I originally posted this a over two years ago, but think worthy of a repost. This basically is my ministry philosophy in essay form. Please share your thoughts and dialog a bit with me!

Is local church ministry a waste of time?  Sometimes it really seems that way.  After all, the state of the local church today is really sad.  It is no wonder most are declining or at best holding on and the ones holding on are aging, losing the chance to pass on their cherished faith to a younger generation.  Churches last about 40 years.  That’s it.  One generation and they die.

Ministry would be a waste of time if what I pointed my life’s work to was the propping up of an institution, especially a declining institution.  Yes, lives are touched, history was made in these places.  Often, the people left are curators in the museum of what they and others have done before them.  They whine about the fact that the next generation is not taking the mantle and adding their picture to the wall in the church memory halls.

If you are not growing you are dying.  That is true of a local church. It is true often of our personal faith, too. But, often a church will see a mill closed, or some other unforeseen series of events occur that devastate that church.  When things are kicking, growing and working in a church it is problematic to ask the hard questions.  Why rock the boat when numbers and money is up?  Why confuse people with introspection when the season is one of upward motion.  Do not critique a winning team.  It just annoys the boys in the game.

All this is to simply say that spinning wheels to keep status quo is not my calling.  I see that as a waste of time.  Some are called to plant, water, and others to pull weeds.  The lucky one gets to harvest or even be a part of all those points in the journey of a local church.  I actually like pulling weeds.  I enjoy the challenging times I spent planting.  But, never, do any of these activities assume  the reign and protection of status quo.

I think of a passage that has stuck with me since my Bible training days:

Do we, like some people, need letters of introduction to you, or from you?  No, you are are all the letter we need, a letter written on our heart; anyone can see it for what it is and read it for himself.  And, as for you, it is plain that you are a letter that has come from Christ, given to us to deliver; a letter written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, written not on stone tablets but on the pages of the human heart.
2 Corinthians 3:1-3 (Revised English Bible)

What is clear is that people matter.  What makes sense is that if ministry is people, then it is not a waste of time.  People are eternal.  What you and I do to build into people makes a difference for eternity.  Often, it is easy to see the institutional issues and judge our work in ministry based on that.

Growing numbers of people and success does not mean that people have you written on their hearts just as much as declining numbers of people does not mean you are not writing your ministry into the very hearts of people.  As long as that is happening, I think it is not a waste of time.  It may be good to actually give a funeral to many churches, but even in that process the people we serve will take with them our ministry.  That is much better than a plaque on the wall, an article in Leadership Magazine, or authoring a book.

I do think that if you are a worship leader, worship team member, songwriter or at all involved in leading worship or the worship experience that this event could change your life. Often, the hype of large conferences gives a charge for a few weeks, but building relationships around forming your heart along with a few others can have lasting results.

The All About Worship Retreat is a unique event that I could not pass up participating. Even though I am one of the facilitators, what I know from experience is that being small with only 65 attendees means the environment will be unlike the typical conference. Also, no haze machines. Simply, spend time with the likes of Tommy Walker, Jared Anderson and other passionate worship leaders. The event is in Overland Park, Kansas from May 20 t May 22.

I strongly recommend you join us. My friends Ben and Wisdom of the All About Worship Podcast are making an impact because they are like you and I–they are church guys who love the local church! Their agenda is to see your heart formed more like Jesus from this event. So, yes. This could change your life.

Recap: Jeff Saville, a Navy Chaplain and member of Sunridge, taught Sunday as we continued the study through 1 Thessalonians entitled “Notoriety”.  This Sunday we introduced a couple new tunes to Sunridge and even with the DST (Daylight Savings Time) kicking in we had an energetic group of people offering their worship.

Set List: The central thought in the music set was the idea of how seeking God, spending time in his presence truly changes us. Psalm 34 tells us to seek and that when we do our faces are “radiant”–”tasting and seeing” God’s goodness is one of the very reasons we gather each weekend. We have to put a physical experience to acknowledge the spiritual. In fact, we often forget that they are connected. Think of the line “forever I am changed” from “Majesty” and you get the nut of it.

• Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher
• Because of Your Love – Paul Baloche
• Sing Over Your Children – Jason Ingram, Matt Maher
• Taste and See – Rich Kirkpatrick
• Majesty – Delirious

Links:

• This past Sunday’s sermon on video
• The Worship Community worship set lists
• Rich’s Facebook music page (I have lyrics posted, music, etc.)

Share your thoughts about our worship set, or what happened in your worship services this past weekend.

My kids love Peeps. Pick a caption for us here at RKWeblog and then go to National Geographic Peeps in Places Photo Gallery and enjoy!

HT: HolyKaw at Alltop.com

Here are some examples in the church today of the results with art by committee:

Blended worship: This term makes no sense to me. If you blend two perfectly good things such as an orange and fillet mignon you get something perfectly horrible. Blending means you erase the unique value of each separate item and unify it into slop. Traditional music done with an organ does not “blend” with modern worship with an electric guitar. There is no formula that will make those that enjoy these differences enjoy the combination. Not even close.

Plastic plants & beige: To create an environment that is less creative than a hospital why not paint the walls a non-color and arrange plastic plants around it? After all, the goal is to be as non-offensive as possible. Why not? The reason this is a bad idea is the assumption that being non-offensive and bland is a worthy goal. In fact, the goal of a room environment should be to move people into a space that promotes worship, if you are a church. Or, if you a painting a kids room its about stimulating interest–not bore.

Tepid worship songs: Upon hearing our worship industries best offerings, surely there are many gems to be mined. One particular publisher seems to be into “safe” words and phrases that you have heard before. Obviously, theology is not a suggestion. But, language is always moving and good art need not be what you have already seen or heard before. So, these songs are not great songs because they are bland. Its as if the writers by their committees were told to play it safe. I am so glad the likes of Isaac Watts ignored the committee hundreds of years ago. We would have never sung “Our God Our Help In Ages Past” if that was the case.

Do you agree with these examples as being poster children of committee-driven art? Please share your thoughts here!

Some mornings the traffic lights are all green and the four mile drive is effortless. Its as if all is right with the world. No obstacles. The destination appears almost too quickly. My son and I have to actually interrupt our chat and he is off to class.

The most troubling are the days when every single red light is hit, there is traffic and the parent drop off looks like the 91 Riverside freeway during rush hour. There is no way to cut corners, speed up or defy the laws of nature. You simply have to nudge inch by inch.

With all the variations in how a journey on the road plays out you cannot help but wonder if you are headed to the same destination. The truth is that taking the same road will lead you to the same destination, but the conditions, timing and context of your journey determine what that journey looks like. Yes, each one’s road seems different even though we are all on it together.

I remember a musician friend of mine who bemoaned the fact that he got a girl pregnant from a one night stand. His biggest complaint was how all his friends did it and none of them ended up like him. Yes, his life was tormented after this and almost ruined from an unbelievable set of circumstances. But, how about the others that took that same path?

The Bible says that “you will reap what you sow” and makes it clear that our choices will add up. The musician friend of mine took an express lane. But his friends were on the same path. They would find hardship in relationships based on the damage of having multiple sex partners. They would struggle with intimacy and pay a price. My friend got the green lights. His friends had traffic. But they all ended up at the same place–eventually.

One of the biggest barriers to growth as a believer is owning up to the choices or the roads we have traveled. We complain when things do not happen quickly enough which is at times as crazy as someone screaming at the 91 Freeway during peak traffic. “God, I have been praying for a while now, but…”  “Jesus, I have been reading my Bible all week and am still waiting to get some answer.”

If we are on the right road, then whether we have red lights or green lights will not matter. The same is true if we are on the wrong road. Eventually we will pay the price. Or, for the better eventually we will be rewarded.

This not a mean God who set this up. God loves us deeply and He makes this pretty obvious to us. We as Christians choose to live in the moment in our culture today and microwave our spiritual formation rather than cultivate our soul. This is why we need salvation from ourselves. We just do not get it at times.

What we do not get is that the right road hurts at times. We can have obstacles thrown at us that we never imagined. Someone could get cancer, or lose their home or fail in marriage. Being on the right road does not mean nor guarantee that our time on the road is as smooth as they guy’s next to me.

I wrote a song not too long ago that we recently sung in church that mentions one very important yet forgotten word in our faith–providence. Providence is God’s hand in everything. With Providence, life makes sense. It does not matter who occupies the White House, what natural disaster is at play in the news or the circumstances of my personal journey. God is in control and has included me as a unique stitch in His tapestry.

So, we can choose to complain about the red lights. Or, be glad the road of faith we have chosen is taking us to a destination worthy of the sacrifice, pain and suffering this side of heaven deals us.

Be bitter, or be broken. Which will you choose?

Recap: This Sunday Britt delivered a message “Pioneers & Settlers” where he taught our church a language to discuss the differences we may have and how we need each other–focus on discipleship versus evangelism, for instance. We need both! Some of us are wired to settle and others to pioneer.

We had some very good news for us shared! Our mortgage loan was extended for a 3-year period, giving us much needed breathing room. I do believe that us praying as a church has surely loosened things for us as far as God providing in this issue.

Ben Cherry and my daughter Emilie did most of the lead singing Sunday. I really enjoyed Ben, and of course its nice to have a team leading when you can.

Set List: The song set was designed around the theme of the beauty and wonder of God with a reading from Psalm 96. Like the writer of this psalm or song, we gave recognition for how God fills us with wonder from the beauty of His works and ways.

• Beautiful One – Tim Hughes
• Glorious One – Fee Band
• God of Wonders – Casting Crowns
• Providence – Rich Kirkpatrick (I have the lyrics/song on my Facebook music page)
• Cannons – Phil Wickham

Links:

• The video of Britt’s message “Pioneers & Settlers”
• The Worship Community – set lists from all over the place from this Sunday
• Our Sunridge Facebook Page & my Facebook music page

How was your worship weekend? What did you give or offer in worship? Share you feedback, too!

RT @worshiptechie: @rkweblog Was it a Toyota?// #

RT @sunridgechurch: Sunridge, you can do it…only 13 more to get to 500 on our FB Page!! http://twurl.nl/gjh4wi //can you help us out? #

THANKS for all the feedback from my new song this past Sunday –in case you missed here’s video http://twurl.nl/0sarym #

always a treat to be with my daughter at her songwriting/piano lessons #

thanks to @worshiptogether peeps for 10 free Easter songs http://twurl.nl/1rdsl7 #

my son is “helping” me at work today http://twitpic.com/16g6u2 #

RT @bmarch: On my way to San Diego with the kids. Alone. Please pray. God help me.//you can do it Bobby!! #

hanging out with worship team at st. arbucks by trader joes #

@loswhit I am waiting for your CD on vinyl bro! in reply to loswhit #

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Jeremy is the winner, as long as he claims it! Thanks for the fun guys and I hope to see some of you at the conference. Its gonna be great!

Want two free passes? In April in Lenexa, Kansas there is an amazing event for worship leaders! The worshiptogether.com Training Conference (April 12-14) will have the likes of Phil Wickham, Matt Maher, Christy Nockels, Leeland, Brenton Brown, Audrey Assad and more! There are workshops to choose from as well as moving times of worship.

All you have to do to win is comment below. You get extra time in the drawing for adding Facebook and for adding Twitter. That means you can possibly have your name entered three times! Please link back to this post so I can verify where you have shared this. And, if you entered in the last giveaway, you can again–except the nice guy who won!

Ethan had a science project and of course something like mold would be of interest to him. At the science fair you could tell the projects displayed by boys. Everything from a potato gun to fire whirlwinds to mold. The girl–of course–who won did the extraction of DNA from pees!

No boy would even have interest in peas. In fact, girls do not either. But, what would parents and teachers love most? A child that not only loves peas but the extraction of DNA. She rightfully displayed her blue ribbon and also made sure to educate those passing by her display.

Indeed, I am not complaining that my son’s mold experiment did not win. I am simply stating how fun it is to see the difference between the boys and girls at this age–other than most boys being shorter than the girls.

What memory of middle school strikes you the most? If you are a parent, what worries you the most about walking through this with your child?