I define leadership as sovereign election resulting in decisive functional authority that builds up the body. Bobby Clinton in his book, The Making of a Leader defines leadership this way: ìÖa dynamic process in which a man or woman with God-given capacity influences a specific group of Godís people toward his purposes for the group.î
David is a nearly perfect archetype for us as worship leaders, because he learned how to worship God in secret, before he had a position of leadership. How did God prepare David? Through the quiet disciplines of raising sheep. God will use those life experiences, both painful and positive, to shape and prepare our characters for service.
All around us media providers are scrambling to make their products interactive. You don’t just watch the News-you email your opinions and photos. You don’t just listen to the radio-you text what you are up to, and what you thought of that song. You don’t just view TV talent shows-you decide the outcome by phone vote or, even better, you audition to be the star! In music, bands like Radiohead have provided the individual ‘stems’ for some of their tracks and invited fans to remix their own versions, and then post them back on the band’s website (and then, inevitably, people can vote for their favorite).
All this is chasing to catch up with what people call Web 2.0-Internet sites like Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Twitter-where you provide the content, sharing your films, thoughts, music tracks, photos, writings etc. People can comment, collaborate and respond with their own versions. No longer do people go online to merely consume information - they want to share as part of a like-minded community.
After all the hard work and sweat that goes into preparing the worship music, it can be a real drag when the congregation feels like they have to sing, too. You know how they mess things up: they usually come in late, can’t keep a beat, and they sound nothing like the live worship CDs, which are much more exciting. Look, we all understand if you desire to just have the congregation sit quietly and watch. Fortunately, we have listed a few of the many methods available to effectively shut them down.
I spent some time considering what the main tips are that I not only recommend to people in classes I teach and articles I write, but that I also use in my own weekly ministry. I have a hard time calling these my Top 10, since at various times, other tips not mentioned here could be extremely important, but these were the ones that I tend to rely on frequently.