I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Worship Ministry lately. (In part because I have the time to do so.) I’ve been thinking about how we run our ministries and what our motivations are. What is our philosophy for worship ministry and how did we get here?
As I have been thinking about it, I’m starting to come to a conclusion. And that is, that we need to be more like Hillsong. Ok, not really. But it seems to be the conclusion of more and more worship ministries around the world.
I don’t mean to pick on Hillsong, it’s just that they’re one of the biggest influences on our world of worship these days. But, the same applies to almost any influential worship band or worship songwriter.
What is it that motivates us to try to be like Hillsong and these other groups? It’s not just driven by those within the worship ministry. Church leaders around the world have the misunderstanding that building a flashy-dashy worship ministry will bring in the herd.
From what I’ve observed these are a few of our motivators.
1. We don’t have a vision for what our worship ministry is supposed to be like.
We either haven’t take the time or don’t know how to come up with a vision for our worship ministry. It’s easy to get busy doing ministry and not take the time to really seek what God has in mind for us. Instead of seeking God’s wisdom, taking stock of who God has placed in our churches and making a plan that fits within those confines, we copy and paste.
2. We don’t like where our ministry is.
Perhaps you volunteered too early, or took a job at a church without thoroughly understanding where the church is, but you’re unhappy with where things are. You don’t like the style of music or the songs they sing. While feeling that way you see what some of these other groups are doing, and just decide that it will be better than what you’re doing now. So you go after it.
Or someone you work for doesn’t like where your worship ministry is or is going. So they decide it should be like Hillsong. That’s a different post for a different day. But that happens.
3. We’re more concerned with being current than we are with what would work best for our church.
You first response to this point might be to say, “no church would do that.” But, they do. ALL THE TIME! So many churches have stopped trying to fulfill their own purpose and have just started doing what they see other churches doing. They copy their mission statements, philosophy and strategy. They might tweak them a little bit, or use a thesaurus to come up with different words, but it’s the same. And churches take the same approach to worship. This is working for other churches, so surely it will work for ours. This is what Supercool Community Church is doing, so we have to do it.
With as much creativity as God used in creating all the unique individuals walking the face of this planet, He has also created the body that you are serving. There are no two churches who are the same. Every Church is different, and I believe God designed them that way. Hillsong is a ministry for their church. Yes we get to enjoy the benefits of it, but Hillsong was created by their church and for their church. It worked for them, so we think it will work for us.
The thing is, it won’t work nearly as well for us as it has worked for them because we aren’t them. We don’t have the same people or the same culture or the same anything. What we need to do is be who God wants us to be.
My only goal for todays post is to get you thinking about your ministry in terms of what God wants your ministry to look like. How do you go about doing that? I’ll come back to that in a future post, but here’s a short way to get started.
Seek God’s Wisdom, Evaluate the Body, Make a plan.
Seek what God wants a desires you to be. Evaluate the body of Christ you are a part of. And Make a plan to go there.
Vision is a huge topic for another day and another post, but if you start here, you will be taking a step in the right direction.
Will you join me in taking a step to be who God wants you to be? Where are you right now and what is one small thing you could do to take a step in that direction?
At WMC, in partnership with GCP, we want to encourage, equip, and celebrate believers using their gifts creatively to support the worship and mission of the local church.
