Do you ever feel like that? You should be a beautiful, magnificent creature. But on the inside you’re hideous. I know I feel that way. And if you’re honest I’m sure you aren’t any different.

But thank God for 1 John 3:2:
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 

Or you could say:
We may look like hairless bears now. But when we see God we’ll be transformed to the magnificent bear God is and wants us to be. 

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There are tons of great magazines for churches. Why add one more?

There’s a massive migration toward creativity in our churches. And there are some great magazines and blogs out there trying to help the cause. There are great tutorial-based magazines and blogs. And there are great tech-based magazines and blogs. But there are very few platforms helping churches use those tutorials and technologies effectively.

Just because a church has great resources and skills, doesn’t mean they will use it effectively.

Sunday| Mag aims at the root of creativity. If you can strengthen the “why” of creativity, the “how” comes easily. Sunday| Magazine is a “why” sort of magazine. It’s about the philosophy of creativity in our churches.

Though there will be some practical thoughts from some very practical (and genius) contributors, there will always be a philosophy behind the practical. So no matter what your church’s size or budget, you’ll find Sunday| Magazine challenging and inspiring.

Have you subscribed yet?

What’s your creative background?
I drew in all my school books as a kid, and haven’t stopped since. I have been known to sketch letters in my sleep. I’ve done lots of visual thinking through design as a profession for 9 years and would rather be dead than stop learning. I love getting to use creative leverage in the Church to break down the walls of those who don’t know who Christ and His Church truly are. I also love ampersands.

What is the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
Complacency & laziness. Innumerable churches copy, imitate, parody and even blatantly steal ideas in an inferior way. We need to make something original. We need to stand out. We need to not look like wannabes. Think more. Design less. We need less copycats and more original ideas and strategies.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
True creativity that communicates the most important message ever that God has charged us to carry in His name. In Christ we are the hope of the world. Let’s create engaging experiences for people.

Focus on the main thing. Doing less allows you to put more emphasis on what matters. More is rarely better.

Check out his blog and enjoy this piece of art:

What’s your creative background?
My favorite toy as a child, beyond the typical G.I. Joe’s and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was a typewriter. I loved typing and writing stories, and eventually started toying around with design when my family got a personal computer. When I was 15, I had a youth pastor who taught me how to use Adobe PageMaker and eventually I began doing graphic design for my youth group. Those early experiences laid the groundwork for what I do today… design, writing, and communication for churches. I served on staff at two churches for a total of 10 years and recently transitioned away from working on a church staff team to working for churches as the co-director of the Center for Church Communication and serving with the team at Church Solutions Group.

What is the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
I believe one of the biggest breakdowns don’t occur in services but during the gap between Sundays. I believe churches can miss a tremendous opportunity to stay connected with their congregation throughout the week leveraging social media and other communication platforms.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I believe the church has the greatest message, the Gospel. Unfortunately we’ve done a poor job of communicating it contextually and creatively. I love seeing churches translating the message of the timeless, unchanging message of the Gospel in ways that reach our hyper-connected, ever changing culture. I believe we’ve never been resourced to extend and share the message of the Gospel and believe that through social media, we could literally see our faith go ‘viral’ like it did back in the days of the early church. I also believe with this opportunity comes a tremendous responsibility for how we, as church leaders, steward the resources we’ve been blessed with in this generation in the life of the Church.

Also check out his book, Outspoken.

Meet Brennan Loveless. Brennan is writing the worship album reviews for the first issue of Sunday| magazine. Check out some of his heart and look for his album reviews in the first issue of Sunday| magazine.

What’s your creative background?
I grew up in a very artistic family, and have primarily been involved in music since I was in middle school. I worked in full time ministry as a Worship/Creative Arts Pastor for the past 7 years and currently minister at New Life Christian Church in Northern Virginia.

What is the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
In my opinion, the biggest breakdown usually comes out of a lack of communication and vision of a sermon or series and also from creative arts people over promising and under delivering.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I’m passionate about seeing more creative innovation and true artistic inspiration flow from the Church into secular culture.

Meet Jason Castellente. Jason’s writing about creativity in sound in our first issue of Sunday| magazine. He’s the Production Coordinator at National Community Church in Washington, DC. Check out some of his heart and look for his story in the first issue of Sunday| magazine.

