Challenge Accepted

Confession: there's been one task I've been intentionally avoiding in my first year of ministry, and it's a task that is very important to the nature of life in a church. Let me explain.

Growing up, I had the privilege of being surrounded by insanely talented musicians. From the early years of playing piano, I played with some really gifted kids. My cousin, being an example of one, is now in the music production field - he also has perfect pitch, something I've always wanted. When I took up guitar, I was in a stage with my piano where I was more or less playing in an academy of music; so my teacher alone, and the students under her, are some of the very best - they would've pushed me to be even better. I was at a point where my recitals were recorded and produced to be put on a CD. I also had the fortune of playing on some of the more expensive pianos in the world. For the sake of the point, these things have to mean something in terms of the environment I was lucky enough to be in. With regards to my guitar in that aspect, I was able to boost my learning curve really fast just by ways of the trickle down effect in how rapid my musical growth was with piano.

When I was introduced to the worship ministry in church, I was blessed with a team of people that had very good ears for music, so they picked things up at an incredible pace. My job, then, was made really easy - I was spoiled with talent. I played with music majors, people who could pick up an instrument in 15 minutes, etc. To be quite honest, I just had to stand there and look as good as I could.

The downside to being in such a musically rich environment was that I never had to direct much. I'm not kidding when I say that during practices, I would just start playing and the rest of the team was able to play most of everything to my liking without me saying a word.

So when I left for Ambrose, I left the pool of talented musicians I grew up with behind. In my time at Ambrose, I also watched a lot of gifted people play and lead. However, I never really integrated myself with them because everything was so structured that I felt like I was in a foreign land whenever I joined a practice or tried to play with them. This kind of repelled me away from being involved with worship leading, and more or less marked the end of my worship leader days.

Bring Newbern into the picture. I've seen the need to train some of our members to become worship leaders in my first year, but I've never really wanted to do it. The task of training people musically at a worship level is so hard that I just kind of shutter at the thought of it. Not only do you have to be cohesive musically, you have to do it at a spiritually engaging level. I had a hard enough time teaching kids how to play guitar, so my mind doesn't like it when there's another dimension to it. In some ways, my arrogance and pride puts the thought into my mind, saying "why can't they just teach themselves? It's not that hard."

But, what's changed my outlook has, again, been that lingering thought of what will happen when I leave. I think if pastors want to be effective, they have to give those thoughts some consideration. Churches change pastors all the time, it's scary how often it occurs. There are good changes, and there are bad changes,which is beside the point, but it does happen. Bottom line is, I don't want to leave here without even having tried. I'm not saying I'm going to leave, but it's fair to say that I won't be here forever.

So my challenge, which I'm very eager to accept, is to do everything in my power to help open up the concept of worship ministry to these people. With the nature and history of this church, a lot of us probably don't really understand that a worship team means the entire congregation. Musically, I know I'm going to get fed up when someone can't play a chord or keep a rhythm, but I think I'm willing to push past the pain and do what I can to revolutionize our worship here. With how I was brought up, I think that of all people, I would be one of the few to have the ability to do it. Most of my experience in worship has been on that edge of advancement or change, so it's not really strange to me with the reaction and responses we might get.

One thing I'm thankful that we have, as a church, is the willingness to try things. So I know that if I get enough people behind me, there will always be places to go.