I’m a terrible judge of climate when it comes to things like this. (I’d describe “climate” here but I’d just be making a judgement about you.) My first reaction to seeing someone with a PC is of course to preach Mac to them. When my mom asks for help with a DVD, I roll my eyes. Get it? Say your an excellent judge of climate, and the climate tree is ripe for shaking; well, now is the time. Shake it. Maybe your congregation has been neglecting a change that it’s high-time for. You better shake now while your opinion still matters, because one day your lack of movement will result in a lack of your own credibility.

Here’s the thing that we’re all afraid to admit; there was a time when our families, our churches, our jobs made a lot less sense to people and were a lot more effective. We slip into a rut of safety. We stop challenging things. We stop poking at comfort. We stop picking scabs. In the book of Matthew, it was the religious crowd, not the Athiest club at the local high school who were berating Jesus for shaking things up. These individuals had seen their faith one way for so long that they were literally unable to adjust before bringing themselves to kill him.

That’s the danger we face; fear that a Christian may not find us as “Christian” as they are. We’re not getting killed over here; we’re defending our faith in 140 characters or less. What are you so afraid of? Learn from Jesus and mess with some people’s perceptions today. Shake the tree.

Your Name- Northstar Worship Arts

You Make Us Strong- Northstar Worship Arts

There Is Love- Northstar Worship Arts

Forever Reign- Hillsong Live, A Beautiful Exchange

If I really wanted to grow as a leader I needed to ask some key questions to those who follow me and make myself accountable to them.

EMAIL 1
So I sent an email to my Worship Arts staff asking 2 simple questions:

1.) Tell me one thing I’m doing well at as a leader.

2.) Tell me one thing I need to improve at as a leader.

I heard some very encouraging things and some very pertinent ways to improve. Some were not easy to hear, but all were spoken and received in love and ultimately helped me to overcome some things as a leader. I pasted their exact responses where I could see them on my computer desktop for the next month and focused on improving in those areas. It proved vitally helpful.

EMAIL 2
A couple of months later I was reading a book called The Minister’s MBA about business strategies in the church. The authors posed 12 wonderful questions that I wanted my staff to answer for me:

1.) Do I know what’s expected of me at work?
2.) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my correctly?
3.) Do I have the opportunity everyday to do what I do best at work?
4.) In the past week have I received recognition or praise for good work?
5.) Does my supervisor care about me as a person?
6.) Is there someone at who who encourages my development?
7.) At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8.) Does the Vision and Purpose of my team make me feel my work is important?
9.) Do my co-workers do quality work?
10.) Do I have a best friend at work?
11.) In the last six months have I spoken with someone about my progress?
12.) Do I have opportunities to learn and grow at work?

The answers to these questions helped me to identify some things that I needed to clarify for my staff as well as some small things that I could do to help them realize how valuable they are to this team and the Kingdom of God. I followed up with each person with just a short chat about their answers to make sure that I understood their responses clearly. It deepened our relationships tremendously and gave them the reassurance that they could come to me with any issue or need that they had. It opened up some wonderful dialogue and helped to further strengthen and unite our team.

EMAIL 3
Just this week I sent another email to the 2 full-time guys that work with me about an issue that I saw creeping up on me.

Hey dudes, I have been consistently about 5 minutes late this week each day. I want you to hold me accountable to something. I know it’s just 5 min. and you probably haven’t even noticed, but the issue is when I am just a little late it’s usually because I was working at home and lost track of time for a bit.

Although that sounds noble, 1.) I shouldn’t be working at home I should be hanging with my family, and 2.) Late is late no matter how noble it seems.

If you see me come in late ask me why. Integrity is letting your yes be yes and no be no. I am supposed to be here at 8:30am not 8:35am. Also, I need to be spending time with my family. That’s the focus of my morning before work; my time with God and my time with my family. Thanks for holding me accountable guys.

The response was encouraging. This was something they both wanted to be held accountable for as well and shared their deep respect for my honesty with them.

Sometimes we believe being vulnerable as leaders will cause us to lose respect with others, but I definitely find the opposite true. Integrity and humility create environments of accountability and grace which are key to developing the kind of work and ministry cultures that we all desire. Jesus lead the way in humility and integrity and I don’t think any of us have lost respect for him.

Philippians 2:1-8
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

The following are 5 popular WPs (we’ll assume each to be at their latest versions):

MS WORD: Without a doubt the most universally accepted mode of word file creation.

