Here’s an example of a video I made in January with our Children’s pastor, Chris, to share some info on upcoming worship ministry details.
All the stuff with Chris was shot in one take and I chopped it up and threaded it through my ministry info. I’ll put up another vid that I shot this week so you can see more recent updates, and updates to January’s updates. (In case you didn’t catch it, I think team updates are a good idea for you.)
Here’s an email I sent to my team as a “Spring Cleaning” measure.
I encourage you to send these kinds of emails from time to time–emails that communicate your new expectations, and that re-communicate old expectations that have gone slack.
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Hey crew, I hope your day is going well!
In an effort to help our ministry excel I want to share six simple areas we’ll be focusing on in the coming months.
Crowd-sourcing Scripture and songs.
I want to invite your input into the Scripture reflections, songs, prayers, etc. for the worship services. I am grateful to have the time to reflect/pray heavily on the state of the church and what it needs to hear each Sunday, but it’s always great to get input from my bro’s and sis’s in Christ about what Scriptures and songs will speak to our Body. And please, no more requests for Bob Sklar bass solos… I get those like every other day and I’m sick and tired of it 
Tardiness.
As a reminder, we need to start line checks at 7:00 (both Wed and Sun), which means you need to be set up and ready to play a few minutes before 7. Vocalists probably only need five minutes of prep for ears, mics and batteries, but everyone else probably takes between 10-20 minutes. Please do your best to arrive accordingly, and thank you for helping us make the most out of our time together!
Voyagers: Your Church Home.
Worship ministry is the ministry where it’s most common to have volunteers who don’t really attend the church except when they’re “serving” …and I say “serving” because Music/Tech is so much fun that it hardly even compares to sitting in a room with a dozen screaming babies! My expectation is that you would attend Voyagers at least 2-3 weeks each month, including the week you’re playing. Let me know if your work schedule doesn’t permit this, or if you have some other unique circumstance, but I trust each of you to honestly manage yourself in this regard, and to keep–or make, moving forward–Voyagers the church in which you faithfully worship, fellowship, tithe, and serve.
Statement of Facts vs Requests.
Yet another small thing to grease the wheel for us, if you’re on stage and are unable to get someone loud enough in your ears—say, BGV 2—try a Request (“Can you please turn up BGV2 in the ears?”) as opposed to a Statement of Fact (“I can’t hear BGV2 well enough.”) The first sentence is a clear request to the soundman to help you, whereas the second is just a vague summary of your own situation, functionally equivalent to saying “I haven’t been to Disneyland in a while” or “Mark Van’s favorite color is light pink.”** Soundmen will begin to do the same thing for their requests… “Can you turn your amp down?” instead of “The electric guitar is too loud on stage.” I plan to use public shaming and ruthless sarcasm in order to enforce this, so get ready to be asked about your favorite color if you use a Statement of Fact. A second offense puts you in the stocks, and a third warrants the death penalty, or you have to buy me a vanilla latte, your call.
Musicians, Less is More. Seriously. Boom.
Lyric Techs Needed.
We’re running short on Lyric techs. If you’d be interested in jumping into an area that has real need, this is it! I could use you about once a month on top of your current playing schedule. Email me if interested.
Onward and upward, friends! Hoping in Jesus,
Aaron
** This may or may not be true
I’m not big into celebrations that remember past events. I’d rather my birthday come and go without any fanfare, and the same disconnect is true for me on Easter. It’s not that I don’t understand why we make a big deal of that day (Easter, not my birthday); it’s just that I don’t have a “connectedness” bone in my body, so I don’t “feel” the Easter season/history like many do. Even so, I’m a worship leader, and yesterday was Easter, and I had to wear the hats of coordinator and ringmaster of Voyagers’ Easter celebration. As the service took shape in January and February, it become clear that if I was going to help steer the ship with any degree of authenticity that Sunday, I had to find some serious personal investment in its cargo.
But where does a non-history-minded, relatively unemotional guy find points of investment and connection on Easter Sunday? If not in the solidarity between our celebration and the billions of Easter celebrations spread across the past 2,000 years (which is awesome, BTW), and if not primarily in the emotional aspects of the salvation story (which is important, BTW), where could I get excited about Easter?
I’ll tell you where: In the Challenge and Promise of Easter.
