I don’t have a good voice.  I know very little about musical theory, whether I’m an alto, tenor, or soprano, or how to play a diminished chord on the piano.  You might be significantly more musically gifted than me, an average musician like myself, or simply have no musical bone in your body.  Unless you are musically gifted and pursuing woship ministry vocationally, you probably haven’t considered yourself a worship leader.  But the truth is you are a worship leader.  You may not sing on stage at your church, have any influence over the direction of your weekend services, or even be working at a church, but you lead worship every day.

Everyone is a worship leader.

If you are a parent, you are the worship leader in your home.  If you are a youth pastor, you are the worship leader to the students you serve.  If you are a volunteer in the children’s ministry, you lead worship for the children.  If you are just one person in the worshipping congregation, you lead worship for those around you.  If you own a small business, you lead your employees by the way you worship.  If you attend school, you lead your peers in worship by the attitudes you have towards those in authority.  Being a worship leader is not determined by musical capability; it is simply part of being a Christian.  If a disciple is someone who follows Jesus and wants to be like him, as Christians when we make more disciples we are making more worshippers.

It’s more than a song.

Be careful not confuse this with getting people to sing songs.  Music is our first reaction when we think of worship leaders, but worship is more than music it is a way of life.  Romans 12 says, “Therefore, I urge you,brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices,holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”  This is not about song choices but a way of life.  Worship is a life lived in view of the cross given completely to God.

Louie Giglio defines it this way, “Worship is our response, both personal and corporate, to God for who He is, and what He has done; expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live.”  Mark Driscoll describes it by saying, “Worship is living our life individually and corporately as continuous living sacrifices to the glory of a person or thing.”

This means that in your home you are a worship leader; not because you gather the famly around an instrument and sing bible songs, but because you teach your children what it means to love their neighbor, work hard in school, and read their bible.  You are a worship leader in your student ministry not because you have a “time of worship” in your programs, but because the goal of student ministry is that people’s lives will be all about living for Jesus, which is worship.

If you are a Christian, you are a worship leader.

Who are the people that God has put in your life that you have influence over and have the opportunity to lead in worship?  Not because they need to be taught to sing songs, but because they should be taught, led, and encouraged to love God and love others the way that God teaches us to.

You will face criticism for the things that you do.  You will create something that people don’t like.  You will be forced to make a difficult decision that upsets a family.  Somebody won’t like the music choices you make for weekend services.  Criticism is inevitable in ministry because it is impossible for you to keep everyone happy.  When you are faced with criticism, how do you respond?

Don’t take it personally. Because ministry is often a creative endeavor, it is easy for us to be very personally connected to our work.  This means that when somebody criticizes something in your ministry, not only do you look at it as a criticism of your ministry’s activities, but as a criticism as you personally.  Don’t.  There will be things that we do in our ministries that people don’t agree with for a variety of reasons; in those cases, try to disconnect yourself from the ministry you run enough to objectively look at the criticism and evaluate it.

Don’t respond when you’re fired up. Usually when your ministry or your leadership are criticized, you will get fired up.  You are passionate about your ministry and confident in your decisions as a leader; you should care if somebody says that you are doing it wrong.  But in the midst of this passion, be careful not to respond immediately.  Give the critic some time to let what they said sink in and give yourself some time so that you can have a respectful and thought out opinion.  If you have to say something, write the e-mail and delete it.

Get an outside opinion. Some people are just unhappy and criticize everything; other people have some valuable insights that we need to take into consideration.  Find someone outside of yourself so that they can help you discern what should be ignored and what should be taken into account.

Photo Credit: superrad_

When Elijah was born things changed.  Certainly there were the typical changes to our lives that everyone would expect, like new sleep patterns and priorities in our lives.  But there were also several new things that were previously unacceptable for a grown man, but now were completely acceptable because I have a young child.

Things That Are Now Acceptable Because I Have a Kid

10. Playing with toys.

9. Choosing a children’s movie over an action movie.

8. Saturday morning cartoons.

7. Reading children’s books.

6. Hanging out at Toys ‘R Us.

5. Leaving a party early because someone missed their nap.

4. Accusing your son or daughter of being stinky when you fart in public.

3. Taking regular naps.

2. Seeing any and every animated Disney or Pixar film in theaters.

1. Making up songs about whatever you’d like, sometimes even about poop.

This past weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity of preaching during our confirmation service.  The following are my notes from the sermon:

You can’t have just one.