- The Good: It’s probably the program you’re most familiar with (at least between updates). When MSW doesn’t take over for you with formatting, it’s actually fairly easy to manipulate. It’s hard to complain if you’ve never known anything else.

- The Bad: As stated before, from update to update, the platform changes drastically and causes users to have to basically relearn where the developers have put everything. As also previously stated, MS Word has a mind of its own. It’s an antique car with an automatic transmission.

- The Janky: The operation is a dump, especially after returning to this processor from another one. It’s like trying to kill a wild turkey with a Nerf dart. “Where is double space again?”

MS Word Details Here

PAGES: The WP for the enlightened Mac user who is too poor to pay for MS Office: Mac.

- The Good: Universal file exporting (change your stuff to Word, PDF, Rich Text, Plain Text or even ePub). Clean Mac interface and integration.

- The Bad: The minimalist-style interface takes a bit of a search to find some functions you’re looking for.

- The Janky: Pages has never had a full screen option until now, and it looks like this…

Pages Details Here

EVERNOTE: Most people would call this an organizational note-taker. Others would call it a lifestyle.

- The Good: Organization and Navigation is unmatched. Sharing/syncing is superior (between iOS devices and web-based servers).

- The Bad: The Premium edition (co-editing of shared docs and unlimited space) is a hefty $50.00 a year…

- The Janky: Ads on the free version I guess?

Evernote Details Here

GOOGLE DOCS: Google’s greatest contribution to the internet since Google. Web-based and open-source.

- The Good: It’s FREE! It’s online! It’s freaking smart! It does everything any of the others can do, plus it allows you to share via email and co-edit with friends or colleagues with annotations, Google Chat and so much more. If you don’t know about Google Docs, you’ve been living under a rock.

- The Bad: It’s free… It’s online… It’s too smart? Given that it’s free, you can’t expect too much in terms of updates, the need for internet juice can sometimes be a limitation, and I’d bet most people will never use this WP to its full potential.

- The Janky: Though there is the ability to annotate, it can be a bit cumbersome/misguided at times. “What exactly is that note referring to?” “Why don’t I have edit privileges yet?!” “I swear I deleted that file yesterday.” “Why won’t my chapters stay in numerical order?!”

Google Docs Details Here

WORD PAD, TEXT EDIT, ETC: The “Oh dang, let me write this down” WPs.

- The Good: They’re quick.

- The Bad: They look like garbage and have next to no formatting.

- The Janky: Does “Kmart of the WP world” mean anything to you?

That concludes our look at Word Processors. I hope it helps those of you who are graduating from pencil and paper and are on the fence about where your WP allegiances should lie. Happy Writing.