What’s your creative background?
I always loved music growing up and started playing the guitar. Then, I started teaching myself about audio and recording. As I worked toward my Bachelors of music in college, I mixed live sound daily, toured as an audio engineer, and minored in music technology. God opened doors of opportunity to learn from and shadow people who are more experienced than me. I feel like I improve in what I do more through talking with and teaching others.

What’s the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
With how advanced gear is today, volunteers can struggle with knowing all the in’s and out’s of operating the church’s gear. Sometimes, we focus too much on how to use the gear in training sessions and forget to put emphasis on the artistry and spiritual sensitivity we need. Gear training is important, but we need to find a balance.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I’m excited to see how we bridge the gap of culture, communication and technology. I believe when Jesus gave the Great Commission of going into all the earth, He meant to go where the people are and to reach them where they are. We have so many new ways for communicating the Gospel through technology. How can we best use them on Sunday mornings?

Read more from Jason on his blog:
“What we do in production is a ministry of building bridges. We build bridges between our pastors, worship leaders, the worshippers, and, ultimately, God.  That’s an incredible responsibility!”

What’s your creative background?
I grew up building anything I could nail or glue together and painting it any color I could find in my dad’s paint inventory. My entire family was involved in churches at some level; be it art, tech, music, or leadership. So even when I was young (elementary school) I was around tech, art, and music and learning its role in the Church. Fast forward a little and now it’s such a blessing to be able to help churches with lighting and projection all around the country and world.

What is the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
Control. A lot of churches don’t allow for a lot of creativity (on purpose or not) because, by definition, ‘being creative’ can be messy, unstructured, and unpredictable. In our business/growth model for churches that doesn’t work most of the time.

Plus, it takes people. It takes a creative leader with a team of do-ers to do creative things. While I know some great examples of this in a few churches, it is not the norm.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I would love to see more people being allowed to express themselves within the Church. Like I mentioned, there are some roadblocks to that happening in a lot of churches.  My dream would be to see more and more people’s gifts and talents used in each church body.

Meet Justin Wise. Justin’s writing about social media in our first issue of Sunday| magazine. He’s co-founder of Center for Church Communication and Communications Director at Monk Development. Check out some of his heart and look for his story in the first issue of Sunday| magazine.

What’s your creative background?
I grew up taking apart old appliances in my family’s basement. I had a chemistry set. I used to mix chemicals together just to see what would happen.

When I started working at a church, that same habit followed me. I would throw different elements together just to see what would happen: What would high-church communion look like with a drum circle mixed in? What about bathing the sanctuary in purple lights? How would that affect how people encountered God? Church on Thursday night? In a night club? With those people?

Experimentation, not repetition, is the mother of all mastery.

What’s the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
The biggest breakdown is lack of structure. Easily. This sounds counter-intuitive, but I believe it’s true. Many churches falsely believe that structure creates confines and confines cramp creativity. Just the opposite, in fact. The more structures you can build into your creative process, the more time you can spending ideating inside those structures. Restriction creates freedom, not the opposite.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I love to see a church that doesn’t copy the culture, but instead leads the culture in new forms of creative expression.

Read more from Justin on his blog:
“Content, not conversation, is the keystone to social media effectiveness.”

Meet Becky Ykema. Becky’s a contributing writer. Her story in the first issue of Sunday| magazine is all about teaching a worship band to play simply. Becky leads worship at Willow Creek Community Church and has written some really great songs. Check out some of her heart and look for her story in the first issue of Sunday| magazine.

What’s your creative background?
As a kid I was encouraged to sing, write, draw and paint. I began writing songs when I was 15. It started as a means to release some teenage angst and quickly grew to my favorite personal, creative expression. I studied voice for years and picked up the acoustic guitar and piano along the way. I now have the joy of using these gifts every weekend in worship.