Have you ever experienced something so delicious that you had to eat more?  Maybe you’ve opened a bag of Doritos and minutes later discovered that you’ve eaten almost the whole bag.  Or maybe you’ve experienced the feeling of walking into a kitchen with fresh baked brownies; the aroma fills the room and you can’t help but eat several.  One of the best snacks that I’ve ever experienced is my mom’s chocolate chip cookies.  My mom makes the best chocolate cookies in the world.  There is nothing better than a tall glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie that has been warmed up in the microwave.

This concept of craving food is not just true of the food we eat.  If you’ve ever played sports, you probably understand what it’s like to crave game time.  Perhaps you have an upcoming baseball game and you crave the moment you walk out onto the field.  Or maybe you are playing football and you crave the moment you can pad up and hit someone.  Families experience this feeling after a great vacation; as soon as you return home you crave the moment you can have a vacation like that again.

When we have something good, two things happen.  First, we crave more of it.  Second, we want to share that experience with others.  We crave more and we tell people about it.  When the scriptures talk about our relationship with God and God’s words to us, it uses this language of tasting and craving that we are very familiar with.  In the book of Psalms it describes God’s word as being “sweeter than honey.”  In Hebrews it describes those who have faith as having “tasted the heavenly gift.”

“I have tasted and have seen.”

In Psalm 34 David writes,

David is saying that he has tasted God and he is delicious.  He has experienced God and it was so good that he wants us to experience his giidness tii.  He has tasted God and he craves more of him.  What has David tasted an seen?  He has tasted a God that answers him, that delivers him.  He has tasted a God that gets rid of his shame.  David would find a lot to be ashamed of in his life, but God, because of Christ, gets rid of all our shame.  David has tasted and says “He is good.”

As we celebrate confirmation, we celebrate what David celebrates.  We celebrate that we have tasted God and He is good.  We celebrate the parents that have tasted and seen Christ.  We celebrate that as they have experienced Christ they craved that relationship, not only for themselves, but for their children.  And because of that  they encouraged them to “taste and see.”  We celebrate that small group leaders desired to share their experiences in their small groups.  That the group leaders could say, “this is what I’ve tasted and have seen and I want that for you.”  And we celebrate that as the confirmands share their faith they have tasted and seen the goodness of a God who has sacrificed his life for them.

Photo Credits: penguincakes

[This post is a part of the Technology in Youth Ministry series]

If you are leading a youth ministry, you are likely also utilizing some form of web technologies as a way to communicate with parents and students about your ministry.  Oftentimes student ministries choose to have their own websites apart from the main church website, which allows for some extra flexibility and freedom when it comes to posting new information, sharing media, and making it “youth friendly.”  Building a website can be a daunting task; from working with FTP servers, writing html code, and all kinds of other tasks that will hurt your brain.  There are countless services and options that are available to make this easier for you; the following describes one option that we use when we build our websites.

Hosting.  In order for your website to exist on the internet you have to have somebody that is willing to host it.  Or more accurately, you have to pay someone to be your host.  Often when you register for your domain nomain, you will do this through a company that also offers some kind of hosting.  My favorite option for youth ministry hosting is Dreamhost; dreamhost actually offers free hosting for non-profits.

CMS system. CMS means “Content Management System,” which practically means a way for you to update your site without having to do all the code stuff.  You will want some sort of CMS.  Since CMS is so popular in web development, several hosting providers also provide one click installations for various CMS providers.  When we build our websites, we use wordpress as our CMS, which is easily installed onto our domains using dreamhost’s one click options.

WordPress themes. If you decide to use wordpress for your CMS, which you probably should, your next step will be to find a wordpress theme.  A theme is simply a set of pre-packaged design elements to make your website look nice without you having to go through all the design work yourself.  You’ll provide pictures, logos, and content and the theme provides the layout.  This site is built using the theme Standard.  For our student ministry sites, we use themes from churchthemer.com.