Word Pad, Text Edit Details Here

Run To Me- Northstar Worship Arts

All We Need- Charlie Hall, Flying Into Day Break

Paint The Sky- Northstar Worship Arts

Our God- Chris Tomlin, Passion:Awakening

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

We see God in nature. He is all around us and the earth and the heavens tell of his glory. We can also see the glory of God in our marriages, our children, and in art, but all of these things are devoid of the thing we need to see most about God; his holiness. It’s his holiness that reveals to us our need for redemption and only through his Word do we get a clear picture of what we truly deserve and what Christ did on the cross to rescue our souls from the wrath of our just and holy Father. God reveals himself in many ways, but only the Bible is the full revelation of God and the full truth of how we are called as his children to live lives in response to his amazing grace.
God’s plan for redemption unfolds like a beautiful sovereign tapestry throughout the entirety of the Holy Scriptures. In the beginning God showed us about the importance of faith in his relationships with Abraham, Noah, and Joseph. These men had no laws to live by until God gave the 10 commandments to Moses later. Their relationships with God weren’t about keeping the law they were about faith. Which is why these great men are later referred to by the writer of Hebrews in what many Christians refer to as “The Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. These great patriarchs showed their faith in God and went to be with him in eternity. I am often asked how those in the Old Testament, especially before the presentation of the law and the covenant, would come into eternal life and salvation with God and the answer is less complex than most think. They were saved through faith. They were saved through their faith in God and their faith manifested itself in their obedience to God’s commands. They had no written laws, but when these men heard from God they obeyed and were revered as fathers of not only the Jewish faith, but of the Christian faith as well.
After the presentation of the laws to Moses and his communicating of them to the Hebrew nation they still were saved by faith. They had faith just like the previously mentioned patriarchs that if they obeyed God he would be faithful to forgive them. So as the Jews followed the law that was given to them God had his hand of favor firmly upon them, but when they would rebel God would remove his hand. This became a vicious cycle for the Israelites. The would be living in harmony with God then they would disobey. God would then warn them through a prophet to return to him and obey him. The Hebrews wouldn’t listen and God would turn his back on them. The nation would then beg for God to rescue them and in his mercy and justice he would. God sovereignly new that this covenant wouldn’t last forever and through out the Old Testament spoke prophecies and words that a new covenant would one day come by way of a Savior, but it wouldn’t just be for the Israelites.
In Isaiah 60:3 the prophet spoke these words, “Nations will come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.” When God chose the Israelites as his people he knew that his story of redemption was not just for them, but for all creation and that the Jews would be the “light” by which the rest of the world would find hope and salvation.
In his unmatched divine wisdom God orchestrated a sovereign symphony to crescendo with the birth of Christ right at the crux of all time. In the days when BC switched to AD the birth of the Savior of the world transpired and he began fulfilling more than 300 prophecies about him found in the Old Testament. Once, the people had to have faith that if they fulfilled the laws of God then God in his faithfulness would forgive them, but under the New Covenant they simply had to believe in the one who had come to perfectly fulfill the law and the prophecies once and for all. Christ declared this about himself in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” Also, when Christ was transfigured on the mountain before his 3 closest disciples in Matthew 17 he appeared with Elijah, the greatest prophet to the Jews, and Moses, to whom God revealed the law. Jesus is salvation come. Not just for Israel but for the entire world. His death and resurrection tore the curtain in the temple and fully satisfied the wrath of God. This was the beautiful manifestation of both God’s infinite mercy and perfect justice. But this story of redemption and hope presses on in the Word of God.
Jesus returns to the Father after his resurrection where he sits at his right hand. He has empowered believers since the day at Pentecost by the Holy Spirit and given Christians the promise that they will do even greater things because he was going to be with the Father. That promise came true at Pentecost in one way as more people came to know Christ as Lord and Savior on that day than during Jesus’ entire earthly ministry. God gave us the Holy Spirit by which to live in the power of the resurrection and as the church grew throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Europe God gave us the letters to the churches, or Epistles, in his Word to instruct us on how to live out the Christian life. The central way God shares the love and salvation that only comes through Jesus is through the lives and testimonies of those who believe. Therefore, much of the doctrine of Christian churches is derived from the letters of Paul, Peter, and other writers of the New Testament Epistles. These writers tell us how to live out our faith that we may be used by God in reflecting his truth to those who do not know him. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says, “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.” God wants our lives to shine his love so that the world may believe in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross.
Paul tells us in his second letter to the church at Corinth 3:18, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” When Moses had seen the glory of the Lord he had to veil his face as to hide the glory of God from the Israelites. They could not behold it, but we have been made holy by Christ and Paul calls us to remove the veil and let the glory of Christ shine through our lives. He also says that glory should be “ever-increasing”. We should be growing in the degree to which we reflect Christ. We should be becoming more like Christ in the way we live our lives.
It’s this command that stirs my heart back to what the Bible really is. It is the revelation of God. If I want to be more like God, if I want to reflect his glory ever-increasingly then I need his Holy Word. It is the perfect truth of who he is and tells the story of why I need the sacrifice of God to rectify my relationship with God. It’s true that I can see the glory of God in creation, art, relationships, etc… but I can only know the truth of his love, redemption, and grace by loving, absorbing, and living out the truth revealed to me through his one and only Holy Word. This is why the Word of God has been and always will be the most influential book of all time. It is faith, hope, and love incarnate and the only place that man will find his life to lose it.

Thank you God for your Holy Word.

REMINDED
At times it seems that my feet have been cemented in my own debt.
It feels like my spiritual walk has been outlined in chalk
That reads the headlines of my regrets.
Don’t fret, I am reminded, rewind it, and bind up all Of your regrets,
For, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,”
“My child,” I have forgiven your debts.
So many lonely nights that I’ve invited despair to stare Into my soul.
The eyes of despair’s stare are always heartless and cold! Yet still I’m reminded, “My child,” rewind this, And bind it to your soul,
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” by faith I’ve made you whole!
When depression keeps pressing like linebackers blitzing
In my direction,
And I scramble in the wrong direction losing sight
Of my protection,
I am reminded, “My child,” I Am your protection,
Your direction, your center and linemen.
The earth is Mine and everything in it, I’ll lead you with perfect timing!
What about when my tears fall like tons, because they are
Full of pain!
As they crash into the earth’s surface and burst into flames!
I’m reminded, “My child,” as your tears fell to the earth
I extinguished The flames.
I replenished your soul; as the earth when it rains!
LORD I get it, now I see!
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it
You blessed me before I came to be!
It was you Lord who has blessed me throughout my years
Of not knowing how quick the flesh will parish!
It was you Lord who has blessed me!
The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit within me!
I love you, Lord, the Trinity.
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”
His love is everlasting from beginning to ending!
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”
His love is everlasting from beginning to ending!