What’s the biggest breakdown in creativity in our church services?
I think a big breakdown in creativity stems from fear.  We want so badly for every element in our weekly services to connect with everyone who comes through the door. We are also in the thick of a culture that expects to get what they want, hear what they want, and be entertained the way they want. The fear of the church channel being changed on us can stifle our creativity and cause us to make art that is safe.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I’m passionate about seeing people be radically transformed from the inside out by Jesus Christ.  That out of knowing Christ, relationships will be restored, all needs will be met, the earth’s resources will be stewarded well, and we will be peacemakers.  I believe artists in the church have tremendous influence in encouraging this life change with our songs, stages and canvases.

Read some more of Becky’s heart at her blog:
“These days I am trying to see Jesus in everyone: my family, friends, the homeless man on the side of the road, my neighbor, even the other drivers on the highway.”

Meet Stephen Brewster. Stephen’s writing our cover story for the first issue of Sunday| magazine. He’s the Creative Arts Pastor at Cross Point Community Church and invented the art of flow (I’m not sure about that last point). Check out some of his heart and look for his story, “Simplifying the Sunday Morning Story” in the first issue of Sunday| magazine.

What’s your creative background?
I have always loved creativity. As a kid, music and art were a big part of my life. As a senior in college (with 1 semester to go) I dropped out of Radio/TV Broadcasting and moved to Nashville to get into the music business. (I did go back and get my degree in pastoral ministry/leadership). I was blessed to get to break into the music business where I was exposed to doing A&R, Marketing, and artist management.

I left the music business after about 8 years and started to do creative direction for a church. A few years later I was invited to lead a marketing team at Integrity Music. I missed working in the church and when Jenni Catron (another Sunday| contributor) and Pete Wilson presented the opportunity for me to be part of the team at Cross Point, I couldn’t turn that down.

What’s the biggest breakdown in creativity in our services?
That can actually be diagnosed in 3 totally separate areas:

1. We lack creativity in story telling. We need to make sure we are doing a really good job identifying story and translating that through our elements.
2. Time constraints. Figuring out how to accomplish all the necessary elements in a service that is 60-90 minutes is difficult. It takes a lot of editing to get really great creative elements to support and tell story in a short time. Most people tend to wonder what we should add to a service when often the questions should be what can we simplify to tell the story better, support the pastor more, and create a better experience.
3. Creative excellence. The most obvious of the 3. Taking the time to create great pieces and not allowing good or less than good pieces to exist in our spaces.

What are you passionate about seeing happen in the Church?
I am passionate about the Church using creativity to help create and support life change. I believe the day will come when the church returns to its rightful position as creative epicenter of the arts.

• Stephen Brewster - creative arts pastor at cross point church
• Jason Castellente - production coordinator at national community church
• Jenni Catron - executive director at cross point church
• Josh Collesano - worship and creative direction for student min at northridge church
• Adam Fry - creative communications pastor at central community church (canada)
• David Gungor - lead singer for the brilliance
• Colin Harman - north point ministries media art director
• Blaine Hogan - creative director at willow creek community church
• Brennan Loveless - worship/creative arts pastor at new life christian church
• Jonathan Malm - editor and creator of Sunday| and churchstagedesignideas.com
• Gary Molander - founder of floodgate productions
• Josh Neuroth - business and ux designer
• Stephen Proctor - worship vj and environmental projection guru
• Tim Schraeder – co-director of center for church communication
• Camron Ware – visual worshiper and environmental projection guru
• Russ Ware - worship leader and curator
• Denny Weinman - a/v specialist at seacoast church
• Justin Wise – co-director of center for church communication
• Becky Ykema - worship leader at willow creek community church

But a church can’t afford to be distracted from its mission. Churches get easily distracted for one of three reasons:

1. They get bored with church. Either they aren’t being effective, seeing growth, or church isn’t their calling.
2. They see a need no one is meeting and decide they should meet it.
3. A highly involved congregation member plunges the church into one of these projects.

So a church opens a food pantry, a community gym, an after-school program, a missions sending branch, and international student outreach.

Nothing’s wrong with any of those programs. But when a church of 200 tries to do all those things and do church, the church usually suffers. All their energy is spent doing those other activities, so they don’t have the volunteers or emotionally energy to make the service awesome.

The most effective organizations have a laser focus. They do only what they’re called by God to do.