Other stuff. If you are using wordpress, there is an awesome tool that can be a great addition to your youth ministry website called the prayer engine.  The prayer engine is a tool that allows students to submit prayer requests and prayer for other students using your website.  The Prayer Engine will work on sites not created with wordpress, but they have also made it extremely easy to install the Prayer Engine as a plugin for wordpress pages.  This has been a great addition to our sites to encourage students not only going online to find out what’s going on, but to also spend time in prayer for their fellow students.

If you have ever considered a career in youth ministry, there are certain things that are absolutely necessary if that is going to happen for you.  This post is not about specifically the hiring process, but more importantly about some of the specific things that are needed if you hope to get your name in the hat when a church is going through the hiring process.  When I was in college I was fortunate enough to be a part of a student ministry that gave me incredible opportunities that shaped me as I tried to figure out the whole youth ministry thing.  By the time I was done with college, I was “ready” to dive into full-time ministry.  If you want to do youth ministry as a career, you will have to make some intentional choices about what you are doing and how you are going to gain experience, skills, and knowledge relevant to student ministry.

3 Things You Need to Get a Job in Youth Ministry

Experience, experience, experience.

If you expect to apply to a college with a great youth ministry program, but don’t have a plan for where you are going to volunteer in student ministry, there is a huge problem.  The most valuable way to prepare yourself for doing youth ministry is by doing youth ministry.  Do anything and everything you can so that by the end of your college years you feel like you could take over the student ministry that you have been volunteering in.

Get a degree.

If you want a job in a church in the current culture, you have to have some sort of degree, preferably a relevant one.  If there’s a school that offers a good youth ministry program, do it. It’s always helpful to have a degree that you like to learn about.  Find a degree program that will benefit you as a youth worker and also will look good on paper.  If you find the perfect youth ministry program, but you cannot do the program and also be an active volunteer in a local student ministry, it’s probably not that great of a program.

Find a mentor.

One of the best things I did in college was ask one of our church staff to spend time with me every week talking about youth ministry.  There are a lot of people that have incredible youth ministry experience, find someone and learn from them.  Doing this not only was helpful professionally, but it led to a great friendship that is much more valuable than any professional gain I could’ve gotten.

[This post is a part of the Technology in Youth Ministry series]

As tablet devices get more and more popular, there are also more people looking for ways to specifically utilize them for their ministry.  Perhaps you are trying to justify buying the new iPad as a ministry expense or simply trying to find ways to use the device that you already own within your ministry.  As the iPad continues to grow in popularity, the library of applications that are available continues to improve and therefore the amount of quality apps for ministry also continue to grow.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Youth Ministry

10. Relevant Magazine. Relevant  Magazine not only produces a great print magazine, but they have produced a great iPad app for viewing their magazine.  If you are in youth ministry, there is likely a lot of great content that you will find helpful in this magazine.

9. Chimpadeedo.  I do an e-mail newsletter for our middle school ministry.  The most difficult part of doing this, besides writing it, is actually collecting e-mails of parents.  One great way that I plan to implement this fall is utilize this app by Mailchimp as a way of collecting e-mail addresses of parents who would like to sign up for the e-mail newsletter.

8. Evernote.  This is one of the best digital ways to take your notes.  Evernote has done a great job making their services work across all platforms, whether it’s your computer, smartphone, or tablet device.

7. iMovie.  While you can certainly use iMovie on the iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll have a much easier time and a better video editing experience using the iPad.

6. Spotify.  As you look for music to use in your student ministry, it is easy to have a music bill that is continually growing.  Spotify, which was just released for the iPad, makes it easy for you to make playlists of almost any song you can think of.  The app is free, but it will cost $9.99 a month in order to use the app.

5. Pages.  On the iPhone, I rarely use the Pages app but on the iPad I find it much more useful.  I’ll use it to make small adjustments to key documents, use it to keep track of my retreat schedules, and even use it as notes during a teaching.

4. Reeder.  If you use Google Reader and subscribe to several blogs, my favorite RSS reader app for both the iPhone and the iPad is Reeder.

3. Keynote.  If you want an easy way to save yourself from having to bring along a laptop to hook up to a projector and show your presentations, Keynote for iPad will allow you to do the same thing with your iPad.

