239:. Practices of Effective Worship/Creative Ministries – 1
· Creativity / Worship · Posted by cdenning · 3 Comments
10.29.09
Long title, I know, so my apologies.
I’ve been in a big planning/proactive mood recently, so I’ve been revisiting some old favorite books to glean some more insight and thoughts on what’s been on my mind recently. I started reading Stanley/Joiner/Jones’ “Seven Practices of Effective Ministries” again, and something occurred to me. I’ve always read this as something that a head pastor or someone who made big, path-altering decisions in the church to check out, but what about us creative/worship leader types? What if we looked at it through our lens and tried to see what it would look like to implement some of these practices to make our worship/creative ministries more effective in the practical. In the next couple of posts, I want to take a look at these different practices and try and apply it to these realms.
First up, “Clarify the Win”.
The book defines “Clarifying the Win” as “communicating to your team what is really important and what really matters”. Basically, in your ministry, what are the most important and pressing things you need to be doing? The purpose for this is summed up really well with a quote saying, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. To be able to make progress and see growth from our actions, we have to first find a way to measure what success looks like in a tangible way.
Do I know what an absolute win looks like in a worship setting? No, but we’ll get to that in a moment. I feel like pushing ourselves to define wins in these conventionally undefinable contexts will allow us to increase the impact of our ministry. When we don’t clarify the win, we force our musicians, leaders, or staff members to guess at what it is, which causes miscommunication. I feel like wins are important to establish because at the core, people (whether volunteers or staff) want to have clarity in what they are trying to accomplish and they do not want to do menial tasks. The want their actions and time to have impact.
Clarifying the win keeps everyone on the same page, which can be very difficult to do when you deal with musicians and the like that don’t usually do well with structure or constraints on vision. It also “creates the potential for positive momentum”, which can be paramount in a suffering or young ministry. “When people know what a win looks like, they are much more likely to win”, which translates into people ultimately & hopefully being lead into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
So, what does it look like to have a “win” in a worship environment? What does it looks like to have a “win” in your creative department? This is something I’ll be digging into in the future, but my first thoughts are they for a worship leader, it must be something we can measure and work at, through prayer and practice, to improve upon. For a creative ministry, I feel like a win has to have to do with whatever creative elements we use being clear in their intent, relevant to the congregation, & always pointing back to the cross and Jesus.
So now I ask you guys:
What does a “win” look like for a worship ministry?
What does a “win” look like for a creative ministry?
One.Love
cd
liz
“The purpose for this is summed up really well with a quote saying, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. ”
this is my question about applying BUSINESS principles to BODY life: do we really want to ‘manage’ worship? and how do you ‘measure’ worship, or ‘successful worship’?
I have trouble placing the phrase an ‘absolute win in a worship setting’ into a biblical context . . .
cdenning
When I use the term “manage” or “measure”, I’m talking about the practice of said worship. If one were to try to lead people in worship haphazard way without preparing at all, he would be looked at as a bad steward of his position and influence within the body. I feel like the organization and preparation of the worship deserves to be managed and measured in a way that results in excellence that honors God and others.
Can God be honored outside of excellence? Sure, but I feel like failing to seek to do your best in whatever you do, for the glory of God, is to be irresponsible and wasteful to whatever responsibilities God has placed with you. I feel that in order to pursue excellence in leading worship, you must first seek God and then learn to manage and measure your progress, among other things.
Also, I used the term “absolute win” to poke fun at the idea that there is one golden way to lead worship and that someone may claim to “understand” it, not to insinuate that there is an absolute win within any context of worship. I’m glad you have concerns with this, because I’m a big planner and programmer and I tend to not see things as others might. It helps to hear from others much wiser than I.
cd
Duane
Good post Chris…
I think the better question…
How do we manage what is impossible to quantify?
And I think that you are right in that we break out those things that are quantifiable and perfect them and we leave the rest up God.
I think the hard balance here is making sure that we don’t raise that which is quantifiable (ie. number of wrong notes, number of hours rehearsing, number of people saying “the music was awesome”) to an inappropriate level. Because, though it is definitely important, it isn’t in the end why we are there.
As Mike says all the time “The one thing that God wants from us is the one thing we can hide from everyone.” A win happens when everyone leading is doing so out of the right motive and intention…which in the end can only known by God.
So for me the real win is being able to TRUST that those leading with you are there for the right reasons…
So as far as managing a team … I guess the goal should be building trust within the team?