Time to analyze your ministry roster. Are you going above and beyond the call of God? Have you bitten off more than you should chew? Maybe it’s time to refocus.

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In fact, I was about to write a blog post about helping singles connect during the service. I was going to “solve the problem” of single people having to sit alone in church. This comes out of a love for singles and for people, but over analysis means over controlling. And it’s not our jobs to keep everything under our control.

“Organic” is an overused word in church leadership. But it’s a very good word. We need to allow room for the organic in our churches. Organic means life. Life is all about letting people solve their own problems. Let people find their own solutions. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming nothing more than a well-oiled machine. And church is not meant to be a machine.

So next time you find yourself trying to solve all your congregation’s problems, take a step back. Is this a problem that actually needs solving? Or are you trying to over-manage your church? Are you controlling the life out of your organization?

Do you struggle with church narcissism? Are you tempted to overanalyze problems at your church?

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At the moment, parking is the bane of my church’s existence. We are bursting at the seams and our lack of parking is killing us! We’re building a new space, but until that happens, we are limited on growth because our parking is overcapacity.

We’ve put out parking guards and police to help manage the traffic. But we’ve also kicked around some other ideas to help ease the pressure. Here are some ideas.

1. Hire a valet company. Give a gift to your early arrivers by giving them free valet parking. Post signs that say it’s completely free (so there’s no pressure to tip). And be sure to hire a company so they can deal with the liability of potential car dings. The costs are fairly minimal. And if you’re going valet out of necessity (instead of frivolity) it adds a cool dynamic to your parking lot.
2. Give incentives for parking far away. Though our lots are full, businesses around us have given us permission to use their lots on Sundays. Create a “frequent parkers” punch card for those willing to park in those distant lots. For every four punches you could give them some cool swag.
3. Move non-service calendar items to another time. If you have a Sunday school or small group meeting during your peak parking times, consider moving them to another day or time. This may seem like anathema to some. But if it you’re turning people away from your church because you’re out of parking, it’s worth it.

So those are the ideas. What are some ideas your church has kicked around or implemented?

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Politicians wear suits. Used car salesman wear suits. Business men wear suits. They’re all trying to sell me something. And many of them are somewhat dishonest. That’s why I’m not a fan of suits from the pulpit.

People don’t want to be “sold” their faith. They don’t want to be “convinced”. I can be convinced to buy a used car. But I know I’ll leave the car lot with buyer’s remorse. Why would I want to associate that feeling with church?

Many people believe dressing super nice is a matter of respect. Which is true. I’m not saying wear a shirt from the dumpster. But I am saying people don’t want to be intimidated or convinced into belief. They don’t want to be impressed into the kingdom. They want to be won over by a genuine experience. They want a faith that works in real life.

When was the last time you wore your Sunday best in the real world? We need to understand the group of people we’re reaching and be real.

If your church is in downtown NYC, your congregation may be used to wearing suits. But if you live in rural Kentucky…you’re alienating your congregation.

What do you think about suits in church?

• The Front-Side Eucharist – Have them come to the front. They can rip off a piece of bread and dip it in the liquid, have it fed to them, or just pick it up and take it back to their seats.
• Family Style Communion – Have the leader of the family grab the elements and serve their family. They go up front and bring it back. It’s a great option for family gatherings or services that incorporate the whole family.
• The Long-Winded Lord’s Supper – Get your staff members up front and have them serve and pray with the families. This takes a super long time…but might be a great option for small churches or New Years Eve services.
• The Armchair Communion – Pass the plates/elements down the aisles. Let them take communion at their leisure.
• The Goody Bag Eucharist – Create tiny burlap sacks of communion and give it out at the door. Let people know it’ll be used later in the service.
• The Lord’s Supper with Grapes? – This is an idea that came up and I’m not sure if it’s sacrilege. What about giving out grapes instead of juice or wine?

So those are the options I have in my head. What did I forget? Share your unique ideas in a comment below.

One of the first things God created was light. “Let there be light.” So of course there should be light in the church. But sometimes lighting designers can go a bit crazy when it comes to light shows in the service. So these are 10 things a lighting designer should never do. Enjoy!