2. Marble Mixer for iPad.  Once in a while you just need a fun game for a few students to play together; Marble Mixer is a great multi-player game that can be played with up to four players.

1. Paper.  If you like to sketch your notes and ideas out, this is the perfect app to let you do that.  Paper will let you make some quick doodles during meetings or do a mind map as you brainstorm all kinds of ideas for your ministry.

If you’re an e-mail subscriber to this blog, you might notice a couple of changes to your daily e-mails. This past week I spent some time working to improve the options that I offer to people who subscribe to the blog. I love the fact that some of you choose to get my posts sent straight to your inbox every day so I wanted to put some time into making it the best possible experience for you and any future e-mail subscribers.

*note: if you didn’t know that you could subscribe to blogs, learn about some of the options you have for receiving updates.

What I did?

For the tech-savvy readers of the blog that want to know what exact changes I made to e-mail subscriptions, I switched from using feedburner’s e-mail subscription service to using mailchimp’s rss-to-email campaign service. Feedburner has a great plug and play option for e-mail subscribers but as soon as you want to control any elements of that process it becomes significantly more difficult. There were several things that I was looking at implementing as a part of my blog subscribers list so I did some research and quickly chose mailchimp as my go-to service for e-mail subscriptions.

What’s new with my e-mail subscriptions?

• More options. Previously when you subscribed to get blog updates, you automatically got them everyday. As I thought about the blogs I read, I realized that sometimes I’d prefer to read blogs in chunks only once a week. Now when you sign up to get on the e-mail list you can choose the frequency of your e-mail updates.
• Give-aways. I don’t have any immediate plans to do something like this, but if I ever wanted to have exclusive e-mail subscriber only give-aways switching to mailchimp would allow that to happen.
• It’s sexier. I care a lot about design and feedburner’s daily e-mails did not look great. Mailchimp allows me to customize the design of daily/weekly e-mails. Expect the e-mails to still be very simple, but also much easier on the eyes.
• It helps me understand you better. I want to know if you actually read the posts that I send; switching will help me do that because it gives me some great tools to better understand how you interact with the e-mails I send.

If you already are an e-mail subscriber, I hope you welcome these changes and find them helpful to your blog reading routines. If your not a subscriber you can get on the e-mail list and get updates sent straight to your inbox, you can add my feed to your RSS reader of choice, or you can just keep checking back every day.

What’s your preferred method for tracking your favorite blogs? I use Google Reader.

Starting last weekend and throughout this month, our middle school is working through a sermon series called “Grow Up.” This series is a part of XP3 Students produced by Orange. If you’ve been wondering why you havne’t seen teaching notes, I haven’t been posting them because several main ideas from the series is a part of the curriculum. There are times throughout the year that using produced curriculum is highly beneficial. As we are preparing for the summer season, I wanted to have a series that I could use that would also allow me some freedom creatively to begin thinking about summer events and retreat themes.

Why I’ll occasionally purchase curriculum:

• Saves me time of developing my series plan and sermon outlines.
• Provides graphic design work for me.
• Gives great main ideas and illustrations for my messages.
• Often includes discussion questions for groups.

Make it your own

I’m all about strategically choosing times throughout the year to give the primary teacher a break. I often do this in our middle school ministry by having guest teachers and also teaching through a purchased curriculum. Buying a curriculum saves me time and allows me to creatively get a head on some of my other ideas. While there is a great benefit to doing this, it is also extremely easy to not do any preparation on a message. I encourage using already produced curriculum, but I highly discourage using curriculum as a way to skip out on preparation for your messages.

Whenever I use a series that I’ve gotten online, I try to make it my own (I must admit that there have been times where I should have but didn’t do this). Because of the nature of the curriculum already being produced, it certainly takes significantly less time but I still make sure to spend time working through the lesson and make it my own. I listen to the finished lesson and read through the transcript, but I don’t use it. I take the working outline and ask myself several questions.

• How can I make this my own?
• What scriptures would I use that weren’t included?
• What stories from my own life fit this topic?
• Are there other points or ideas that I feel like need more explanation for my students?

Buy curriculum and use it to help you as you teach students, but any curriculum that you buy whether a sermon series or a small group curriculum should always be adjusted to fit your own needs.