Today I closed my Hotmail account. It felt quite liberating, actually.

I do all my e-stuff through Google, it’s just easier for how my brain is wired to navigate and it’s only going to get better when Google Wave comes later this year. But the reason I closed my hotmail account was because I don’t do much with it. Do I use it? Yeah, but do I get value out of it? Erm, no. So the question becomes, why keep it around? And “just because” isn’t a good enough reason anymore. Information without application is just noise.

I want to throw out a challenge to you guys to find something to stop doing something in your area of ministry that is not adding real value. If it’s just taking up time, taking up space, taking up budget or other resources, and you don’t think it’s helping you guys do ministry, get rid of it.

My friend Fred McKinnon is giving away a free registration to one of the premiere worship conferences held this year:

WHEN:  JULY 20-23, 2009
WHERE:  Leawood, KS

I’m honored to be invited to do some live blogging from the National Worship Leader Conference in Kansas this Summer.  It will be awesome time of worship, training, teaching, and networking.  If you are going, I sure hope to meet you.

Worship Leader Magazine has teamed up with my blog here and TheWorshipCommunity.com to offer a cool contest - a FREE REGISTRATION to the National Worship Leader Conference!

INCLUDED:  Free Registration for One Person ($395/value)
(travel, lodging, and optional meal plan not included)

To find out how to win, go here!

During the worship set I noticed a gentleman with his fingers in his ears and I knew from reading his body language. He didn’t like the volume level. I know that volume issues are very big in some churches. So I thought I’d write a post on how to deal with people who come to you or comments come through the grape-vine on how to deal with complaints in regards to mixes and volume issues.

1. Clarify the Goal - You need to know who you are trying to reach as a church. Is it a particular demographic, or just non-christians in general? If you aren’t crystal clear on this point you NEED to sit down with your senior pastor for about 15 minutes and have him articulate who he would like the worship (and sound) try and reach. Trust me, he will appreciate you taking initiative to try and do a better job.

2. The Devil Is In The Details - I have found with experience that it is very difficult to have the average congregant articulate clearly what they didn’t like about the mix. Getting them to tell you what exactly they don’t like is very difficult sometimes, so…

3. Feel Free To Ask Your Own Questions - When you are talking with someone and they are telling you what they don’t like, ask them questions to dig deeper. Find out where they sit. Acoustics of the room are a huge issue, if you’re sitting in front of the subwoofers and don’t like low frequencies, I can’t really help you except to find you a better seat for next week. If they think the overall volume is loud, have them sit towards the back of the room. The Inverse-Square Law states that for every time the distance of a sound source is doubled the volume is halved, so it’s going to be quieter in the back of the room than in the front.

4. Treat Everyone Respectfully - There are about a dozen scriptures that state how we should treat each other with kindness and love. NEVER forget that. You should reiterate the clarified goal of who the church is trying to reach. However, just because the person who is complaining is outside your target audience, does not give you the right to simply blow them off. You can do something better…

5. Turn a Problem Into a Solution - The best thing you can do is empower people towards a solution. If a group of people come to you in regards to a specific issue, try and find a way to have them help you solve that problem. Example: some people don’t like a particular area of the room because it suffers from poor acoustic qualities. So, tell them that you would like them to help donate acoustical treatment to help that particular section of the room. There are so many churches that have large tech needs and have had their tech budgets slashed to zero because of the economy. I should know, I’m in one of those churches. But if you’re clever, you can figure out how to artificially generate budget for your ministry needs. The stage bleed is annoying? Ok, maybe you can help us by donating some in-ear monitoring systems for the musicians. Our youth hasn’t had any of their equipment replaced since 2000. Most of the room is held together with gaffers tape and they need A, B, C, and D. Can you and your friends help…

Are you following me, are you seeing the pattern?

You can turn your biggest complainers into your biggest helpers by refocusing their vision to helping others find Jesus, instead of their own comfort zone at church.

[Go read Jeremy’s blog Church Audio and Sound for more articles like this one]

For eight years I have been a part of an amazing think tank and creative leader conference called cre:ate (recreate) in Franklin, TN. Randy Elrod and his wife Chris have founded not just an environment that challenges, encourages and catapults a group of leaders but they have created a real community of influencers who are shaping the local church in America and beyond.