• Use continuous motion during “Heart of Worship”. It kind of defeats the purpose of the song when the lights are strobing and movers are burning holes in people’s eyes. Match the mood of the song. Lights need to echo the atmosphere. (That goes for constantly flipping through the color wheel too.)
• Hide the “ugly band members” by not lighting them. We know you are a sort of god, but let’s not be shallow about it.
• Use XLR cables in place of DMX (apparently). There’s much debate on this topic but I don’t want to get into a massive conversation like there was on Church Stage Design Ideas.
• Only up light the speaker. Up lighting looks spooky on faces. I’m pretty sure if you’re dong that on your speaker you want to make them lo bad. That’s not your job. That’s their job if they so choose.
• Use six different colors at a time. It’s the crescendo of the song. It should be stimulation overload, right? Wrong. Ugly lights never help make a moment more exciting. (I think the only exception to this rule is gradients of colors and an intentional rainbow.)
• “Try your hand” at pyrotechnics. If you aren’t trained, don’t try it. Danger, danger!
• Let band members plug in to power designated for lights. I’m ashamed to say this. But I’ve had band members come to me asking why their gear wasn’t turning on. They plugged in to a dimmer pack. Doh!
• Try to control the lights from a Mackie. It’s a funny thing, but you can’t control a lights from a sound board. Weird, huh?
• Duct tape. Duct tape is not a substitute for safety. My friend Camron Ware has actually seen someone “secure” a truss using gaffers tape. Don’t do it! And don’t duct tape wires or lighting fixtures–unless you want a mess evoking many curses from future users of the equipment.
• Think it’s all about you. Lighting in church is not about making yourself look cool. It’s about helping lead worship. It’s about connecting the congregation with the story.

What did I miss? What are some things you think a lighting designer should never do?

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This is NOT one of the ways to deal with young volunteers.

I get scared every time a young person wants to volunteer. I’m not scared because I can’t relate to teenagers. But it’s so critical that Sunday mornings go smoothly, that I’m afraid to risk it. But youth can be a powerful part of your team.

So these are some tips for working well with the youngin’s that want to join your team.

1. Give them immediate feedback if they mess up. (Positive.) They will make mistakes. Don’t let them think you’re mad at them when they mess up. Many teens come from a background of angry parents and even angrier teachers. Let them know it’s ok to make mistakes and help them learn what they could have done differently.

2. Keep their parents in the loop. Don’t rely on them fully to schedule themselves. This is especially true for Tweens and young teens. Their parents know their schedule and how much time they want their kids to devote to your team.

3. Realize they might not need as much technology training as your older volunteers. (Don’t bore them.) Most teens don’t need to be educated on opening a program or clicking a mouse.

4. Remember they are young. They won’t understand responsibility like you or have the life skills you have…yet. So if you schedule them for a service, call to remind them the night before. I remember during summer I hardly knew what day of the week it was. Help them along and be understanding.

5. Mentor. Encourage. Give them someone to look up. Be an example.

6. Appreciate their energy. Young volunteers will have energy your other volunteers don’t. So while they might lack some of the focus, they have energy. Instead of trying to put them into a role of steadiness, work with their strengths. Give them tasks that require energy.

So those are my tips. Got anything you’ve learned from working with young volunteers? Share!

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Blue Screen of Death at the Beijing Olympics

I’ve been picking on sound engineers and worship leaders…time to pick on projection people. These are things I’ve either witnessed or done (I won’t tell you which). Enjoy and be sure to post your own in a comment if I missed anything:

• Use Comic Sans, Brush Script or Papyrus fonts. Those fonts need to die already. Seriously.
• Project their critiques of the sermon. It can be tempting if a guest speaker is preaching heresy…but please don’t do it.
• Cut and paste worship lyrics from a website without double checking the spelling. People that type lyrics for lyric websites rarely spellcheck their work or even consult the CD jacket to ensure that the lyrics are correct.
• Insert clipart into the worship lyrics. Clipart kills worship. It’s in the Bible. Look it up.
• Let the screensaver come on. Your projection screen will flicker. People will notice.
• Position the projector low enough for heads or hands to get in the way. I don’t care how careful you are…the tallest person in the room will always be the one who gets in the way of the projector. Tall people crave attention…it’s psychology.
• Not read along. It gets very tempting to run on autopilot while you’re running the slides. But please read along with the worship lyrics and scripture passages. The congregation is reading along. They can tell when you aren’t.
• Clean the keyboard during the service. This happened Sunday with one of my projection people. I nearly had a heart attack.
• Click frantically if the slide doesn’t show up immediately. The more you click, the slower the computer will process your click.
• Accidentally click the “Live” button and push the webcam onto the screen. Ok…I will admit. I did this one…Very embarrassing.