The Challenge
I’ll frame this section with two Biblical statements that go hand-in-hand: 1) Salvation is entirely based on grace—not works. 2) Faith without action is dead.
I believe everything that ever needed to happen for our salvation happened to/through Jesus, and yet his ownership of our hearts is to be confessed through both words and deeds that bear the fruit of (and witness to) our adoption. What’s more, the impetus of those deeds should be the continual laying down of our lives and the taking up of our crosses, and that is precisely the Challenge.
I connect with the Challenge because I’m inclined to see challenge and correction as signs of God’s concern for me—not the only signs, certainly, but two of them (See Proverbs 3:11-12)—and as one part of accepting Christ’s invitation of salvation, I view taking on the challenge of dying to self as the best, most righteous and meaningful way to live my life. Easter reminds me of that challenge, and I’m encouraged that God would have a plan for my life, even though it involves total self-sacrifice and submission to Him.
The Promise
Yet another sign of God’s love and mercy, there is a Promise attached to the Challenge given to us at Easter. To borrow lyrics from “The Wonderful Cross,” Jesus “bids me come and die (The Challenge) and find that I may truly live (The Promise!).”
2 Corinthians 4:10-18 spells out the Promise clearly, and gives hope to those who experience hardship and persecution because of their response to Christ’s call… which (Spoiler Alert!) happens to every person ever who tries to follow Jesus. Check out verses 17 and 18 especially:
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Accepting the Challenge means receiving the Promise of the eternal resurrected life yourself, and not just any resurrection, but that of Jesus. Romans 6 says by dying to our flesh we gain a “new life,” one that is “alive to God in Christ Jesus.” What a trade, right? What a deal! God, in Jesus, comes to our door and offers us something we could never buy—eternity with him—in exchange for something we could never keep—our lives. Why, then, are we so hesitant to make that deal? Easter reminds me just how sweet and glorious the Promise of our resurrection really is.
So What?
Do you say “yes” to the Challenge, and do you accept the Promise of resurrection—of Christ in you, and the Spirit and knowledge of God as your heart’s one true passion? Like speed bumps on an airplane runway, what keeps you from getting off the ground—from emptying your life daily to receive the overflowing presence of the Spirit, and from knowing the joy of being adopted into the family of God? What will it take to remove those speed bumps from your path? What do you need to let Jesus do?
I encourage you to accept the Challenge afresh today, and to experience the Promise of resurrection life, alive to God in Christ Jesus!
He is Risen!
I’ve led worship for a handful of churches that use Planning Center Online, and it’s intriguing how many worship leaders/departments run their PCO pretty fast and loose! Every time I see that, I wonder to myself, “Don’t they know that it takes like 1 extra minute when putting in a song to make a HUGE difference in the long run?” Don’t get me wrong…I’m not the kind of guy who arranges the shirts in my closet by color or anything like that, but I am the kind of guy who wants to a) streamline weekly processes to avoid wasted time/energy, b) increase his work’s effectiveness for the church, and c) leave a clean house to whomever would come after/alongside me in ministry. If you get nothing else from this post, understand that in general the difference between an organized person and a disorganized person is the willingness to take 90 seconds and write details down.
Below are obvious but often-overlooked techniques to make Planning Center Online work better for you and your church. If you have to go back and do this stuff for your whole library, start by editing songs as you use them week to week, and commit to doing 5 extra songs per week in alphabetical order.
Put an accurate BPM for every song. You should already be on click, so having the correct tempo
listed for every song is mission critical. Don’t waste precious minutes of practice listening to the recording on your phone and having the drummer tap it in… or worse, just guessing the tempo based on how you’re feeling at the moment. If you didn’t know, bands and producers will fight tooth and nail for 2 or 3 BPM in the studio, so–unless you disagree with the band’s tempo, which I do from time to time–play it at the tempo of the most popular recording. Beyond the benefits already listed, your BPM’s will reveal easy transitions from one song at 100BPM to another song at 100BPM. You’d be surprised how close most song tempo’s are. *A new-ish PCO feature even lets you include the Meter, so do that, too! Why not? It takes 2 seconds.
