Worship Pastors and their Teams - Lesson 10

Carl Cartee
Worship Pastors and their Teams
mc230-10
Questions from a Pastor
Lesson Transcript

 

Hi, I'm Bill Mounce, founder and president of Biblical Training, and I've been so excited to spend this time with you, Carl. And I've been looking for a worship pastor for literally years that knows what you know. And so I'm so thankful that you let us record you. And to take up all this time. I pastored for several years and as I've been listening to you, I've been kind of putting on my pastor hat and thinking, I wonder how you would answer this question when speaking to pastors. So this is more a question and answer time of a worship pastor to a preaching pastor. Yeah, And there's there's a little bit of repetition here from some of the things you've said earlier. It's okay, but I think would be helpful to go through them. Yeah. One is we all know that it's a team building. It is going to be better, the collaboration is better, and that the worship I don't want to use worship because the singing is teaching and the preaching is worship. Yeah, it's a it needs to be a seamless experience. And I'm kind of interested in terms of behind the scenes stuff throughout the week. What kind of stuff have you learned to help so that on Sunday morning you really function as one team and not two individuals doing two different things? Yeah, I think, you know, as you said, collaboration is it makes everything better, you know, you know, the Trinity thing, it's collaborative. And so I think our a team led model for for for worship is is essential. But you have to remember that. Collaboration comes with some parameters that need to be honored that are helpful. So like, you know, collaboration is slower. You know, it takes it takes longer to get people scheduled and meetings to be in the same room to talk about things.

 

But if you really want it to be a collaborative effort and not just kind of a unilateral decision maker, just kind of charging the ball down the field and leaving everybody in the dust, everyone has to agree from the senior leader, the worship leader, anyone else who's involved. Everyone has to agree that our collaborative time is important. And when we work together, we're working together and everybody around the table. I'm not one of these who believes that all ideas are good ideas. I think some ideas are not great ideas, but everybody should feel the freedom to talk about their idea and to not get there, you know, really to hold holding loosely to your idea. I learned about this in in in co-writing songs like, you know you dare to be terrible, but holding back and or just isolating and thinking and imagining things kind of in your own little vacuum is never more valuable than just throwing it out there on the table, even if it's even if it sounds like a dumb idea when it's coming out of your mouth, you wish you could take it back immediately. Opening up dialog. And so everybody around the table has a has permission to say, Hey, this is an idea. What if we did this? And everybody honors that time that I said, I don't think you have to be best friends with everybody that you work with. I do think you if you want to be on a collaborative team, you have to honor the people that you've invited to be on that team and respect the process of collaboration. It is an exchange of ideas, and the exchange of ideas is what makes things great, and that takes real humility on both parts to it.

 

It takes humility to submit your ideas, and then it takes it humility to admit that you've probably maybe heard an idea that was better than the one you wanted. You know what I mean? It's it's the exchange of ideas in the in the context of Christian humility. And just considering somebody else might have a better idea. So if I were the you don't have a lead pastor your church. But if I were the lead pastor, did most of the preaching and you did most of the worship leading, what would are what would look like during the week? Does there need to be a lot of contact? Do we need to go play miniature golf together? I mean, one at a very personal level. Yeah. What is it like? I think it would be helpful if we were friends, you know, or helpful if we liked each other, helpful if we respected each other and not not necessary for us to be like the tightest of chums in the world. But senior pastors are busy. They've got a and congregational care and the dimensions that come with like getting ready to preach their time consuming the same for a worship pastor. You know you get you're preparing to lead to lead musical worship for the congregation. Those things keep us all busy. I think what would a would a good week would look like is if you and I both agree to say. There are very few things that will cut in on our collaborative time. You know, if there's a terrible tragedy or if there's a family crisis or something like that. But like, if you build this the system and the strategy to say this, how we're going to communicate during this time. And it is boy, it is nobody gets in this time, you know, and very few things.