• turn on the amps before turning on the sound board. @shannonvercher
• run an electric guitar through a di box. @zakkshane
• forget to change batteries in the wireless. @josh_kaiser
• they should never mess around with the lighting or try and mix from their iPad without knowing how the app works… @jonowilliams
• ignore problems and be a jerk @BrianMurray1
• play music during the altar call. @gr3gh
• Always play with the buttons/knobs/levels/etc. If its not feeding back, no need to constantly be playing with stuff! @StevenRinaldi
• a sound engineer should never go without a written input list! @shevy_j
• ride the faders!!!!! @alxwarmstrong
• Sing in the band he’s mixing for from front of house. Seen it done before. His vocal was too loud in the mix…big surprise. @derekstudt
• should never cause the speaker or singer stress their voice b/c of a bad mix/eq @tjthescott
• Tell everyone how good they are then fail to show it. @joshcollesano
• mix drunk. Can’t hear them lows @CreativeDamages
• Set it and forget it @sharonthebyrd
• become complacent @mattscroft
• let the lights go into the red. It’s beyond what the law allows. @tmpendergrass
• Focus on EQ when he hasn’t even line checked all the channels. Get everyone up and running before you fine tune the mix! @Allen_Keller
• fart into the talkback mic. @riffinator
• run on stage during a service lol @GregReade
• mute the pastor due to personal issues with his message. @bradfordberry

[Image Credit]

Guys! Post your Movember masterpiece in a comment below. What style does it fall into?

Girls! Please don’t post a pic of your mustache… But please do post a pic of your spouse’s, boyfriend’s, or even pastor’s mustache.

1. Overmix. Give the band some dynamic space. If you’re always riding the faders you’re limiting the band. Most of the time, a good mix at the beginning of the song is a good mix 2 minutes into the song. Let the song breathe on its own. Don’t overmix it.
2. Think a good mix is subjective. I’ve heard so many sound guys say a good mix is subjective. It’s really not. A good mix is the mix your boss wants you to have. If the worship leader/pastor wants it to sound a certain way…that is a good mix.
3. Ignore the band. Okay…so you’ve have a bad day. Or the band doesn’t even realize what they need in their monitor mix. A good sound engineer will never ignore the band…regardless. We’re here to help them sound good. That means we need to engage with them and help them out.
4. Ask for more cowbell. It was funny a few years ago…but enough with the “more cowbell” jokes.
5. Add special effects to the speaker. Unless you preplanned this with the speaker, don’t add echo, pitch tune, autotune, or reverb to their voice. It will make them feel stupid and draw attention to you. Your job is to be invisible.
6. Coldcut. I’m 99% sure this isn’t an industry term. But I really hate the mute button. If you forget to unmute an instrument, bring the fader down, unmute, and bring it up. A choppy unmute always sounds like an accident. Same goes for a choppy mute job.
7. Remove creativity from the mix. It can be easy to see yourself as a “tech”. Techies don’t have the responsibility to be creative. But a good sound engineer is an artist. He’s involved in science and art.
8. Mess with the band during service. I’ll admit…I occasionally count in a 5/4 rhythm into the drummer’s headset just to throw him off–during practice! But don’t pull that stuff during a service.
9. Skip rehearsal. You are a part of the band! Be there! Find out what their needs are and how you can make it all happen. Build relationships with the band during this time. Good relationships means respect and an easier job for you.
10. Think it’s all about you. It’s not all about you. Even though you feel like a god with the knobs and faders underneath your fingers…it’s not about you. It’s about connecting people to God through the music and the message. Remove your ego and preference…and bring glory to God.

Did I miss anything on the list? What’s something you think a sound engineer should never do?

