We want to make excellent music. And by “excellent,” I mean the best we can do with what we have. It’s a continuously moving target. It’s personal - you don’t become excellent by comparing yourself to others but by comparing yourself today to yourself yesterday. Movement matters.

I was interviewed on the More Than a Worship Leader podcast, and he sent me the questions beforehand so I could prepare. I wrote my answers out and am sharing them with you for this week’s Fertilizer. (Make sure to respond to the questions at the end.)

You want to be a good steward of the leadership opportunity God has given you, right? You want to help your team be more confident and comfortable as they serve. You want more capable, Godly people on your team. You want to experience joy as you pour out each week. You want to complete your calling to the very end. You want to experience fullness.

Just under a month ago, worship leaders, pastors, and teams from 22 churches in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, gathered to learn about some foundational aspects of worship.

On a long enough timeline, we all need to punt. What does that mean?

I sat in the senior pastor’s office as we hammered out the details of the 12-month coaching program we were beginning with their leaders. Something he said, so flippantly, still haunts me after ten years.

After two and a half decades of supporting churches in your worship ministry, we’ve noticed something. The longer we’re around, the more the church personnel change. While we do know some leaders who have been at the same church since 2002 (when Ad Lib started), many have moved on. Even though some leaders feel like fixtures, even they are no longer leading worship.

We helped unload a shipment of ten 4x4 crates containing donations for needy families. Since they had no further need for the crates, the Central American Mission Projects (CAMP) leaders said we could have them. With my help, the three youth I had brought along began disassembling them. Each crate was made of about 80 screws, six 4x4 sheets of 3/4-inch plywood, and other assorted support lumber.

Imagine a world where the two people who share the vast majority of stage time at your church were best buds. I know that many lead pastors don’t have anything near that on their radar screens for how they work with their worship leaders, but John Maxwell’s leadership Law of Connection is still irrefutable:

“Leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand”

How can you improve your worship experience?

There are at least two perspectives as you read that question. One says, “yes, I’ve been wanting to up our game for the worship experience!” The other says, “I don’t like that you call it a ‘worship experience.’”

The note ringing out from the bass in my hands was jarring and dissonant. I quickly stopped it and frantically tried to find out which key we were playing in. If you had been in my head a few moments before, it might have sounded something like this...

Here’s the strange thing. I ask good questions for a living. As I coach worship leaders, I listen to what they say, what they leave out, what they focus on, what their perspective of reality is, and I ask questions from the OUTSIDE. I’m not better than them; I’m not a better leader than they are; I can’t outplay them as a musician. My value is that I’m not them. I’m not on the INSIDE.

Conferences are great! I used to be the guy who would sit in the auditorium in the afterglow. I didn’t want to leave. I had been inspired, encouraged, stretched, and poured into. What I received was not just information, it was impartation. I wanted to take many of the presenters home with me.

This is a beautiful treatment of this topic by Ad Lib coach Craig Knapp.

Something I hear constantly in conversations, especially in the tech realm, is the fear that AI is replacing human jobs. Frequently, I get asked the question, “Aren’t you afraid that (fill in the blank) job will be replaced by AI?”

“Should the singers have click in their ears?” many a worship leader has asked.

I can almost feel the visceral reactions as you read that.

Are you aging out of worship leadership? Are you feeling burned out or pushed out? Do you wish you had the same passion for Jesus, worship leading, and people that you once had before all those years in worship ministry? How can you rekindle a youthful, yet mature exuberance for the next season of ministry?

My friend Adam once said, “I’m not a psychologist because that’s what I do. I’m a psychologist, so that’s what I do.” In other words, his chosen profession doesn’t make him what his job title says. His calling and bent made him who he is, so he chose that for his profession.

Thanks for reading this year! As we prep for a new year, I want to equip you with tools for reflection. Worship leaders usually aren’t very good at reflecting. Introspection and navel gazing, yes, but real reflection, not so much.

The candles go out, the lights come down, the room empties—and suddenly it’s quiet. After weeks of rehearsals, planning, long days, and late nights, Christmas Eve hits with so much beauty and energy…and then it’s just done... it's over.  

On Christmas Eve, a church in your area is holding six services: traditional, contemporary, blended, modern, emergent, and orthodox. Then, after the candelighting, the worship team is hopping on a redeye to do a missions trip to Cambodia over Christmas and New Year’s.

Stop and think for a moment. What has most influenced my model of ministry? Many of us don’t even realize we have a model. Can you identify it? Who shaped it? A pastor? A co-worker? An industry? A speaker at a conference? An author? A friend? A podcaster?

I was on staff and was failing with my techs. There was constant tension. There was contempt and sarcasm. And so much passive aggressiveness. There was no life. Rehearsals were dreadful.

Slash chords, color chords, inversions, and magic chords shape musical expression. I'll illustrate their unique roles with piano examples, but all melodic instruments can benefit from understanding these nuances.

It’s happening all over America. Worship leaders with twenty and thirty years of experience are “aging-out” of leading worship.

No, they’re not, but that’s what they call it.