Church Artists: The 2nd Service

What seems like most of my 19 year tenure at our church, we've had two or more services. In recent years we've been at one service--and gotten used to it. Two weeks ago we're gladly back at two services.

My observation of the band last week, and dialoguing with guys I was playing with this week, reminded me that as a musician (or vocalist), the second service is harder.

This might not make sense, since intuitively you have one under your belt. You have the confidence that you and the rest of the crew can pull it off. This is deceptive.

It's harder for a number of reasons:

1. You're talking and hanging out with friends in between services. Your mind is elsewhere.
2. Your adrenaline is down--you don't have that natural edge you had in the first service.
3. Emotionally, you've done it before; it's not fresh; doesn't feel spontaneous. 

Playing well in the second service requires something we didn't have to conjure up for the first service that we don't talk about in music rehearsals: discipline.

The second performance requires us to be more disciplined mentally. It's tougher in the space between our ears. And as musicians can be an emotional lot, this feels odd. We're having to think and focus more on something we'd rather feel more spontaneously.

You might say that the uncertainty of never having performed this set, fuels us in the 1st service. But it's our mental focus that fuels the 2nd service.

Musicians want to feel music similarly to the way we all want to feel love. And it actually works very much the same.

When we start dating someone (with whom we're compatible), just being with them fuels our feelings of attraction. The situation of newly dating seems to provide its own fuel. That's the first service.

But after enough time passes, emotional love doesn't exist without the discipline of loving actions. We're no longer new to each other--the situation no longer fuels us quite like it used to. So we choose loving actions that result in loving emotions--that's how post-courtship love works. That's the second service.

What music teams are doing in churches is art. And art requires discipline. Art without discipline isn't very good art, really. So I encourage us as church arts teams to grow in the discipline of playing second services even better than the first.

And please don't get me wrong--I am not mentally robotically playing the second service. That would be hideous. That wouldn't be art.

I am trying to be at least as emotionally vested in the second service as I was the first--and perhaps more. I'm trying to nail it technically and authentically exude it emotionally. This is difficult. I didn't learn to do it overnight. And that my friends is what makes it art...

Peace

Say Something Before You Do Something

In this point in history we are a very vocal people. That is, on social media and to our friends. We're vocal in all the easiest of situations.

But if there's something or someone we don't like; if there's something we don't care for, we quietly, secretly back away. We back away from friends, family, church, restaurants, websites...without a word to those involved.

Last year we had what I thought was a raw deal in terms of a cut-and-dried auto insurance claim. It had been bugging me. I was thinking about leaving our long-time agent. So I went to his office and politely, respectfully talked to him about it like a human. I told him my thoughts and why I was entertaining leaving.

We tried to help each other better understand each other. I talked with him like a man, not an agent. And he talked with me like man, not a customer. I'm probably more likely to stay with him after that. But I'm not 100%. If I do leave his agency, he will know why.

The other day I renewed one of my website domain names. The website was horrible. It was like a visual representation of an army of Billy Maze's yelling at me. I emailed the company. I respectfully told them I didn't appreciate their strategy and that they could do better; that their web strategy will make me reconsider using them in the future.

Those examples were pretty benign: insurance and a website. But what about the local restaurant that goes out of business because no one tells the manager/owner what the product or service was like?

What about the spouse that you stop communicating with because you don't have the nerve to engage them about______________?

What about the friend that's just easier to stop contacting because of ________________?

We think negatively: believing that our words will not result in any change, and so we keep quiet. But in reality our words might initiate change or understanding.

Then of course, if we withhold our words, it's a 100% certainty that things will continue on like they always have.

We're talking about integrity. Believing the best in someone or an organization. Believing that someone might be open to our words. Believing that the other party does not want to let us down or worse.

Holding back our words will certainly add no value to that person or organization.

Holding back our words will simply fester and annoy us while the other party goes blindly and obliviously on their (sometimes errant) way.

In the Bible there is this concept that we all belong to each other. This wise truth makes it harder for me to keep from saying something to people or organizations. Even if that person or organization isn't Christian, isn't it better for everyone if I treat them this way?

The ways of complaining, whining, ranting to uninvolved parties is easy. Integrity--finding respectful ways to appropriately speak into people and organizations is more challenging. And it is the path that potentially makes both parties better. Integrity is doing the right thing even if the other party doesn't.

Not saying something because you don't think the other party will respond in kind, is dysfunction.

Our culture needs more integrity. Integrity rises and falls on all of my interactions and all of yours--from simple things like insurance to momentous things like marriages.

We all belong to each other.
Respectfully say something before doing something.
We can all get better; with each other's help.

Peace.

Learning from Younger People to...

1. Be Connected
Social media is so much than more noise in my life. It's the potential for real time connections, reconnecting and connecting with people I'd never have the chance to before.

Authors like Mark Batterson, Shannon O'Dell, Rob Bell, Donald Miller, Andy Stanley & Craig Groeschel are speaking every day, and I listen in on Twitter.