 

I think I've seen, you know, our church guys, um, you know, Wednesday is is the meeting that we get together and talk through the service and nobody misses Wednesday you know and if somebody does miss Wednesday it's not because like there was golf or lunch or something like that. If you missed Wednesday's because something bad happened and and and we're going to pray for you on Wednesday because it's it's very rare that you miss what it is is everybody involved the collaborative process the worship pastor and the senior pastor have have made the agreement to say this is worth working on together. We don't have to be best buddies, but we're going to act like best buddies by keeping by keeping that time. And we sit down. And what I've found is that the accumulation of that time over time, the consistency, it has a way of building a natural rapport and relationship, and you do become better friends over time. But you got to say on the front side, if we're going to commit to collaboration and working together, then we're going to build our schedule so that it gets done. Well, let me ask you about your Wednesday meetings, because this whole issue of critiquing is a is a difficult issue. Yeah. Song leaders or I. I need to find a better term, don't I. But we're sort of leaders Yeah often are kind of a feeler Yeah. And are going to be a little more sensitive to critiques and things like that. And how do you go about the critiquing process or do you can a can of can a preacher critique the singer or vice versa? Yeah. How does that work? Well, it's it's always no one no one no one signs up to be critiqued.

 

You know, no one no one loves that, you know. And so it's always a delicate situation, I think. I think all of us could get better at offering critique and also get better at receiving critique. Mm hmm. One of the one of the things I think, though, it's like it's not a problem to solve. How do you get better at, you know, critiquing people? That problem will never be solved. It's never going to be easy. Oh, I love I love I love receiving critique. I love offering critique. But it's a tension to manage. And we especially Christians, we're very, very nice people. We are very nice. And we we we don't all you know, we don't offer critique, you know, as honestly, as truthfully and as direct as it could be. You you speak the truth in a in a loving way. You know, if I if I if I critique you and you and I both understand that we have the trust equity between us, that if I'm saying something to you, I'm saying it to you because I want to see you flourish versus saying something to you because I want to hurt you or cut you in some way. Or or if you said something to me in the context of trust equity, where I know the things that you've said to me, you have a track record of saying as many encouraging things to me or as you do critiques when the critique comes in the context of our relationship. I know you're saying it to me because you want me to flourish, not because you want to get me or something like that. Not because you, you know, want to fire me or, you know, so critique in that in that healthy dialog, you know, talk, talking about difficult things.

 

We'll never, you know, we'll never be, you know, nobody's ever going to be an expert at that kind of thing. But I think under with an under a foundation, underneath a relationship, this is, you know, you're not out to get me. I'm not out to get you. I hear your critique differently in my ear than if I don't know. I don't know for real what you think about me, you know? And then you say, I just didn't think your singing was very good. You know, I think I might take a value hit in the absence of. Actually. No, I know, I know. Bill's for me, he's. He's. He's established that with me already. He wants me to flourish. And if he's saying something that sounds critical, it may still be hard for me to hear. But, I mean, if I'm being a mature human, I should run it through that lens. Mm hmm. One of the dangers I've seen in churches is the tendency for the worship leader to kind of feel like the first. I think he said 80 minutes or four songs, whatever comes first is yours, and then the rest belongs to the other guy. And do you have any suggestions on on how to blend those two things together? Yeah, Well, I think what we're talking about with the collaborative process in each of us acknowledging that, you know. What I what I would offer on a Sunday morning. What you would offer? Um, it's, um. It's kind of all. Yeah. Part of the corporate expression in me like we worship in song. Then, you know, preaching informs. That's a revelation. Mm hmm. And. And then you want to respond again. Yeah. You know, it's. It's response and revelation and response, and it's.

 

And it's back and forth, but. But they don't exist independently. Mm hmm. They. They are connected, you know, inseparable in. In truth, you know. Mm hmm. We can get in silos and build up our own kingdoms and in our own minds, but that's really hard to make anything fruitful out of that. So I think it's an admission that, you know, both of both of them have equal, equal importance. You know, I mean, you're a priest. I'm a priest. Yes, we are. You know. You know, we're able to to do the thing and have and have equal value, different gifting, different perspectives. But that's what makes it good. Except for I will make the point that there will be no preaching in heaven. There will be worship. I was preaching is worship. And. And singing is teaching. So. Yeah. Yeah. The sometimes where I feel a separation in the two halves of the service is when the worship leader is speaking between songs. And it sometimes it feels like in some churches I've been in that it's almost like a mini sermon. Mm hmm. And it has zero connection with what's going to be said the second and a half. When you're preparing on speaking and introducing songs or. Yeah. Or what you're doing. Do you try to tie them into what you know is going, or is this going to be said? Or do you just more reflect on the songs? Yeah. No, no. I always you know, when we have our meeting, when we plan out how the service is going to look, it's always the worship leader and the pastor who's preaching or teaching that we can, you know, we're together. And so, you know, that's the ideal scenario. So he's able to say, this is where I'm going, this is where I'm heading, even to this is the illustration.

