Worship Philosophy: Relationship Evangelism

Evangelism through Relationships with Unbelievers

An effective creative arts/worship ministry goes beyond the Sunday morning band to engage all kinds of people in creative expression.

Rick Warren, says in this podcast, “Saddleback doesn’t have any kind of official evangelism program. We simply ask people, ‘What do you love to most? Go do that with unbelievers.’ ” One example he uses is “If you like to shoot guns get 5 guys who are lost who don’t know the Lord and take them down to the shooting range and shoot guns.” I would add,”If you love to play music go do it with unbelievers in your community.”

A great worship pastor is not only leading worship in church on Sunday morning he is also supporting the local music scene in the club on Friday night. He doesn’t only facilitate music for worship on Sunday morning, but is also encouraging Christian musicians and artists to be using their gifts and talents to add to the culture of their city. A great worship pastor has rapport not only with the other worship pastors in town but also with non-Christian artists, actors and musicians who perform in the community. Because he is a leader who multiplies himself he actively encourages everyone on the worship and tech team to have not only fellowship with other Christians, but also to be involved in the lives of unbelievers as well.

People come to Christ when we love them as Jesus does: without an agenda. We can’t get to know people simply “so that they’ll come to church,” but we have to truly love them for who they are. They will come to Jesus by getting to know us. Jesus is a pretty compelling guy.

The added bonus of doing evangelism this way is that when people make a decision for Christ they have a clear picture of what living life as a Christian looks like. Too often people make a “commitment” to Christ after simply hearing a sermon or a 5 minute tract-accompanied presentation without truly counting the cost.

Evangelism through Relationships with Unbelievers is part 4 of a 5 part Philosophy of Worship Ministry series entitled 5 Purposes That are Vital to a Thriving Worship Ministry.

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Around the ‘sphere

Jeff did a cool worship leader interview with Chris. Next week is Brent, king of the mullet men.
Bobby‘s adorable giraffe and Los‘s um…princess are gonna give Conner a run for his cute-kid money.  Of course I’m pretty biased towards the cuteness of my girls.

Jeremy shot me an email about his worship song podcast. It’s inspired me to go on a songwriting rampage seriously cutting into my memorization time.  Thanx 🙂 (BTW – My baby girl loves Matt Redman’s Shine – she starts dancing every time it plays – like right now.)

4 Quick Worship Resources

Recently Terry emailed me some great worship ministry resources.

Here are 4 of my favorite websites to help resource your worship ministry:

1. Better Than Blank Resource Center – Alex has complied a list of websites and open source software that he uses in his minstry. I personally use many of the same tools. His resource page is worth booking marking as he continually updates it.

2. Hot Worship – Every conceivable worship website linked in one location.

3. Worship Trench – Brent and Jordan keep a blog where they share a great deal of hard hitting practical worship resources and advice. Subscribe to their feed, but also take a trip through the “trench” archives as you will find some gems.

The Trenches:

• 1 people
• 2 process
• 3 design
• 4 implement
• free tools
• input needed
• news
• recon
• theology

4. Ragamuffin Soulcast – Will Los ever podcast again? The world may never know, but I’d recommend subscribing to the Soulcast in iTunes or getting the RSS Feed and then listening to all of the previous episodes. It’s funny, relevant worship banter from a leader in the worshiping community.

Red Letter Day

Mars Hill Seattle is a church that knows how to utilize an RSS feed. In fact they have over 20 feeds that you can subscribe to on their website. I personally rock the everything audio feed in my iTunes. I went back a few weeks tonight to look at some older stuff and what I found gave me this gleaming ray of hope. I’ll tell you why.

The Set Up

Yes, as of recent I’ve been 7 shades of dejected. The story’s the same: I’m talking to a ton of amazing churches who are looking for worship pastors, but no one’s hired me yet. It’s not that I have a problem with waiting, it’s that I’m so hungry to serve Jesus. Essentially, I’ve lessened the amount of time I spent serving in order to conduct a full-time worship pastor job search and it’s starting to get to me. With each pastor I talk to I get fired up about what I could be doing in a church. Then I hang up the phone and I have to go back to job hunting instead of worship leading. It’s maddening.

The Rub

To throw some salt in the wound there’s the issue of my voice. Now it’s uncanny how quickly you can improve in any given skill set when you want to. I feel like the progress I’m making is massive on a daily basis. I keep looking at the audio examples I have of my voice and I think, “I don’t sound like that, I’m much better now.” I know, I need to quit my whining and record some new stuff. The fact still remains that my strongest skill set lies outside of my vocal ability. A handicap that no doubt provides a challenge to finding a worship leader job.

The Joy

Enter the Mars Hill Podcast. In August they posted an amazing version of All Creatures of our God and King performed by Red Letter. It’s a raucous blast of indie-driven mayhem. I’m not suggesting you play this one for the old folks, but these guys are definitely pushing the envelope of ancient-future worship. I’ve listened the track about 30 times tonight it rocks so hard.

And the best part?

Joel Brown, the lead singer, has a voice that is well… less than great. At parts he’s way off pitch. So here’s this guy whose an amazing innovator and whose strongest skill set lies outside his vocal ability. (The word around town is that he is not only an imaginative songwriter but also teaches others.)

Of course my thought is, “If Joel can sing vocals at Mars Hill, then there definitely has to be a church out there for me.”

To be fair, Joel does have other days when he’s been more on. (Much like me.) But isn’t it so true that we get inspired by seeing God use imperfect people powerfully?

Rick Warren Would Want Me to Get Wet

Amanda and Wes’s wedding this weekend was excellent. Because Sarah was preoccupied with Matron of Honoring I got to take care of Ashlyn all day Saturday. It was longest I’ve been able to hold my daughter in a one day and it was amazing.

I’ve been reading a deeply theological book on baptism which has been mildly helpful. I’m not necessarily at a point where I’m ready to chuck my Lutheran upbringing altogether but all I know is that this weekend I couldn’t take my eyes off the baptistery.