Small Church/Big Worship

Most leaders (volunteer or paid) find it easy to think about what they want to do and have and be after their ministry or organization grows. A preferred future is fun to think about. The current reality, especially for those in small churches, well, not so much. Here was reality at my first church:

• My annual worship budget: less than my current Wii bowling average.
• My band: Me. And occasionally Lori, a pianist who couldn’t read chord charts or leadsheets. So when she played, we had to do everything from the Maranatha! Green Book.*
• My sound system: Two words, squished together–RadioShack.
• My video tech: an 80-year old gentleman who sat 3 feet to my left and moved the transparency up and down (quite rapidly) on the overhead projector.

We can dream and scheme and spreadsheet our preferred future all we want. But no plan for future growth will succeed without faith-infused realism. Here’s what faith infused realism is NOT:

[Read the rest at WorshipMinistry.com]

Check out the Small Church/Big Worship Seminar in the Columbus, OH area this fall:

I wanted to let you know about a project that I’m working on. We’re doing a full out redesign of www.WorshipTeamCoach.com and WorshipGuitarWorkshop.com. The two sites will be integrated and content will be easier to access and find. I’ll also be adding more to the Small Church/Big Worship resources.

In order to keep overhead low and a huge majority of my resources free, I’m crowdfunding the redesign through RocketHub. If you’re unfamiliar with crowdfunding, it’s not charity and it’s not an investment like venture capital. It’s for friends/fans/followers–people who appreciate the work someone is offering and chooses to help fund them through a big or small gift. The cool thing is, each contribution gets a reward. In our case, we’re giving away everything from a 10-week worship team devotional ebook to a full weekend of workshops at your church or 16 hours worth of coaching.

The $20 gift range is a great deal–it’s my Chord Voicings for the Advancing Guitarist DVD. It’s a 2-disc, 2 hours/40 minutes of training that helps you play chords all around the fretboard. The great thing is that $20 reward is almost $15 cheaper than than the regular price on the website.

You can check out all the rewards at RocketHub. You can also watch a video to learn more about the project. If you have any questions about RocketHub, about the rewards or the redesign project, feel free to drop me an email at jon@worshipteamcoach.com.

Thanks for stopping by…

~jon

I’ve just started writing for WorshipMinistry.com. The first series is Quit Practicing at Rehearsals. It’s not necessarily a “Small Church/Big Worship” article, but the whole preparation issue kicks us in the teeth no matter what size church we are. Hope you enjoy it.

A burrito as big as your head for $6 or a three pound box of fast-mex food for $5?

The cheapskate in me usually hits Taco Bell. Couple items off the value menu and a water, and I’m full for $2.50. And I do enjoy Taco Bell – probably a little too much. But Chipotle…mmm…it’s like Christmas morning when I lean over that stainless steel counter picking out which salsa(s) will top my burrito bowl. And should I splurge for guacamole? Yes, I should.

A secondary draw for me to choose Chipotle over Taco Bell is the simplicity. Here’s Taco Bell’s indoor menu board:

Here’s what you see at the drive-through:

Ever gotten in line behind the uninitiated at Taco Bell? They stare. And they stare. And they’re just about to order, but, oh wait, what’s a Chalupa? Mafia wise guys get made in less time then these people’s burrito decisions. But honestly, who could blame them? My college catalog had less options to choose from.

Now here’s the Chipotle menu:

I marvel at the genius of Chipotle every time I go there. You pick one of 5 meats (or a non-meat…). You pick one of 5 ways to contain that meat. You choose a few toppings, add an extra or two. Done.

There’s a place for a myriad of choices. I like having lots of options. And Chipotle’s menu allows for a thousand options, but within the confines of a few key selections. It’s about giving people something great with less. And that ‘less’ is the key: they do those few things very, very well.

The music and worship ministries I led in the past resembled Taco Bell’s menu…[read more]

Like, now.

If there’s no one that can, or really wants to take leadership in the area of worship, we appoint a committee.

If there is someone in charge, but we don’t quite trust him or her to lead, we assist them by appointing a committee.

We might call it an “advisory panel” or a “planning team”, but it’s just a turd-polished committee.