 

And for our church, we preach through a book of the Bible. So, you know, months from now, I'll know that on this weekend we're doing this passage of Scripture, which that alone is a very good, like head Start on like, well, this is probably at least the neighborhood of things that we'll be talking about. But we always I like I like to work to make things feel like they're cohesive and thought out. The the the connectedness of a worship service, I think, enhances people's ability to engage in it. So if I'm talking off in left field over here and he's preaching about something else, how how you know, that doesn't. Does that seem like it would serve our people as as well as like if you know, if I read the scripture that he was going to going to preach about, you know, we're connecting things, if that scripture had an insight, you know, in my own heart that was complimentary to something that we'd already talked about. So I think, you know, I think we do a lot of oversharing as worship leaders. We we you know, we you know, we we like to we like to hear ourselves talk. And so I think it would be good to to be a little more poignant with our words instead of just. Mm hmm. It's funny that I'm saying let's be poignant with our words and I'm talking like nonstop for 5 minutes. And remember, in Gary, Kurt's class on difficult training, on worship with a three hour and then a full 20 hour class on worship. And Gary's fundamental understanding of worship is that it's a cycle of revelation and response. Yeah, Isaiah six kind of stuff where there's there's a revelation of God, and that can be in the words of the song, or it could be in the response of reading, or it could be in the sermon.

 

And when I was pastoring, I was always looking for ways for the people to respond so that it actually was this cycle. And so one thing we tried was we moved the sermon much earlier in the service so that the people could sing afterwards. Yeah, as a way to respond. I love that. And I was going to ask you what you thought about basically, how do you how do you get that cycle going in a church? Well, I, I think you're already solving the problem. I wonder sometimes if our kind of forms that we've fallen into, just like the music is first, the preaching in second, and then you go home. I wonder if that can be reimagined a little bit like you've described, because every every chance that I receive as a believer. Mm hmm. To respond to the word preached or to respond to, you know, there's something that's been read from the scriptures, it's always more enriching, you know, to me, just as a Christian worshiper, when I get the opportunity to hear the word and then respond in faith. And I wish we had more freedom and flexibility in our worship architecture to to build things like that. I love it. I asked I asked the guys who teach here on the weekends like, Hey, can we build it this weekend so that the preaching is is in the middle and you know, it's central and we have a chance to respond. So I think there's a there's a culture in church where, you know, some some some churches where, you know, people are late all the time now. Yeah. Bugs me. So you missed it. So you missed the break. You missed the first 10 minutes of service. And then and then so the guy who's teaching most as well, I don't want the room to be half empty, so let's, let's push it back a little bit.

 

But I think it's the nature of of, you know, kind of how people experience church in the in the local context. Now, it's important. It matters to be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's a little off topic, but yeah, we had real problems of that earlier and I had a worship pastor once who he called the first song a throwaway song. Yeah. Because, you know, only half the church was there and the other half was out in the parking lot and the singing is that, Oh, hey, we're starting. I felt that and try to do that. But what he tried to do was he would build a progression through almost a liturgy, through the song. So that one naturally led to the next. Sure. Either it was a song, a confession, and then a song of forgiveness and a song of joy, of someone who's been forgiven. And yeah, it's something that was very good. And but the song after the sermon was always the hardest one because he was looking for a song that actually would give voice to the people to agree with the truth of the sermon. Do you do that kind of thing or try to do it if if there's a there's a song that, you know, meets, you know, at that perfect you know, in sometimes there hasn't been. So we try to write one. Yeah you know what you know we preaching about you know how how would you want people to respond you know and if it doesn't exist, we try to write one. And, you know, I don't think someone has to be a, you know, just some kind of mind blowing songwriter to be able to do that and be effective with it. Because writing for your local context in in in response to what you know, your local pastor is preached about, I mean, you might only sing it once, but it could have tremendous impact on folks that I mean, I think it adds to the you know, that collaboration that's a gift that that maybe a teaching pastor might not have, but it's also a gift that could really add dimension and enhance what he's already done.

