to the class last night! Hopefully you enjoyed yourself! I ABSOLUTELY believe in growing young worship leaders. That’s actually the entire purpose, focus and reasoning for teaching this class. I don’t know that I’ll reference the actual “discipleship rainbow” but throughout the course there will be a lot of hands on training as well as one on one instruction that will result, for those who work hard, in opportunities to step on stage (youth and adult).
mdschreiner
September 20, 2011Yes, I did enjoy myself, and learned a lot about the direction that Anona’s contemporary worship will be taking. I noticed I did not thank you for the invite, so a belated thanks!
The reason I was asking about growing worship leaders is because we all need to start somewhere, and I want to be part of a church that welcomes all different skill levels, not just the best. I would like to know that the door is open to be mentored to grow into a worship leader, if that is what I feel God has led me to do. The feeling that I got from your post and from the first session was that only the best would take the stage. Our Savior deserves only the best, but I am sure a joyful noise unto the Lord will do! Everyone starts out a “poor musician”, and putting one onstage is probably not the best way to get returning visitors. But to your point in last night’s class, it is not a guitar or microphone that matters, it is God in us.
If we only take the good musicians and make those people worship leaders, soon there will be no more “good musicians”, because they will all be worship leaders! We need to ALSO think about making “poor” and “average” musicians into good musicians, and ultimately worship leaders. I think that is where the disciple rainbow thing comes in, where there are always musicians that are on the heels of others, learning and growing.
Michael Cleveland
September 20, 2011Thanks for the comments, great points! No disagreements here. We are very blessed at Anona to have such an incredible asset as “The Academy”. Last night one of the things I spoke on for a few minutes is that no one is ever “too bad” that they are hopeless. With things like the Academy and all of the great private instructors in the area, anyone can grow to be as good as however much time and effort they put into growing their skills. My goal/job is to take musicians of every level (hopefully they are working to be better as we talked about last night) and help them to move from being a musician/singer to a worship leader.
Again, thanks for the comments! Great conversation! I’m really looking forward to digging further into all of this during the course.
Michael Schreiner
September 26, 2011Yes, very good discussion. Thanks for being open to talk through some of these ideas. I want to let you know I am praying for you brother, and am looking forward to your leadership as you guide Anona to the next level in worship. By the way, Venue on Sunday was awesome! See you tonight at the watch/critique session. Peace out!