For Your Glory- Northstar Worship Arts

Your Love Never Fails- Jesus Culture, Your Love Never Fails

Rescue My Soul- Northstar Worship Arts

1.) Awareness:
Anytime you go into an environment that you’re not familiar with leading worship in you need to be aware of the kind of environment it is. It’s size, how wet or dry the room is, how the seating is arranged are all things that if ignored could be a surprise. Our theatre venue has movie theatre style seating, it’s a very dry room with curtained walls, and is a shotgun style room. The sound is good in the room, but very simple. People typically don’t sit up front in small rooms like this. I gathered that I would be dealing with a small crowd since this was a new opportunity and that people would be sitting far away from me. I knew there would be a tremendous opportunity for things to get awkward very quickly. Being aware of this I was able to prepare mentally and spiritually to engage a small group of people who would be sitting further away. That’s very different than engaging a packed room of 650 people with a full band. In our theatre the instrumentation is very simple so I had to be aware of that as well.

2.) Acclimation:
I went into the room a little early and plugged up and played through some of the songs alone before the other lead worshipper showed up. I got to hear the room, get a vision from the stage and pray for the services as I worshipped through a couple of the songs. It’s one thing to rehearse at home, but if you’re playing in a fresh room it’s going to sound and feel it’s own so it’s a good idea to spiritually and artistically acclimate yourself to these surroundings.

3.) Attitude:
When you’re in a new situation and especially in leading small(er) group times of worship there are sometimes great opportunities for awkwardness. This was a new opportunity for our church so the congregation came not knowing exactly what to expect. We need to make sure that whatever happens the people that we are leading in worship feed off of our attitude. If we are awkward and uncomfortable they will be, but if we are joyful and ready to worship no matter the situation they will feed from that. As leaders we have a tremendous effect on the room both in what we say and do and in our demeanor. Make sure that your attitude is prayerful and that you come expecting God do amazing things as we worship him.

These things apply in every worship setting, but in my experience small(er) group times of worship have more opportunity for things to get uncomfortable. The people can hear themselves singing, you typically don’t have lighting conducive for the situation, and the instrumentation is simpler. However, small(er) group worship has the beautiful opportunities for intimacy and simplicity that isn’t always found in our times of worship in the greater assembly. Above all realize that every time we worship it’s an opportunity for us to lead people into the presence of God and we as lead worshippers have the responsibility of doing all we can to make that experience a great one.

“How does that make you feel?” I asked, bewildered.
“Nick,” he said, “I’ve just come to terms with the fact that every job I do is important, and how I perform is a direct reflection of how I view God.”

That conversation has always stuck in my head. I learn a little more from it every day. We all face different monsters that cause us to feel apathetic towards our art, whether that’s entitlement, disconnection, fear; any number of things can cause us to forget what we’re called to do. That thing–whatever it is–is an illustration of how much we value God’s opinion of our responsibility. My friend’s responsibility was to make food for people. He knew God was observing his attitude, so he executed his responsibility well.

Andy Stanley once made this statement about temptation: “Our ability to withstand temptation has a lot to do with our confidence in God.” And man, is it true! Daily we face the temptation to do half of our job, to put half as much heart into our art, and to be “pretty good” because we’re not confident in God’s ability to use our best art any more than he could use our half-baked art.

Seth Godin says this about the idea of being “pretty good”: “Good art is useless and banal. No one crosses the street to buy good art, or becomes loyal to a good artist. If you can’t be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.” Now, before you let me have it, this has nothing to do with the learning process or being perfect. It’s neither of those. It’s about the product you present. It’s about doing your best. Ultimately it’s up to you, as the artist, to decide whether or not you’re giving it your all, but you had better be. If you don’t think it matters to God, look at what Paul says about it (I Cor. 10:31). Look anywhere to see what God’s glory is worth. I’ll give you a hint: It’s hot, gold-dipped and skillfully played.