 

So that's it's almost telling me once that if you statistically if you have the offering after the sermon, you get more money. Oh yeah. Well that's what he said and, but I didn't ever want to do it for that reason. But again, it was a way to respond. Yeah. The revelation and response. Yeah. So it's interesting. Yeah. Couple more questions. Okay. Drones. Drones. Some people love them, some people hate them. And it's we this issue of drummers that couldn't control their volume. And I didn't like the. Esthetics of them being in a plexiglass cage. Yeah, sure. But the drummers don't like electronic drums for the most part. So my question is how do you balance the musical desires and the growth trajectory of the band members and what you're trying to do on Sunday morning? Yeah, there is a lot to talk about in this. I think one important thing to remind everybody about drums and audio. Like, if you're going to use a sound system with and with drums, that is the most difficult thing to manage from an audio perspective because it gets into everything. It gets in all the other mikes, the sound of the drums, the room acoustics have something to do with it. So a lot of times if you have a volunteer musician playing the drums and a volunteer sound person and they're just serving on the weekends and given their best, it's going to be very hard because some of the hardest things to make and control sound, even for audio professionals, are drums. So I wish I let everybody off the hook to say you might not like the drums, but it's because they are hard to take a little break. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so for the for the audio guy, it's an education process and for the drummer.

 

Um. If you are as an audio guy or pastor worships in the church, say, you know, I need you to play. I need to adjust your playing for the dynamics and the acoustics of this room or for the limitations of our sound system or for whatever reason, as a drummer, as a doer, a person who's stewarding a gift I need to be and to be able to at least pivot enough to get going in that direction. And I think, you know, there's a funny joke about drummers. You know, they have a you know, they have their own kind of way of being, and the drummers are always arrogant. But that's what you get when you let a person call their little stool a throne. Yeah. So but like everybody in the band, you know, top down can't can be served by being reminded this this is a team effort for one objective. And we're trying to help people sing if we can. And I'm glad you like to play the drums, but when you're playing them here, we need to make sure you play them in a way that helps people sing, you know? And I love drums. I think drums are awesome. Good drum sound is like, that's music to my ears. Um, I think it's important to remember they're hard to control. Anybody can bang on a drum, but if you play the drums dynamically with great, great feel, great expression. It's uniquely hard, you know, if I'm putting together a band, the most important person in my mind, if I'm going to have drums. The most important person in the band is the drummer because he can let the thing rise and fall. He can push and pull and lead people. So drums is is not easy now for most people who have drums in their church.

 

I'm with you. I don't I don't love the way the, you know, the plastic cage looks on on the stage. Mm hmm. But even that is not a you know, it's not a a universal problem solver. It just means you have you solved one problem and created another one. Acoustic drums are harder to manage than electronic drums, so that electronic drums, although a lot of drummers don't like them, the technology's gotten a little bit better and they're usable. But if everybody kind of like takes a step back and says, Look, this is a problem, so we need to we need to help with education and experience and invite somebody in to help us. You know, there's so many people that know how to do it. It just it's a it's an easier problem to solve than we make it, though, because drums, drums can be offensive. Um, you know, just they're loud and sometimes they're connected with things, um, you know, connected with rock music or something like that. You know, The great bluegrass musician Bill Monroe said There ain't no music in a drum, so it's kind of right. That's yeah, I guess I hadn't thought about it, but you actually could bring in professional audio people, at least to set it up and to make sure the mics and the drums are proper and all that kind of stuff. You know, we lose so much ground by just failing to ask for help, you know, and and especially on something like that. I mean, if you're, you know, your computer system, it's, you know, it might be really hard to set up and you might have a problem constantly somebody asking for help. I would always ask for my for help with with my audio.

 

And especially if you're having problems with drums and drummers, um, get your drummers to ask for help. You know, there are plenty of people who know how to play in that environment and do it well. Okay, just ask for help and audio. You know, a church audio is always it's always, you know, it's too loud. I wish it was louder. You know, there is something, you know, that like getting into the business of pleasing people is a very difficult business to be in, you know, trying to make everyone happy. Yeah, this is not going to happen super, super difficult. So you know that that's that's a challenge. I don't think anybody that we're going to solve. But ask asking for help in that you know from from a professional is yeah there's no shame in that repetition. One of the things that is it again, repetitious repetition. I learned if I were singing it, I might say it a bunch of more times. But it's interesting when I watch in churches that there seems to be a correlation between how many times a chorus is repeated and dropping volume and maybe just my own sensitivities. But how do you feel about repetition of words in a chorus? Does that add to it, or does it detract from it, or does it just totally depend upon The song may depend upon the song, it may depend upon taste. You know, like like what moves this person may not move another person. Um, sometimes repetition is a literary device, so to speak, to kind of reinforce a theme which I've seen it used like that to good effect. And then it's also lazy lyrics, you know, in, in there, you know, if you're repeating something worth saying, then great.