The other morning I had a real time 3-way Twitter conversation on my phone with two friends: one in Noblesville and the other in Nashville.

And because life's too serious, I follow Tweets from Jim Gaffigan, The Church Curmudgeon & my son ;-)

2. Be Concise
Now that every baby boomer is on Facebook it's full of bloated posts & comments that look more like essays. Twitter forces me to pare it down. What am I really saying? How do I say it in 140 characters? That's a healthy discipline. I've noticed it's reshaping how I think as well--thinking in more concise thoughts--getting down to the issue.

3. Be Open
Lately I've noticed how much I've heard people my age proudly proclaim, "Ah, I have email and texting. I don't need Facebook or that Tweet thing!"

Let me paraphrase that, "I'm old and don't care what anyone else is doing. I don't need to keep up with the times. I don't need to learn new technology or ways of staying in touch with people."

Imagine someone saying as the telephone was coming in, "Well who needs some clanging noise-maker in their house when I can go down to the telegraph office and get it in writing?"

4. Be Patient
It's so easy at this age to want to jump in, redirect, show them the "right" way. (As if I'm always right ;-)
It's harder to be patient and gracious. It's easy to butt in. They remind me how much I wanted to do it myself at that age.

This is challenging. I want to add advice appropriately, sparingly, encouragingly. I also want them to feel valued and built up. I want young people to smile when I'm headed their direction; not annoyed, "Great, here comes Morgan again..." (Insert eye roll.)

5. Be Alive
Younger people model excitement and happiness like no one else. The things they love in this life ooze out of them. They smile and laugh a lot. They're passionate.

What a noble, endearing and attractive quality. And as I observe them, I realize the more decades I live, the more likely that stuff nu-noticeably leaks out of me, a drop at a time. Resenting this trait will make me old before my time. Aspiring to be more like them in this, has the opposite effect.

 ************

Speak Up
I'm blessed to have so many younger people in my life. I'm not just living a segregated life of people my own age. There are so many integrity-filled and talented younger people I have the privilege to know, work and serve with.

To all the younger people in my relational world, I ask that you would speak into my life when you see something that I need to grow in. I want to be open. I want to be approachable. I want to be connected with you. I want us to learn from each other and have fun in the process.

Andy Stanley; Recovery Road pt 1

This talk is about the road to recovery in America. I've yet to hear anyone speak so profoundly and simply about it. This is a bright bright spot in Christendom. Please make the time to watch it.

ReWork ReView

It's a new day. Our world, and specifically our working world, is different. Who can deny it?

As social media, marketing, and cultural guru Seth Godin preaches, "We're in the post industrial age." Which means we've left the age that was almost single-handedly defined by Henry Ford: Americans mass producing things for Americans and the world.

We've not just left the age of mass production, but also the age of rigidly defined processes and hierarchies. The industrial age was defined by things like boxes, rules, authorities and permission. This new age? Not so much.

As I've 100% agreed with this view, that we're in a new age in America; I've also wondered, "What does that look like? What specifically defines the post industrial age workplace? What is it and how do we function?"

ReWork has answered those questions!

This book has not only put tangibility to this new age, but even the form of the book is a reflection of it. Out of 271 pages, the chapters (lack of better word) are a mere 1-3 pages. The ideas: simple, concise, applicable.

Who is it for? Everyone. People who care about their career. Business owners. People wanting to start a business. College students. Church leaders. Non-profit people. People who want to get better. People who want to grow with the times.


Some of my personal underlines:

"Whenever you can, swap 'Let's think about it' for 'Let's decide on it'...Don't wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward." 77

"Delegators are dead...everyone's got to be productive. No one can be above the work." 218

"Build an audience (v customers)...an audience returns often--on its own--to see what you have to say." 170

"Make tiny decisions...the best way to achieve those big things is one tiny decision at a time." 130

"Interruption is the enemy of productivity...so get in the alone zone. Long stretches of alone time when you're most productive." 104

"Meetings are toxic...so
1. Set a timer. When it rings, meeting's over. Period.
2. Invite as few people as possible.
3. Always have a clear agenda.
4. Begin with a specific problem." 108

"Hire the best writer...clear writing is a sign of clear thinking...they makes things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit...writing is today's currency for good ideas." 222

"Send people home at 5...you don't need more hours; you need better hours." 258

"They're not thirteen. When you treat people like children, you get children's work...when everything needs approval, you create a culture of nonthinkers." 255

Check it out.

I Have Issues

One of the thing we do well in our culture is ruin words: Gay, bitch, cock, balls.

The Flintsones had a gay ol' time.
Our greyhound is a bitch and a great one at that.
The gun isn't automatic, you have to cock it.
Let's pickup the dodge balls, people.

Odds are that's not how you interpreted those words in the opening sentence.

And let's not leave out words like: Muslim, conservative, liberal and Christian.

These words used to be benign adjectives; descriptors. Words that helped define a picture. Now, to large groups of people, each of these is a very negative adjective. Each paints a dark picture.