One benefit is having filmmakers, authors and talented musicians as part of this group along with experiences in a setting that is small—the max size ever is 150 people. Being able to dialog with authors like Ian Morgan Cron and gifted communicators like Ken Davis proved to make this past year as memorable as the rest.

Randy knows the power of community. The authenticity and safety of this environment gives the air needed to breath dreams. I have so much to unpack and journal regarding the powerfully impacting time taking the Eucharist or hearing Randy’s lecture “The Cure of the Blessing” as well as most of the other content. The advantage I have is that there are friends all over the world now sharing this experience with me until next time and with twitter, tokbox and skype we will do it together.

More to come about this experience. If you were part of cre:ate, did I get his right? If not, does a conference like this intrigue you?

I am a horridly slow reader. I think the last time I finished a book this fast it was called Pirates Don’t Change Diapers. And even then it was the abridged version. If I’m honest I’m not that much of a reader. After spending years reading technical PDF’s on acoustics, music industry business and electronics theory to the tune of f=c/2 √p2/L2 +… you need something a bit fun. Which is probably why I’m drawn to pirates.

This is not a formula book. If you want a formula book, buy a physics textbook. But as with many other social sciences, leadership can’t be reduced down to a set of formulas. If your looking for a formula, then what you’re actually looking for is a formula for your church your ministry and your team. But looking for a formula means you are looking at other people’s formula that worked for them. It’s probably not going to work for you because you are not them.

You don’t come to this book looking for answers, you come looking for ideas, challenges and questions that you can ask about yourself as a leader or about why you are thinking the way you are thinking about ministry. Why do we do ministry the way we do? Are our methods really effective?

I’m sort of struggling with this book, if I were to be honest. “Killing Cockroaches” doesn’t seem the appropriate title for the book. While Mr. Morgan adequately defines the title and purpose of dealing with issues as a leader within the church it’s more of what novelists would call a sub-plot. His main issue he talks about is strategic leadership. But who can blame him seeing he is that is his day job. It’s like criticizing Brad Pitt for… doing whatever it is he does, looking smug mostly.

Tony’s book is a combination of harsh truths, challenging thoughts, brilliant ideas and mishaps with Mustangs. I’d recommend the book for anyone looking for a fun read and a bit of a challenge. Heck, it’s better than watching pirates change diapers.

Have you seen the new ASIMO; that little miracle-powered self-aware robot by Honda that has arms, legs, eyes…? It can smile, wave, walk up and down stairs and recognize over 6 million objects (including the Toyota Prius). If you walk holding its little hand it will do so without crushing all the little bones in yours because of how clever it is. It will match your speed and even changes in direction. Honda is very tight-lipped about its ASIMO project but after 2 decades, 40 machines, and Lord knows how many millions (or billion) dollars spent, they are finally bringing mankind closer to the day when Terminators and the Borg will kill us all and take our place of dominance on Earth. Hollywood’s got the picture though. How many movies can you count that feature a set of cybernetic versions of wasps working systematically trying to enslave or subdue the human race? The number is quite a few.

Ants are scavengers, taking their food from dying things. Bees create honey and help pollinate flowers. What do wasps do? So far as I can tell, nothing. Nature has a habit of disposing of useless creatures like the dodo bird that couldn’t fly and was too slow to outrun predators. Then there are the dinosaurs, which we all know got too big for their own good. And yet the wasp is still with us. Why? They have no relevance to the food chain. They cannot make any honey, and they aren’t fluffy. Wasps can smell out a bowl of sugar from five miles away. How do they do that when sugar does not smell?

They also organize flight paths between food sources and their nest. But how, unless they’re been trained in air traffic control? Wasps are also vindictive. Many creatures will attack when threatened or hungry, but a wasp will attack you if annoyed slightly. And unlike a bee, which tears out its entrails while plunging its stinger into you, a wasp can sting you again and again.