List a Sequence for every song. The Sequence section is a relatively new addition to PCO, but deserves full adoption into your weekly workflow. Let’s be honest, a given song (say, “10,000 Reasons” by Matt Redman) doesn’t change that much in its sequence from one instance to the next–it’s pretty much the same Sequence both when you play it this week and a month from now. Even though PCO makes it really easy to make a one-time adjustment of a song’s Sequence within a particular plan, I don’t change the Sequence in PCO week to week… I just leave the fullest, longest edition of the song in the Sequence section and then have my players scratch out sections in practice as I decide to scrap the repeated Bridge or add a Tag at the end. (This reflects my leadership style, though, where I come in with a plan but try to let the band members have a say in some of the Sequences). The way I see it, the Sequence should act as an aid and a catalyst for you, not a restriction that has to be updated weekly unless that’s something you want to do. Either way, PCO has you dialed in.
Assign Custom Properties to every song. For some reason, some guys act as if “you can’t limit worship by labeling songs 
as Fast, Medium, Slow, Rock, Indie, Contemporary, Older, Hymn, etc.,” but I totally disagree. Organization is not only key to good business, it’s also core to the character of God to organize, to structure, label, and classify. At some point you will need a Slow Hymn, and if you didn’t take 5 seconds–LITERALLY 5 seconds–to indicate “Slow” and “Hymn” when you plugged “My Jesus I Love Thee” into PCO, you’re going on a wild goose chase through 300 songs to find that song… and you may not even see it.
Quit using PDF’s and Word DOC’s, and quit using different fonts, sizes, and arrangement terms. You can Google any song and get a relatively accurate chord chart that PCO can transpose to any key you need, so get those non-transposable PDF’s/DOC’s out of here! When you paste/edit a chord chart, be sure to choose the same font, font size, and arrangement terms for every song. Too many people go back and forth between fonts (Courier on Song 1, Times on the next, back to Courier for Song 3), making the band’s experience visually schizophrenic and distracting. Again, take the 2 seconds to change the font to your preferred font, whatever that may be. A quick rant, if I may:
Courier needs to be wiped from the face of the planet. Please, for Heaven’s sake, us Arial or Times. I also recommend using size 13 or 14 so the words/notes are more easily visible from a few feet away. Whatever you do, be consistent …and consider yourself shunned if you actually prefer the great Serif’d monster that is Courier on anything other than a child’s lemonade stand.
Ok, thanks for letting me do that. Back to PCO.
Print and review a 12-month Song Usage chart every quarter. This will expose songs that have been on the fringe of both over- and under-usage, and will indicate which songs you should probably even put in the “No Fly” zone for a few months. This is especially important if you have multiple worship leaders who could potentially do the same song 3 weeks in a row without meaning to. I had to shelf “Forever Reign” for a few months when I got to Voyagers because it had seen a gluttonous amount of air time in 2012. You can see this Song Usage chart by clicking on Plans to take you to your Dashboard, and then clicking on Reports at the bottom of the page. Set the “What” to “Songs” and then set the dates. I recommend looking at this sheet once a quarter, and look at a 12-month period every time… so in April you’ll look at March ’12 through March ’13. This helps you stay fresh and unpredictable, and tells you when it’s time to start bringing in some more new songs to pad the church’s repertoire.
Write in major holidays and important events in the Title section of each plan. This helps you keep track of the “zeitgeist” in the church and in its surrounding culture. For 
instance, I have St Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day, High School Winter Camp, and “Tax Day is tomorrow” listed next to the sermon titles on various Sundays throughout the year. You don’t need to paint the sanctuary green for St Patty’s Day, but it’s low hanging fruit to connect with the every-day life of your people by making mention of major holidays, cultural trends and events, and church happenings. Maybe you already have a system for doing this, but if not this is a really easy way to make sure you don’t lose touch with people whose whole lives don’t revolve around Sunday like yours does.
In Brief: Don’t be a right-brained jackwagon and leave your PCO disorganized. Learn to value what 90 seconds of assigning details gets you in the long run, and people may even start to call you “organized.”
Anything I’ve missed?
Stay on the bus,
at
Love is what happens to a man and a woman who don’t know each other. – Somerset Maugham
Somerset, I couldn’t disagree more. Attraction, not Love, is what happens to a man and woman who don’t know one another. Love is when you have seen them at their worst and at their best, been wounded immeasurably–and at other times deeply healed–by them, etc., etc., etc. To say more would be to protest too much.