Just as ball can be the toy of an innocent toddler and an anatomical noun (whew!), so too Muslim can be a person of faith or someone with terrorist ties.

For me, I'm vexed by the word Christian. Some of my best friends are Christians. Some of the people that most irritate me are also Christians. Oh yeah, I'm a pastor. Is this a problem?

This dynamic seems to ebb and flow in my life. Probably because in the first 20 years of my life the thing that most repelled me from faith was the "faithful." God seemed good. The "godly," not so much.

I'm in that mode again. Two weeks ago I attended the Global Leadership Summit, a very Christian event. And it rocked my soul, challenged my mind, strengthened relationships, revealed the Holy Spirit of God and made me so proud to be thrown into the pot with the Christian label on the outside.

Then a week later my Christian brethren (why do only Christians have brethren?) threw a great Christian friend of mine under the bus for blogging in a way that offended them.

My inner dialogue went something like this:

"&%$# Christians! Glad we can count on our people to beat up our own people. Where's the flippin' grace we LOVE to sing and preach about, peckers?! Maybe I should get out of the game...maybe I could have these same beliefs and only renounce my affiliation with Christians?..." Seriously. (This is called "I Have Issues" for a reason.)

Of all the things I have belonged to in my 4+ decades of life, Christianity is the only one I have been cautious about owning up to 100% of the time. I never hesitated to tell people what school I went to, what activities I was into, what music I was into etc. But in owning my Christianity...sometimes I play it like a hand in a poker game.

And it's funny, I'm never second guessing who God is or what He calls us too. But some days the word Christian feels like the word ______(your choice: conservative / liberal) does to you.

I hate this. I feel bad. I feel bad in the sense that as a member of Christianity I have had a part in ruining the word Christian by what I've done or not done in front of family, friends or people I don't even know.

And too, I have this hideous tendency to have the most hate for things in others that exist in me.

The thing is, if we're judging by externals, I'm mostly kind of rockin' the Christian thing. But in the less public parts of me, some moments, not so much.

So maybe my condemnation for the people who are clearly publicly botching the word Christian is my way of dysfunctionally yelling at myself for those unchristian thoughts and struggles that rear their ugly heads in my life.

Oh yeah, reared is also a ruined word. Seriously, stop snickering.

My name is Morgan Young and I have issues. And I'm trying to rock the Christian label inside and out. What say we rebuild the word Christian, one thought and one action at a time?

Now I gotta go let my bitch out...

We're So Full of Piss and Vinegar

Christians, I mean. Probably some are outraged at the title of this post. "How inappropriate for a pastor to use the 'p' word in a public forum!" Even though we'll all hear far worse words than that tonight on TV and not bat an eye.

As much as I love the internet and all it makes possible to me, it also serves up an unloving and quick-to-judge side of us Christians.

This writing is fresh off yesterday's post on worship by Tim Stevens (original post, followup post). And before that, it was the firestorm of anger toward Rob Bell.

Here's the response to Tim in a nutshell: "How could you? You're immature. You're embarrassing. You annoy me. You're elitist. Self-absorbed. I've lost all respect for you. Quit being so self-serving, I'd never go to your church..."

(To be fair, several posters thanked him for his transparency and honest sharing in the spirit of helping us all get better and for saying what they'd wanted to say.)

Sadly we Christians respond just like the culture does these days. If people think differently than we do, we write them off personally. Jab their character and throw stones.

In terms of Tim and Rob it's as if their body of work up to that point didn't matter; like they're as good as their last soundbite.

I think a better way to love is to ask questions. A better way to love may be to seek first to understand (S. Covey), rather than condemn. It looks like this:

"Tim, it reads to me like you're tearing people down, being sarcastic...was that your intent or am I misunderstanding?"

"What was your purpose in writing that--I think I missed the point--I'm confused by it. Can you help me understand?"

Those are better lead ins, I think. These questions presume the best about a man who's served God in incredible ways for decades.

I'm talking about civility. Assuming the best about someone with different opinions. Respecting someone simply because everyone has value. Civility is hugely missing in our country right now.

I believe civility ought to be thriving amongst God's people. I remember reading somewhere about people outside the faith knowing Christians by how much they loved each other.

And why I'm here...I don't understand the general defensive and argumentative nature about the topic of worship among Christians in social media. At the heart of worship is this idea of unblemished lambs; bringing something excellent.

As far as I can tell, when talking about a skill set like musical worship, pursuing excellence and getting better requires discussions, feedback, coaching and evaluating.

Maybe this subject is a powder keg because we musicians are touchy, sensitive and opinionated as hell instead of being totally surrendered to heaven. (That was just for me. I'm a musician and I struggle.)

This world is watching us more than ever, because what we say isn't hearsay anymore. It's written word for word on Facebook and Twitter. And our piss and vinegar interactions enable would be Christians to look in and say,

"Eh, it looks as jacked up as political circles to me--I don't need more of that crap in my life."

We have the Love of the world inside us. Let's let Him out--especially when we don't agree with someone or understand where they're coming from.

Love does indeed make all the difference.

Shalom