Annoyingly however, wasps also live amongst us in church. They are both on your staff and a part of your volunteer core. As a ministry leader you no-doubt have people that are useless to you. They don’t usually volunteer. And if they do they are very picky, the first to whine, inherently late and flaky, and they do it without a sense of passion. Every church has freeloaders and naysayers, but what do you do with them? The church stopped officially sanctioning executions in the 17th century, so put away those asbestos salad toppings.

Working with these people is akin to a ship trying to sail while dragging its anchor. Anchors are for keeping you constant and unmoved regardless of the weather, but that’s not what the church should be culturally and dynamically. It should always be adapting to reach people. Growing churches are ones that never let down their anchor, they’re always looking to grow and move, always looking to capture the slightest wisp of breeze. In short, growing churches don’t have anchors, because they are heavy to carry.

To make matters worse, the prescription is worse than the diagnosis: Get rid of your wasps. Wasp staff members will only be an incumbency providing little cost to benefit ratio for the church organization. Wasp volunteers will only keep your ministry from effectively reaching to the community. You are better off without them. You’ll find another staff member and more volunteers, and your morale will be higher without them. Do you have people who are hurting you and keeping you from moving forward while at the same time eating your honey? Get rid of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wasp that needs the proverbial can of RAID.

If I started to help cast this ‘new vision’ and make all these fantastic sounding plans for our rebound . . . what happens to worship? I realized that the worship aspect of the church might in fact be the most important part of the church. Here is why, it is the time where our community comes together and lifts up God’s name, it is the time when we come together and pray as a community, hear God speak, as a community, and connect with God as a community. This is what the congregational church is about. Being Christians in relationship with God together, in community. If I stopped leading worship, then my skills are not being used as best they can. This connection with God may be and should be what keeps this church alive.

Leading worship in a dying church is not always fun, or easy, but neither is leading worship in a thriving church, but it is what God called some of us to do. It may not be our dream, but it is God’s calling in our lives.

Are you willing to follow God’s call to lead where the church is dying?

This morning was also a little bit of a ministry leadership failure for me. We have a FOH guy and a monitor guy for Sunday mornings. I was scheduled on monitors with one of the volunteers on FOH (Front of House). Thursday night rehearsal and Mr. FOH didn’t show up. So I just ran monitors, and then went back and set a few basic levels and the gain structure. This morning I got to the church, and 6:30 rolled around and Mr. FOH didn’t show. At 7, when Sunday morning run-thru started he still wasn’t there. So I made sure the musicians and vocalists had what they needed in levels and I ran the house.

Continue reading this article on Church Audio Blog

A great help for me was the church choir, as it helped to mature my voice and give me a foundation for singing and worship. As I matured I was given occasional opportunities to sing on the “big church” worship team, or share a special song for a holiday service. I also was able to take part in our youth group worship team which was led by a passionate leader who excelled at encouraging the students to develop our gifts in courage. I was able to sit in with the team and learn the guitar by playing along unplugged, and as I got better I was able to play quarterly with the team when the youth group took over “big church” service.  By the time I was a junior in high school I was leading worship for the youth group and continually growing as a leader.

Although I had a great experience, I look back now and realize that there were ways that the church could have come alongside its young leaders even more. So often there is such a wide gap between the youth ministry and “big church”, one which is occasionally crossed, but is still left wide. I think that having the main service worship team come alongside and mentor the members of the youth worship team could have been a great way to bridge that gap, refine instruments, voices, and to teach what true worship is (as so many get worship confused with just an emotional feeling). It would have also helped the students to make an easier transition between high school and college when they stopped going to youth group and began active participation in “big church”.

Obviously, as leaders in the church we know that the next generation is what is going to be leading in the future, and God is calling us to be used by Him in their lives. In terms of worship, it is so important that we continue to actively give opportunities to teach our students how to humbly lead. As an adult and a worship leader, it has been an honor to work with students by giving vocal lessons, guitar classes, and mentoring one-on-one.  Our worship is not only done through music, but also by reaching out in love to others and it is my opinion as worship pastors and leaders it puts a smile on God’s face when we share what God has given us with those who are younger and struggling to figure out their purpose.