Happy Valentina’s Day, Katie Rae. I don’t deserve you. I love you forever.
I’ve had a handful of people ask me about guitar chords/inversions that I use while leading, and I figured the best way to respond was to draw up a chart with my most-used cheater chords. The honest truth is that I’ve learned these chords out of necessity–I need chords I can get in and out of quickly and easily–and not some purist “I want to master the fretboard” mentality. Who was it that said they give lazy men the toughest jobs since a lazy man will find the easiest way to do it? Well that’s me, and the chart below is the result of my desire to make things easy on myself.
One note and one piece of encouragement:
Note: Not all cheater chords work for every key. The chart I have made for you is key-specific, so a cheater chord for “D major” that works in the key of G will probably not work for a “D major” in the key of A, or even the key of D. Seems strange, I know, and there’s a perfectly good musical theory explanation for that problem, but if you just memorize which keys are “green-light” and which are “red-light” for various inversions, you’re good.
Encouragement: The guitar fretboard is all about patterns, which makes things very, very, very predictable if you’ll just get the patterns down. If you want to learn to fly on the guitar, look up the CAGED system of playing chords. And by the way, if you haven’t already, you need to memorize all the frets on a guitar… at least up to the 12th fret. Don’t rote memorize (aka “An A major chord is on the 5th fret, but I have no idea why”) or I promise you’ll never get beyond Beginner Guitar.
Guitar players, anything to add? Any experience with CAGED? That thing changed my life!
Stay on the bus!
at
Here’s that PDF: Cheater Chords
Proverbs 27 says, “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips.” While any generation is as prideful as the next, there’s something about members of my generation that leads them to toot their own horns. I am certainly guilty of this, and maybe it’s just part of being young and naive, but the Bible’s instruction is clear: Don’t praise yourself; if your actions are worthy of praise, someone else will say it. Man, I have a long way to go in this… Lord, make me humble even if I don’t go easily!
Another misguided belief of mine–and, I would argue, of my generation–is that I deserve more than what I have earned. This is one outcome of that quickness to praise myself, no doubt, and also stems from the number of times Sesame Street told me as a child that I was exceptional–just like they told everybody else, oddly enough.
As I zoom out of my life and compare my experiences and reputation with other good, Godly men who are a click or two older than me, I see clearly that I have not yet earned a reputation–a track record of excellence and righteousness in my spheres of influence–that can hold a candle to theirs. I also see that the only thing earning a man or woman a reputation is consistency of character over time. For better or worse, you’ll be known for the areas of consistency in your life, and you will be called up (or left out) based on those areas.
The Bible is clear on this point, too. Proverbs 25 says, “Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among his great men; it is better for him to say to you, ‘Come up here,’ than for him to humiliate you before his nobles.” Friends, don’t think that corner office is yours because you finished up your PhD, or because of the quality (or quantity) of your work in a given season. Earn the respect of your peers and the commendation of God by living holy lives devoted to Christ, and when it’s all said and done–regardless of whether you get the corner office or the praise of others–you will have lived a life worthy of the calling you’ve received.
In short, if you ever start a sentence with “I don’t want to toot my own horn,” I recommend stopping there.
I got to sit in during part of a church elder meeting tonight, and I have a new respect for the men serving our church in that role. Their thoroughness of thought is intense–they’re lawyers, engineers, leaders in business, and just plain “leaders of men”–but what I found most profound (and most encouraging) was their Christlike love for one another. Even when flushing out their honest disagreements, the air in the room was full of grace and humility.
A key takeaway from this meeting that I want to encourage you to act on, too: I/we should be praying for the unity of our church leadership. Divisions come easily in a group that constantly deals with the underbelly of a community as uniquely organized (or disorganized) as a church, so make it a habit to lift up your elders and pastors often. There’s little more encouraging than a person from church saying they’re praying for Katie and me.
Stay on the bus, friends.
at
A friend emailed me asking what I do when someone asks to try out for the band rotation at Voyagers. Here’s the reply I sent to her. Go get ‘em Lauren!
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The short answer: Honesty and humility. Don’t BS them and tell them you “may” use them when you won’t. Either hire them, or recommend they try plugging in somewhere else at church. I walk into every tryout thinking, “I fully plan on denying this person unless they totally, overwhelmingly impress me with their character, personality, and ability.”