 

But if, if it's just kind of some, you know, crazy crazy phrasing thing. Yeah. That, that's not adding a lot of meaning to the conversation or, or to the dialog. You know, for me it's, it's pretty, pretty subjective. It has it's very nuanced, has a lot to do with. But what are you asking me to repeat is is it holy, holy, holy. That's repetitive. But man, that's worth saying. Is that scriptural or is it like, you know, something else that that doesn't like have a, you know, the underpinning of scripture or it just seems like a cool phrase to say, you know, Yeah, your love is so amazing. You love it so much, you love those. Those things are true. Um, and I don't even that's not a real song. I hope I'm not picking any of song, but it has to do with context. It has to do with meaning. It has to do with, you know, Is this the best way of saying what we're saying? It could be. It could be a. Device could be a great way to reinforce a theme and obviously could be just laziness. You know, so and I hear that critique of worship songs a lot, that they're too repetitive. And I, I would tend to agree. We've really narrowed down our vocabulary. Mm hmm. As far as, like, songwriters, there's a lot more words, a lot more subjects, a lot more space, a lot more things we can explore with lyrics. So, you know, if someone says, you know, your songs are repetitive, they they may be repetitive and good, but it might not be time to say, how can I say this in a fresh way, you know, in a new way. Last question. And I don't know why it happens this way, but sometimes the worship leader and the preacher are kind of seen as two points of power.

 

Mm hmm. And the question is, do with gossip that if I don't like your music, I go to the preacher and I complain to him. Yeah, I create this unhealthy triangle and. Yeah, and vice versa. I don't know how much how widespread that is, but I've seen enough of it that it concerns me. So what would be your suggestions to a worship pastor who finds people are being negative about other people? And it could be the drummer, could be the guitar player, could be the preacher. What do you do? Yeah. I mean. Well, I don't have a lot of experience. Well, good. Thankfully. Yeah, but I have a zero tolerance. Tolerance of gossip policy. Mm hmm. If you have if you're going to say it to me, you know, like, if someone says, Hey, I need you to. I need you to say something, but. But I'm going to say something that you can't say to anybody else. And I said, Well, let me stop you right there, because I'm going to I'm going to tell my wife or whatever you're going to say. She's going to know it. And and if it's going to be about somebody else and it sounds gossipy, they're going to know it, too, because I'm going to go ahead and close that loop for us because it oh, my gosh, it's so much trouble. It's too much trouble to manage. So maybe people don't say stuff like that to me because I usually like to say. But let me stop you. Let me help you. It's happened to me a few times. And when so-and-so, you know, a person says, Hey, you know, so-and-so said this about you. I was like, Well, let's go get him and talk to him.

 

Now that's that. That's annoying and unpopular. And and I don't. I just. I don't gossip. Yeah, I don't tolerate gospel. My team. If you're going to gossip, it's not the place for you. You serve somewhere else in. And it would be awesome if you know a church staff, you know, which I'm talking about an ideal world. And I know it's imperfect and we're flawed. Um, but I'll make a deal with you. You make a deal with me that somebody gossips about you to me don't work. We have zero tolerance policy on that. You measure the waters in the hallways of your head? None can compare. No, no, you're equal. You pull out the headings, speak. Listen to this letter. None can compare. None are your equal. We lift up eyes. We look to the heavens. Heavy. With the everlasting courage of your talent. Raise our weary heart up from the darkest light into our darkness. State into with this God who rains on high come rain in its. The breadth of your love, the reach of your compassion. None can compare. No, your equal, the depth of your work more than we can fathom. None can compare. None are your equal. With everlasting Scarlet. Shut your. Raise our weary hearts from the dust. I see what I'm saying to witness God. Arrange on high maintenance. You will. Do we? Do we have a big. Apart from you, there's nothing we can do for you. We have. We live. Hill. We move here. We have. Apart from you, there's nothing we can do. Do we have big. We lift up, I will look to the. Head. Oh, yeah. Within the last. Young. Show your talent face off with your heart from the. I see what I was saying there to work with this guy who is on high maintenance with the.

 

It shows your power grades are very high several, many times. I worked hard to make it to our previous gallery, so. Campaigning in.