OK, I’m sounding a little harsh. Committees are usually well-intentioned. Most of the people appointed to those teams care deeply about the focus of the committee (or they just can’t say no).

But committees give people power with no responsibility… [Read more]

I believe the senior pastor of any church is the CLW: Chief Lead Worshiper. He sets the tone for corporate worship. For the solo pastor of a smaller church, he may be actually leading the worship, or at least doing most of the behind-the-scenes work for Sunday.

Here are ten ideas to reshape your worship experience.

1. Plan your segues.
Let’s face it, smaller churches are known for poorly planned, start-and-stop, no-flow services. Small churches can produce a “wow-factor” for guests (and regular attendees) by simply creating intentional transitions from one service element to the next. (see blog series for more on segues)

2. Create a musical bed for scripture and prayer.
Underscore any scripture reading or longer prayer with light guitar or piano, or even soft recorded music. If using a recorded song, instruct the sound tech to avoid the abrupt on/off. Those little plastic “slider-thingys” are called “faders” for a reason.

[Finish reading the other eight ways...]

That’s what a college classmate of mine heard when he did a ministry internship in a very large church. No, he didn’t just hear the sentiment. He heard the actual words: “Small churches are small because they’re doing something wrong.”

In some cases, this is absolutely true. But does that mean larger churches are large because they’re doing something right? Sure, sometimes. In the case of the larger church mentioned above, the senior pastor left (with his lover) after a long term affair was exposed. So, maybe not always.

The issue isn’t this over-generalization that small church = dysfunction and big church = health. We can all point to shining (and not-so-shining) examples to refute that.

The issue is that we believe it.

[read more]

In the last SC/BW post, we talked about numbers. Numbers matter. We can’t scale NorthWillowBackHillPoint down to 100 people. These large churches have more people on staff than most churches have, well, people.

But there are a few numbers that are common denominators, and no size church gets to claim sole ownership.

The first number is ONE. One God who sent his one (and only) Son. One who died for all. One who was resurrected and ascended, who sent His Spirit to make us one as He and the Father are One. (John 17:22)

The other number is two. Or three. Gathered in Jesus’ name, that is. He promises he’ll be there among us. The trick is the preceding verse – if two or three agree.

Let’s start by agreeing on a few things
1. We can’t out-megachurch a megachurch.
Kmart couldn’t out-Walmart Walmart. It almost died trying. Target didn’t try. Target found their own a niche as a trendy discount store with insanely effective marketing. So be unique. You have an amazing mix of talents and gifts in your church that have positioned you to make a unique impact for the Kingdom. We have to quit trying to accomplish another church’s mission. Let’s tap into the One and figure out what us 2 or 3 (or 120) should be asking for in His name.

[read more]

Small Church/Big Worship – Numbers Matter…

No one walks into a church of 100 and expects Hillsong United. But there is a slight disappointment when “Mighty to Save” isn’t that, well, mighty.

Numbers matter. I know I’m not supposed to say that. But when it comes to corporate worship, they do. The number of singers. The number of instruments. The number of hours put into planning and preparing the worship gathering. The number of dollars spent on the worship space – lighting, sound, décor. And the number of people that fill that space – there’s a difference between a group of 60 and 150. Between 225 and 700. Between a 1000 and 20,000.

But it’s more than quantifiable. There’s also a qualitative difference. At the extreme, think Broadway versus a community theater–both performing the same musical.

I was hired to play guitar in the pit orchestra for a local theater’s summer production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Turns out, the director had some connections – he scored a Dreamcoat actually worn by Donny Osmond during several of his 2000 performances in the Toronto production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. We had the same coat. We had the same script. We had the same music. We even had the wireless mics, the make-up, the lighting, the union musicians (except me…long, boring story), the velvet curtains and the glowing marquee. But Broadway (or the Canadian equivalent) still did it better. Broadway will always do it better. Better sets. Better actors. Better direction. Better lighting. Better sound. Better orchestra. Better wardrobe. All of it. Hands-down better.

However.

Only an idiot would sit in the Renaissance Theater in Mansfield, Ohio and say, “Donny Osmond was a way better Joseph.”

