What does a Worship Leader REALLY do day to day…???

If you’re in ministry, you’ve heard this joke more than once.  ”Must be nice working only one day a week!”  And we all have a good laugh.  But I always wonder, “Do you really think that I only work one day a week?”  I feel like I work fairly hard, but my job is sometimes hard to quantify except to say that I do a lot more grunt work and paper work than most people realize.  And then I saw this pic come through the Facebook stream awhile ago…

Now this really is FUNNY!  And as I was laughing it got me thinking…Everyone has a different view of what I do!  DO I EVEN KNOW WHAT I DO EACH WEEK?  So I thought I’d keep a log of my week and help everyone clarify just what I do with my job each week…so here goes…a week in the life of an ECC worship leader…

Monday

8:25-Roll into office

8:30-Fill out Weekly Staff report

9:30-Eval meeting

9:50-Worship Leadership meeting

10:15-Service Brainstorming meeting

11:00-Staff Team building event (with LUNCH!)

1:30-Staff Meeting

2:00-Check email

2:15-Small clean up of Worship Center.

2:30-Meeting about upcoming drama for sermons and Summer sermon series.

3:00-Meet w/ Visual Artist about wall mosaic for current series.

3:15-Look for upcoming sermon series graphics.  Start on template.

4:15-Leave office

6:30-Watch kids at home so my wife, Sara, can attend Pastor’s Wives event.

9:00-Kids in bed and house cleaned up.  More work on Sermon Presentation Template.

9:30-Shut-down computer.

Tuesday

8:15-Roll into the office

8:20-Organize/print music, worship orders, lyric sheets and tech sheets for secretaries to print for Tuesday night rehearsal.

9:00-Create slides in WC and copy to FLC MAC.  Also create lighting presets in WC.

11:15-Meet w/ Office Manager to talk about printing new PUSH prayer bookmark.

11:30-Make lunch in kitchen and eat in my office.

12:00-Prep for Tuesday night’s devotional.

12:30-Make vocal notes for arrangement, harmony, solo singing, etc.

1:00-Fix ProPresenter computer program glitch. (Yes, it happens even on a MAC!)

1:30-Research videos for upcoming series.

1:45-Meet w/ Chris Kuntz about video needs.

1:55-Upload SFX MP3 for special music this week.

2:05-Check Twitter/email.

2:15-Respond to potential volunteers from our eConnect classes.

2:20-Work on Denominational Worship Leaders Summit coming up in May!

2:40-Leave office to pick up daughter at school.

6:00-Back at ECC for dinner w/ musicians and techies!

6:30-Lead devotional.

6:45-Dismiss everyone and reset for rehearsal.

6:50-Start soundcheck.

7:15-Start rehearsal.

9:00-Finish rehearsal and talk while cleaning up.

9:30-Head home!

Wednesday

8:20-Roll into office.

8:30-meet w/ contractor from ESCO to talk about upcoming video project.

8:45-Hand off to Chris and I go to talk to Anna Edgar about upcoming REACH service and meeting the needs of our missionary guest speaker.

9:00-Check email.

9:30-Find MP3 music for rehearsal Wednesday night.

9:40-make CD master to hand out and give to secretaries to make copies.

9:50-set up meeting w/ Pastor Denny to work through future expansion issues.

10:00-Call another upcoming guest speaker to arrange schedule, lodging, transportation, etc.

10:30-Find hotel room and book for the guest speaker.

11:15-Meet w/ Office staffer about PUSH prayer bookmark and overall communication.

11:45-Lunch w/ staff in kitchen.

12:30-work on new To-do program and update rotating reminders.

1:30-Review information for meeting on Thurs.

1:45-Work on Denominational Worship Leader Summit in May.

2:00-Finalize two possible presentation templates for upcoming sermon series.

2:30-Leave ECC

6:15-Back to ECC for Emmanuel Theatre Co. rehearsal.

6:30-Community time and prayer requests.

6:45-Rehearsal.

8:15-Head home.

Thursday (This is usually Friday, but my schedule got changed this week!)

8:25-Roll into office.

8:30-Check email.

8:50-Insert another slide onto MAC for REACH prayer time this weekend.

8:55-Touch base w/ Bible Study Fellowship women leaders about technology needs.

9:10-Write WorshipNotes.

10:00-Review and Sign Payment Authorization forms for rest of Worship Arts staff.  File my own bills.

11:00-Meet w/ Lead Pastor Denny Miller about upcoming tech needs.

1:00-head home for lunch.

2:00-Post and send WorshipNotes.

2:30-Shut computer.

Friday-Day off

Saturday

3:50PM-Roll into FLC for service.

4:00-start final rehearsal/soundcheck.

5:00-Open doors for service.

5:15-Talk through service w/ whole team and prayer.

5:27-Saturday 5:27 service.

6:30-Start shutting down.

6:50-Head home.

Sunday

6:30-AND THIS IS 6:30 AM!!  Roll into office.

6:35-Turn on equipment and set up.

7:15-Staff meeting/prayer.

7:30-Final rehearsal/soundcheck.

8:20-Soundcheck Speaker’s mic and check live video feed to FLC.

8:35-Listen to Chris Kuntz talk through service w/ tech team on COMM system.

8:45-Talk through service w/ Worship Center team and prayer.

9:00-Worship Center and FLC concurrent services.

10:30-Worship Center and FLC concurrent services.

11:40-Start clean up and equipment shut-down.

12:00-Head home.