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When I experience these services, I remind myself of three things.

1. It’s over.

Thank God it’s over! Very few people will remember it after you get chewed out by the appropriate authorities. You have next week to redeem yourself. We can’t dwell on a bad service, or it will taint our ability to move forward next week.

2. Every church has bad Sundays.

Even the “big boys” have had dreadful Sundays–usually in their early years. But some still experience the occasional clanker. But they learn from it. They don’t get crippled by it. The analyze what went wrong and put of safety systems to avoid those problems. A wise man learns from his mistakes.

3. God is in charge.

Regardless of how much we fail, God never does. God can work in spite of us. That service that seems like the end of the world could have been the service that softened a seeker’s heart. We need to remember that the salvation of the world does not belong to us. It belongs to our God. It’s important we don’t take ourselves so seriously.

So if you just experienced the worst moments of your life during a service, relax. Shake it off. The world is still spinning. God is still on the throne. Your congregation isn’t hell-bound because of your failures.

What’s your worst church experience? And what did you do to survive it?

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1. Chastise the congregation. If the congregation isn’t responding, it can get tempting to “preach” to them about how they aren’t worshipping. But we can’t judge their hearts. Plus, it’s the pastor’s job to bring correction. The worship leader should be a cheerleader, not a grumpy coach.
2. Take a secular song, and change the word “baby” to “Jesus”. (Unless it’s referring to baby Jesus.) Come on, guys. I know it can be tempting to play that really cool song on the radio. A simple change of the word “baby” to “Jesus” could do the trick. But, seriously?!
3. Introduce every song with a story. An occasional story can be a useful tool to engage folks with a song. But you’re there to sing, not tell anecdotes about your child reaching up to you saying “Dada”.
4. Run the sound while leading worship. This is especially tempting at the churches where the sound guy and worship leader are always fighting. Trust me. Even a bad sound guy can do better than you can while leading worship. Don’t do this unless you have no other choice.
5. Close your eyes during the whole service. You’re leading. Plus, it looks like you’re in pain if you close your eyes the whole time.
6. Attempt a hymn you “think” you know. Be sure you know the hymn. Otherwise that throwback for the traditional folks will fall flat.
7. “Wing it.” Unless you’re the only band member…with no sound team or slide runners…don’t wing it. Even then. Be careful. You’ll probably end up saying something dumb or forgetting all the words.
8. Let choir members smuggle percussion instruments on stage. There’s nothing worse for a sound guy than suddenly hearing a choir member shaking a tambourine or smacking a cowbell next to the choir mics. Have a gender-segregated pat-down before the service if you need…
9. Show your mid-riff. It’s the next inevitable phase after the deep-V. But please…don’t do it! (Especially guys.)
   
10. Think it’s all about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about the music. It’s not about the songs. It’s about leading people into worshipping God.

Anything I left off the list that a worship leader should never do? Chime in!

I imagine Jesus does this every time we get those "really great ideas".

“What do you do when your pastor has a really bad idea and wants you to make it happen?” I was asked this recently on Twitter. It’s a perfect question that I’ve wrestled with countless times. You can beg and plead for them to change their mind. But what happens when they won’t budge? Here’s my response:

1. Request a Mediator – Ask your pastor if he’d be willing to run the idea by a “typical person” from the congregation. Agree on an individual that typifies the type of person your church is trying to reach. Then see what they have to say. (You might find out it was actually a great idea.)
2. Identify What They’re Trying to Accomplish – Sometimes their “dorky idea” is meant to accomplish a certain purpose. Identify what they want to accomplish. Then see if there is an alternative method that will satisfy both of you. There are always hidden solutions to the problems we face.
3. Grin and Bear It – If your leadership won’t change their mind, you need to just go for it. Put on your biggest smile and do your best to make the thing a success. Your leadership knows where you stand. If you do your best to help them succeed, they will trust you even more–regardless of whether or not you were right. By supporting your leadership (even when you don’t feel like it) you gain their trust. They’ll listen to you more and more as you do this. (And again, you might find out it was actually a great idea.)

Did I miss anything? What are some other options for avoiding a “bad idea” from your leadership?

[Photo Props]