Forgive me faithful readers, but I definitely was consumed the months of November and December with the standard work of the Music Minister…Christmas, and one big ministry trip we do every year.  I hope your productions, concerts, meetings, or whatever you planned were successful not just from the aspect of music, but that you saw fruit in souls saved, as that remember is always our goal.

I am picking up our series of qualities with where we left off, which is Diversity of Music in our ministries.  This is such an issue in the church world today I feel.  Ezekiel 1 talks about having multiple faces as we discussed in our last post.  Paul said, in 1 Cor 9:23, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”  NIV

Now, I realize that there is a place for making a stand and saying, “This is what we are!” as a church regarding music.  That, however, is easier for the church that is starting out in this current time…i.e. we are going to be a church that is current with our music.  That could be a ‘rock’ type worship, or a ‘Comporary’ type worship, or a ‘Southern Gospel’ type worship, or whatever is the popular stream where your church and culture is.  It certainly is easier to specialize that to try to do everything well.  Problems arise however with established ministries trying to make a turn to stay relevant without alienating older members.  This is so difficult, and has caused problems in even great and established ministries.  Unfortunately, it is easy to become culturally irrelevant very quickly.

In our ministry over 25 years we have had to morph as you must.  Although this is very hard, it is necessary as even God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, also is ‘new every morning’.  He is constant, yet ever changing.  The implementation of this, however, is extremely difficult, as we all get comfortable with what we are.

Early in our ministry, we were pretty much a big choir ministry like our parent church The Brooklyn Tabernacle.  My wife and I were in the choir there, traveled with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers, and drank in all that experience and ministry.  This style worked for us for many years.  We always tried to be as diverse as possible, as our urban culture demanded it, but we were primarily a choir ministry.

After a difficult journey at times, particularly in the last five years, we have had to branch out  even farther from my own personal comfort zone to stay relevant and to be as diverse as possible.  I have been influenced heavily by my Pastor, by our Youth Ministry, by younger people, by music changing around us, by our musicians (particularly the younger ones), and even by the talent we had or didn’t have (you must always play to your strengths and stay away from weaknesses).  In this process through no credit of my own, I believe we have come very close to being a reflection musically of our congregation, not just ethnically, but musically diverse.

All this to say, I believe diversity of repetoire is important.  You must find your own way with the heaviest dose of style being whatever is popular in your area.   We’re in New York City, so what works for you in Kentucky or Tennessee (where I’m from) will not work for me here. 

The same way you might get bored with your meal if it always was pasta, I wonder if we hinder excitement a little by not being at least a little adventurous with our styles.  God is a God of diversity, and if we go back to our analogy in Part I, you can catch more fish with some variety of bait.  Granted, you must use the bait that catches the fish where’s your fishing, but there is nothing wrong with trying a different kind every once in a while!  You might start catching a different kind of fish!  Perhaps that would need to be in a separate meeting, just for youth, or twenty-somethings, but it’s something I hope you might pray over and bring to your Pastor or Music Minister.  It could also give a whole new group of talented people an opportunity to minister.

In our church we have the Christ Tabernacle Choir, a Spanish Choir, a Youth Choir, and a Contemporary Worship Team, all to target a certain audience.  Paul did it to win as many as he could.  Jesus ministered to Nicodemus very differently than he did the woman at the well.  I’m sure as you pray God will show you new ways to reach those in the vineyard he has placed you. 

Next time, we’ll move on to the second big quality found in Ezekiel 1, Unity.  Keep those comments coming, and if this is a blessing to you, share this blog with your music minister friends, and encourage them to subscribe to our RSS feed.  Just click on the orange icon on the main page.  I will be far more regular now that the holiday’s are over.

Also, check out our new recording ‘Change The Atmosphere’ available on this site.

 I have never completely understood the passage in Ezekiel 1 that describes the worship activity in heaven, but at least there is one group of familiar players in the passage. There are worship leaders (the living creatures, what an analogy for us!). They could be Choir Directors, Music ministers, Ministers of the Arts, Music Pastors, or what ever title your particular church or domination uses.

I don’t understand all the activity in this chapter, but the behavior of these ‘Worship Leaders’ has always challenged me, as we can learn from how they do what they do around the throne. There are four qualities that we can glean from the passage, and then from there go to how to cultivate those qualities in our ministry.

The first quality of a great music ministry is DIVERSITY. The living creatures had four faces…

Ezek 1:10-11
Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.

You can’t just have one approach and be effective. Jesus calls us to be fishers of men. If you only want to catch one kind of fish, then use just one kind of bait. However, if we want to catch a lot of fish, we have to be varied in our approach, depending on the setting.

First we have to be diverse in the MINISTERS. We have a choir, but even if you have a worship team, this point applies. There is a story in the Old Testament in Genesis 30 that our Pastor has taught from for years. Jacob in the passage makes a deal with his uncle Laban to keep all the striped and speckled sheep that were born. He then creates streaked, speckled, and spotted branches (by peeling away the bark) that he places where the sheep came to drink. These sheep then had offspring that were streaked, speckled, and spotted. The point…WHAT YOUR CHURCH SEES FROM THE PLATFORM IS WHAT IT WILL BECOME!

Now, some ministries only want to be one way…in New York, there are many churches that only want one type of people, or one age of people, or one socio-ethnic stata of people. However, this is very much unlike Jesus, who loved the WHOLE world! In Queens, we have over 140 languages spoken, and it to my knowlege is the most diverse are in the United States, and only topped in the world by London and Toronto. We would not be very effective if we only were going for one type of person.

So, we need to be varied in the people we have in the ministry…we need old, young, varied races, all different, so everyone will see that who comes and be able to identify. This also means as the leader, you’ve got to be able to draw a varied group. In your area, this variance could just be age, or it could just be income level, depending, but it just can’t be everyone the same. It can be, but you will be cheating yourself out of a greater blessing.

Next time we’ll talk about a second area of diversity…the MUSIC.

Pastor Steven Carey
Music Director
Christ Tabernacle Choir

I’m so excited about our new Christ Tabernacle Choir Website!  Here you will be able now to not only follow the choir online and buy our products, but we are planning to add many exciting things in the coming months.  We will have available not only our current new release Change The Atmosphere, but will also have tools and materials for purchase and download from the project for Music Ministers and Worship Leaders to help you perform the music in your church.  We will also have materials available from our past projects, as well as sign-up for our emails which will have devotional thoughts, testimonies, and other communication to bless you in your ministry.

You can also follow us on Twitter, post to our Facebook wall, and subscribe to our RSS feed which will soon include a podcast feature with messages from Pastor Steven Carey and other of our ministry friends.   A webinar series with Pastor Carey for Music Ministers and Worship Leaders will launch in 2011.

So join our email list, sit back, relax and enjoy the new Christ Tabernacle website!

Calvin Hunt was a beloved member and featured soloist of the Christ Tabernacle Choir for over 20 years. He passed away last December 26th at the age of 52. We honor his memory with a bonus track you can download for free from the below link.

Calvin had over 20 years of ministry with the Christ Tabernacle Choir, Christ Tabernacle Singers, Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and Singers, and released 4 Solo Recordings and 2 DVD’s during his ministry. He traveled the country and the world testifying to God’s power in his deliverance from crack cocaine. We hope you are blessed by this rendition of a song Calvin sang for years at Christ Tabernacle, “It’ll Be Worth It All” sung by his daughter Mia, along with a clip of Calvin’s Testmony and a tribute by Pastor’s Michael Durso and Steven Carey.

Download Calvin Remembrance Track