Little boxes

Today our worship arts ministry team met with Rob our executive pastor. He went over some ideas and thoughts on how to help us within our ministry. With two venues and several of our lead volunteers stepping down recently we found ourselves in a bit of a mess. We found ourselves doing more to fill in the gaps. That may be okay for a short time, but it won't work for the long haul. And that's what we are in this for. We are all committed to making worship not only a priority for Mountain, but also making it the best we can.
Anyway, Rob showed us through the use of circles, boxes, arrows, lines of multi colored markers on a white board how we might be able to delegate our responsibilities. (Almost sounded like an old Arlo Guthrie song with all the circles, boxes, arrows, all we were missing were the black and white photo-graphs). Delegate is probably not the right word though. Through mentoring, teaching, modeling, taking someone along side us we can help them become a leader of a section of our ministry. Letting them take over one part of the ministry would also mean that they would 'own' that. Then in turn we would have more time to do the same with other people. not really working our selves out of a job though. Because with more venues and the possibility of other campuses, we will need more people running tech, media, band, vocal, lights, etc. that means more mentoring, more teaching, more modeling, taking more people along side of us.
After that meeting (2 hours) Bob and I had to go to a funeral where Bob was running sound and I was playing keys for a couple of songs during the service. Setting up for choir and going over the vocal music for Sunday and the choir music for tonight's rehearsal, I'm tired and I still have a meeting with the worship leader, band leader, me and Eric to go over this Sunday's music. Then vocal worship rehearsal, and finally choir. Busy night ahead of me.
Little boxes, little boxes, made of ticky tacky...it might have been a cute song by Malvina Reynolds, but using boxes like Rob did is a very important concept for us to implement.
john

3 inches of snow and everything stops

You have to understand, Marylanders don't do snow well. I came from Long Island and we have a good snow there (a couple of feet) most winters. Ben our preacher comes from Minnesota and he says unless there's three feet of snow, it's not really snow, it's just flurries.
Anyway we got a snow storm this past Thursday. It started in the early afternoon and by 5:00 there was about 3 good inches on the ground. Big, wet flakes of snow, great for making snowballs!
Thursday is also our worship rehearsal night. Schools let out early and cancelled evening activities. This was also the first night our choir was to be back from their winter break. It was also the Thursday that the choir gets ready to lead worship on Sunday.
Do we cancel everything? Do we cancel choir and have the rest of the musicians still show up?
Bob and I set up the stage, with risers for the choir and mic's, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboard, drums, percussion and the sound cart so everything would be ready for rehearsal.
The choir was leading all the congregational songs but they were not going to sing a special. Most of them took the music a couple of weeks ago, and had been listening and singing all the music. We make a music booklet of all the songs for that Sunday along with a cut sheet to guide them on how the song will be sung.
We first decided to cancel choir practice. The choir had the music, they were learning it on their own, so we thought we could cancel and just have them come at 7:26AM on Sunday morning to rehearse and we would be fine. We were still going to have the band members show up and go over the music. This way the band would know the music, and the choir would sing along. Real easy!
Well, then we decided that we should cancel all of the worship rehearsal including the band members and not have anyone come to the church.
So, NO REHEARSAL on Thursday for anyone.
I have to say, everyone was ready to go on Sunday morning. There were about 40 members, and all the band members ready to sing and play. I have to brag again! We have some great worship team people.
We had only an hour and 20 minutes to go over all the songs, get the tempo right, get the cuts and repeats right, get the words right. I was a bit nervous, but God was there all the time. As I look back now, I knew I was nervous, but not as much as I would have been in the past. I finally was relying more on the worship team (band and choir) knowing the music and letting the Holy Spirit work, and not so worried about how was I going to pull it all together.
God was there. It was a great service. The theme was on Koinonia and it really happened. We all banded together to lift our praises to the Lord.
I really can't wait for next week now. The theme is Proskuneo, Worship!!
John