ASNN

ministry is hard: part 1

Someone once said that "managing BIND servers is like trying to herd cats". If you don't get the technical humor behind, just rest assured that managing BIND servers is just really hard and frustrating and unpredictable at times - just like trying to get a cat to do something you want from it.

I would like to submit a slight change to the saying: "Managing *people* is like trying to herd cats, only the cats will listen to you on occasion."

As I've probably told many of you individually, Vanessa and I have begun leading the worship service at our church. It came at a critical time, when the previous leader had left and no clear leader was stepping forward. The church was poised for great growth, the congregation was ready to move forward, but there was waning passion in the worship service itself. Vanessa had put the service together before, and I had been singing on the team for a little while, so we threw our hats in the ring. That was in September, and we've been doing it ever since.

It has been a tremendous blessing, both for ourselves and for the congregation! We have introduced about seven new songs, all of which we culled from recent worship CDs and from the radio. Our goal was to bring this 55-year-old church into a more modern mode of worship, introducing them to great songs that they could hear on the radio. For members that listen to the local Christian radio station, we wanted to give them the opportunity to worship to songs they already kinda know and sing in their cars. For members that DON'T listen to Christian music, we wanted to give them reasons to do so by introducing really solid songs. (That second point was what brought me around after YEARS of hating Christian music. There's still a lot out there that's trite and substandard, but heck, listen to ANY Top-40 station and tell me Christian music is unique in its spotty quality.)

To counterbalance all of the fun we've been having, we've also run into bizarre acts of resistance that really shed light on where the Christian church is at in the US. There has been the predictable bit of fear of the new songs, of course. We saw that coming and now perform any new songs as specials one week, then with congregational the following week. That seems to have given people the opportunity to feel more comfortable sitting and listening a few times through, rather than feeling completely lost, embarrassed and disconnected. But that bit of fear hasn't been anywhere near the biggest hurdles we've faced.

Perhaps the most shockingly significant hurdle we've faced was at the beginning, when we instituted a mid-week practice session. The previous music guy just had people show up Sunday morning two hours early and run through the songs then. After all was said and done, that made for about four hours of singing, playing, worshiping, etc. on a given Sunday morning. I applaud those of you who can do that, and perhaps I'll be able to as my voice and musical skills sharpen. However, for our group it was really rough. In response, we started a modest, 90-minute (later pared to one-hour) Thursday night practice... and that's when all hell broke loose.

We had a wide variety of objections:

• "I'm a married man with a job and a family. [Never mind that the kids were grown and out of the house.] I don't have time."
  
• "That won't work because we've tried it and it never worked. [That's my personal favorite - so much for struggling to do things at all, much less doing them well! Guess you still wear diapers because that whole potty training thing didn't work all those times.]
  
• "We don't need to practice." [We wanted the group to function more as a band, gelled together as a team of diverse but like-minded individuals. How will that happen, musically, if not through practice?]
  
• "Some of us have school and shouldn't be out late on a school night." [First, the complaint-lodger was not one that had school. Second, the ones who did have school had no complaints, nor did their parents. And really, are these high school kids really in bed by 9PM if they weren't at practice?!]
  

We actually lost a few people over just the rehearsal issue. We were really disappointed, as we didn't want to exclude anyone with our direction, but it was a direction we felt very strongly about. Still do.

I'll keep writing about some of the fun we're having as our church's worship leaders. And make no mistake about it: regardless of the bumps, scheduling snafus, and general craziness, it's terribly fun and enriching.

Posted by pcg at April 11, 2006 2:54 PM