The long, involved answer: The first time they approach you about trying out, tell them that they need to have regularly attended the church for at least 6 months, and that your church needs to be their church home—they shouldn’t be shopping around for churches, and they should be attending between 2-3 weeks/month on average (if not 4/4), counting their performance weeks. This weeds out the divas who go from church to church looking for “some place to use their God-given talents” (I hate that phrase) and then only show up when it’s their turn for the spotlight.
Assuming they’ve been at your church for 6 months, attend 2-3 weeks/month, and seem normal and not crazy, give them a tryout:
1. Grab a few stools to sit together and ask them to tell you their story, how they came to faith and how they got started in music. If you accept them on the team then you’re already friends, or—if you say no—it’ll be a lot easier for them to receive that blow if they understand you’re interested in them personally.
As they’re giving you their story, they may make some statements that raise red flags for you (“Sometimes I get overcome by the Holy Spirit and I start barking like a dog”), or that will indicate the person is a bad fit culturally no matter how good they are at music stuff. I have had people tell me about how horrible every one of their past worship leaders was and how “unprofessional” the WL’s were… Really? Every single one was bad? Sounds like that volunteer has an attitude problem, and I didn’t want to be their next victim!
2. When they’re finished with their testimony, and before they play/sing for you: Tell them that most people who try out don’t make the team–only say that if it’s true…but for me it is. Say that you’re very selective who plays/sings, and that the standard you’re going for is higher than most churches they’ve probably been involved with. If you accept them after telling them this, they feel very accomplished, but if you deny them then they had that potential outcome in their mind from the get-go.
Because of how I organized my ministries, I also communicated that Worship ministry isn’t a “full-time” ministry—most people only sing once a month with me…twice tops…so even if they make the team, they should consider places they can get involved outside of Worship, like a small group and/or Children’s ministry–preferably somewhere out of the spotlight. This is a good place also to tell them about practice times/expectations, and Sunday morning call time. Get it all out on the table so they can see the full reveal.
3. Now that you’ve got them sufficiently depressed and ready to be fired before they were ever hired: Be ready to play 2 songs they absolutely know, and in any key they need. Maybe have someone there who can transpose guitar/piano chords on the fly. This avoids the comments, “Well I don’t really know the song so I can’t sing it very well,” and “The key you’re playing it in isn’t good for my voice.” Expose their weakness and give them no easy outs. If, at this point, they tell you they’ve been sick but they’ll *try* to sing well—I hate that excuse—recommend to reschedule the tryout. No excuses, either try out or don’t!
4. If they’re good, tell them specifically how you plan to work them in (When do they start? How often do they play?). If they suck, tell them they won’t be on the team and that they need more practice and can come try out a few months from then. In both cases: Honesty. If you don’t think they’re good enough, DON’T tell them that “you’ll call them if you need a fill-in” or some other answer that makes you seem nice when you’re really just leading them on because you don’t have the guts (or the morals) to be honest and tell them they aren’t very good. If they make the team, don’t promise them that they’ll “sing all the time” if they’ll probably only go once a month.
*Maybe you don’t need that kind of be-honest-or-bust pep talk, but I certainly did at Pathways, and still do at Voyagers. It is difficult initially to be up-front with people, but it saves a TON of heart ache in the end! If you want my exact verbiage for declining a person, try “I appreciate you trying out, but in my opinion you need to work on your __________ (pitch, vibrato, tone, strumming, tempo, etc.) before I’d be comfortable using you. Thank you for trying out, and I definitely encourage you to get plugged into other ministries.” Don’t give up any ground (“Maybe it was just a bad day for you…”) or put it on yourself (“Sorry I’m so picky…”). Just be humble as you let them down honestly, and any kind of negative backlash they give you is their own deal.
That’s all I got…that’s how I think of it, top to bottom. Thoughts? Comments?
at
When there are many words,
The bible says clear,
You better hold your breath
Because sin is near
Like a rain that waits
Until the clouds appear
Better hold your breath
Because sin is near
With the cannibal and the clever
You’ve two souls lost in the desert
Between the animals and their pleasure
Never far but never measured
But the sensible and the lion
With their lives among the dying
Find their home inside the quiet
Ever wiser, evermore