We don’t judge a group of volunteer actors and underpaid community theater staff by the same criteria as a Broadway production. But in Western Christianity, we have people holding churches of 50 and 150 up to the standards of a church of 500, 2000, and even 20,000. Wait, let me make a correction: we are the people holding churches to those unrealistic standards. We don’t mean to. It’s just human nature to compare apples to apples – church to church. But the comparison is more like apples to orchards.

And that comparison is strangling the worship in smaller churches.

Smaller church worship ministries can’t be scale models of larger ministries. The lower attendance isn’t just a difference in quantity–there’s a completely different quality to a small church. And by quality, I don’t mean Kmart versus Macy’s. If we look at Merriam-Webster’s definitions, the Kmart versus Macy’s analogy is the 2nd entry for quality: “degree of excellence; superiority in kind.”

But the first definition of quality is: “peculiar and essential character; nature; an inherent feature.”

The smaller church has a peculiar and essential character that sets it apart from a larger church. It’s inherently different. And that’s neither bad nor good. It just is. And it just needs to be understood.

And that’s what this Small Church/Big Worship series* is about. If you’re part of a smaller church–paid or volunteer, pastor or lay-person, worship leader or team member, I want to help free you from trying to be what you can’t be (right now) and embrace who and what you are (right now). We’ll look traps and diversions that smaller churches fall prey to. We’ll explore some practical ways you can develop and thrive with what you already have, and find ways to grow more. And ultimately, I want to help you leverage your “peculiar and essential quality” to create remarkable times of worship that larger churches could only have in their Technicolor dreams.

Small churches. They’re everywhere. Check out this excerpt from a great post I just read:

Imagine you are looking down a very, very long street, and all the churches of U.S. are lined up along the left side of the street from smallest to largest. In behind each church are all their Sunday morning attenders.

If you counted the grand total of everyone standing behind each church and then divided this number by the total number of churches that you see on this very long street, you would come up with a “mean” or “average” size of 184. “Mean” is usually what we mean of when we think of “average”. But this number of 184 is a very misleading number.

Lets say you start walking down the street, passing the churches with 5 people on a Sunday morning, 10 people, 15 people, 20 people. You continue walking until you have passed half of all the churches in America. Half of the churches in the U.S. are now behind you, half are still in front. The “average” church that you are standing in front of is called the “median” church. You look to see how many people are lined up behind it, and you see 75 people. That is right, half the churches in the United States have less than 75 people. (Michael Bell, Guest Blogger, Internet Monk, July 13, 2009)

Bell continues to describe walking past these churches: So, you continue walking, past the churches of 80, 90, 100, 110. You walk until you have passed 90% of all the churches. You look to your left and you see 350 people lined up behind this church.

My first post-college experience playing guitar was at on a church worship team was at Church of the Open Door in the Minneapolis area. I think at the time they were running between 5000 and 6000 each weekend. I also led worship for the youth. That youth ministry alone was bigger than 75% of all churches in North America.

As much as it pained me to leave Open Door (a place of significant spiritual changes, and one really cute girl), I moved from there and entered vocational ministry in Ohio. It was at a church averaging 65 – 75 people a Sunday. I was the part-time youth and worship guy. Those poor people. I tried to make it “Church of the Mini Door” every week with just my acoustic guitar and an overhead projector. But they had tremendous grace for me. Thank you, Jesus.

It took me a long time to accept that my experience at Open Door couldn’t be duplicated. No matter how much I wanted it. Prayed for it. Fought for it. It wasn’t going to happen. Partway through my second ministry experience (again, in the quintessential small church dual-role pastor of youth and worship) I learned a phrase: “current reality.”

Current Reality: who I have to work with is who I have to work with; the amount of money in my budget is the amount of money in my budget; the church facility is the church facility. I can whine. Curse the unfairness. Pontificate on the injustices. Or I could get busy and start creating a desired future out of the building blocks of the present that are within my reach.

Up until the last 18 months, the majority of my ministry has been spent in churches under 150 people. Through this God has given me a heart for small churches and the unique challenges they face. Over the next weeks and months I’ll be adding to this “Small Church/Big Worship” theme. Please feel free to share about your “current reality” and past experiences in smaller ministries – the good and bad – I’d love to have constant input as I write these posts.

For more Small Church/Big Worship articles, see my the blog at worshipteamcoach.com.