Looking back over my week, there is a LOT of administration to keep everything going.  I see that I need to make more time to meet with people and learn about their lives and what God is doing outside of the office.  But I do hope and pray that whether it’s in the office or over lunch or singing during a weekend service that I am able to give glory to God and to help others worship.

Christians Debate: Was Jesus For Small Government?

I’m not weighing in on this debate, but as we go into an election maelstrom, I found it fascinating…both the discussion and that it would happen on NPR.  The two basic viewpoints are as follows:

…conservatives promoting a small-government Jesus and liberals seeing Jesus as an advocate for the poor.

Thoughts?  http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150568478/christian-conservatives-poverty-not-government-business

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The biblical metaphor for Easter spirituality is found in baptism. The baptized life is a life that is lived in the pattern of death and resurrection. . . . The message of Easter is that the way of being in Jesus, the way of living the new resurrected life is through participation.

Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year

 

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What happens in worship is that our struggles with the powers of evil that disturb us and seek to dismantle our relationships and our lives are brought to Jesus the victor over all evil. In worship we deal again and again with the ultimate truth that Jesus, who overcame the powers of evil through his death and resurrection, is able to overcome those powers of evil that are now at work in our own lives.

-Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation

 

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“…the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. Yet I think most Christians today are involved in great part in a spirituality of addition…We see reality, experiences, events, other people, and things—in fact, everything—as objects for our personal consumption. Even religion, Scripture, sacraments, worship services, and meritorious deeds become ways to advance ourselves—not necessarily ways to love God or neighbor.”

-Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

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Worship is a means through which we can see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and come into contact with the infinite. Therefore the arts can mediate the message of Christ and minister to me in the depth of my being. . . . The future of the arts in worship, I believe, holds considerable promise for us in our continued discovery of worship as a verb.

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According to sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith (authors of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America), only one thing separates white and black evangelicals, but it makes all the difference in the world: Vastly different experiences of structural and systemic oppression… Black evangelicals have a long history of interaction with oppressive systems and structures. When African Americans read the Bible, they see the more than 2,000 passages of scripture about God’s hatred for poverty and oppression. They see God’s desire for systems and structures to be blessings to all of humanity — not a curse to some and a blessing for others… White evangelicals generally do not experience such systemic oppression. According to Emerson and Smith, most white evangelicals don’t prioritize or even see the thousands of references in the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament about structural and systemic injustice. Accordingly, the Gospel — and by extension their evangelism — is about only one thing: Personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for their sins, and a personal relationship with him. Black evangelicals also have personal faith that Jesus’ death paid for their sins, but their Gospel doesn’t end with personal (and individual) salvation. For Dr. King and Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rev. John Perkins and Nelson Mandela and for hundreds of thousands of Black Christians around the world and for me, the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were for the redemption of both individual souls and the redemption of whole societies.

Lisa Sharon Harper, http://sojo.net

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Good art “speaks to me. It makes me listen. It forms me.” . . . Somehow the art in worship surrounds me and gathers me up into itself. Like music, it enters into my soul and abides there. During the week it becomes a dominant image in my experience and pulls me to dwell on the theme and allows the theme to dwell in me. In this way, it forms me and energizes my spiritual pilgrimage.

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation

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…modern racism is similar in form to the various heretical “isms” that emerged during the early church’s controversies over its relationship to Israel and over the relation of Christ’s humanity and divinity. There­fore a theological response to racism entails a more faithful articulation of the nature of the Trinity… …only by affirming Jesus’ Jewish body can one comprehend the meaning of salvation. Gentiles were baptized into Jesus’ Jewish body, which continues and fulfills (and never denies) God’s covenant with Israel. Engrafted into God’s salvation of the Jews, the gentiles were saved insofar as the Jews were saved. It was Christ’s unique human-divine personage that integrated gentiles into Israel’s covenant life with God… …Jewish flesh is most authentically itself when it welcomes the gentile…In the same way that God elects and receives Israel, elected Israel receives the gentiles as an extension of God’s reception history. “Israel’s meaning and significance,” writes Carter, “arise out of its being related to the nations before whom the drama of the Jews’ election unfolds… …The church, insofar as it continues Israel’s salvation, seeks inclusion rather than exclusion. Israel is elected by God for the specific task of blessing the nations; to speak of Israel’s chosenness, then, is to speak of inclusion rather than exclusion—the very opposite of racism’s infatuation with purity… …By returning to the scene of racism’s theological origins, the new theology outlines where things initially went wrong and charts an alternative course. A better option was there all along in the church’s affirmation of Jesus’ humanity (a particular, Jewish humanity) and divinity… …Debates in the early church about Jesus’ identity featured two sides: one side prioritized Jesus’ humanity at the cost of downplaying his divinity; the other prioritized Christ’s divinity even if that meant disparaging his humanity. The church ultimately settled these matters at the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, where Christ’s humanity and divinity were both affirmed within the trinitarian confession… …White supremacy (and its nonwhite versions) can be indicted as a modern perpetration of adoptionism (the early heresy that prioritized Christ’s humanity over his divinity). Those who malign certain kinds of bodies (such as bodies different from one’s own) or ignore bodily life altogether (as in the notion of “color blindness” popular among evangelicals) are guilty of a new strain of gnosticism (the early heresy that prioritized Christ’s divinity over his humanity).

Tran, Jonathan. “The new black theology.” The Christian Century. http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-01/new-black-theology

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To insist that art is necessary for worship is to commit aesthetic heresy. Such insistence makes art an idol, an object of our worship. On the other hand, to insist that art is a hindrance to worship is equally dangerous. It denies that the material creation is a worthy vehicle through which God can communicate to us, and we to him.

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation