Encouragement through Relationships with Believers
A great worship leader should not only be training up other leaders and teaching them, but he needs to be learning as well. It is vital for a leader to be effective that he have strong relationships with other Christians who can speak into his life, hold him accountable and encourage him.
Being a part of a creative arts/worship ministry shouldn’t only be work but it should also be fun too! We should enjoy spending time with the people whom we do ministry with and there should be a healthy fellowship that exists.
Jesus modeled this type of ministry. He had a core group of 12 guys that he lived, ate and traveled with. He practiced “life on life” ministry and poured into their lives. Jesus also took the time separately and held a deeper relationship with 3 of the 12.
If we follow this model we don’t go crazy trying to create relationships with everyone, spreading ourselves thin. Instead, we love all, but invest deeply in a few. We become encouraged because we have a few meaningful relationships in our lives as opposed to many shallow ones.
Encouragement through Relationships with Believers is part 3 of a 5 part Philosophy of Worship Ministry series entitled 5 Purposes That are Vital to a Thriving Worship Ministry.
Billy Chia 
How very true.
That’s funny you mentioned 3 people. I am spending quite a bit of time with 2 people from our worship team. And as I thought about it, I could take on one more person, but no more. Thanks for the encouragement Billy.
I agree with you on this one. Encouraging relationship is my passion, because I know it makes a difference for me! I believe if we could learn to say encouraging words to each other, we could change the world one person at a time.
Great post. This is something I’ve been wrestling with lately. Not because I don’t “know” it as truth, but because it takes intentional effort to apply day in and day out.
What are some practical ways you (as a worship leader) implement this concept into daily life?
I know “spending time” with a few other people is a great place to start, but I’d love to see you take this post a bit deeper. Maybe even some practical tips for making this a reality in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the “work” side of ministry. I know I’d love to glean some insight here, anyone with me!?
Russ,
Great call! Philosophy is great, but what’s more important is living out the philosophy. The practical day to day is where the rubber hits the road.
As a series on philosophy – it’s a little outside the scope. I’ve been intentionally generic becuase the pragmatics will differ from context to context. A good theological and philosophical base sets the foundation from which to choose a solid course of action.
I’ll shoot you an email with some the specifics on my life right now. I try to be intentional about my blogging and I don’t quite have a blog-worthy post ready yet.
My goal would be that in future I could blog about day to day specifics and link back to this post showing the background of where I came from.
I would welcome comments from anyone with practical advice. Either an example of something they do in their own ministry or something they’d like to do.
Ah, yes. The “Philosophy of Worship Ministry” Series…haha, my fault. I just got excited about the possibility of seeing some hands on examples and stories from your experience and others’ as well!
Maybe that will spark the creative flame for a future series of posts??
So true!
I think one of the great difficulties of being a worship leader is that you don’t get to properly engage in worship yourself, you’re (or at least I am) always too busy thinking about what you need to do next.
To a certain extent, we alleviate this problem by having a strong sense of fellowship between us (even more – we’re all just good mates). We make sure we engage in some kind of worship/reflection when we get together and the closeness between us makes this a very rich experience.
BTW: Very funny that you continue to be the feature article for the photography tag in wordpress for what must be about three weeks now!
That’s not a comment on your photos, I’m sure you get my drift!
Pete,
Cool to hear about the camaraderie on your worship team.
WordPress chooses the featured blogs and simply takes your most recent post using that tag. I’m proud of my girl and don’t mind that picture being featured đŸ™‚