Why Foundations Matter - Part 3: The Drummers' Edition

Marching Band Beginnings

When it comes to drums, I had it good.

I began my journey in the secondary school marching band. My seniors would rather have me quit than stay with half-baked foundations, so I spent a lot of time drilling rudiments into muscle memory. I even carried a pair of sticks in my school bag, sneaking in extra reps whenever I could.

Didn’t help my dating life, but at least my paradiddles turned out okay...

A couple of years later it was my turn to teach the new recruits. Not only did I have to teach how to play all the percussion instruments, I also had to teach them how to read standard notation so they could follow scores and coordinate with the rest of the band. That’s thirty or more people. Within a year, they were up to par. I did all this between age 15 to 16. So don’t tell me teaching music notation takes too long.

The Old Guard vs. Today’s Shortcuts

Back in the 80s, Singapore had very few professional drummers, much less drum teachers. Those few could afford to pick and choose their students. Needless to say, they didn’t play games with foundations either.

They would be horrified to see how some drum teachers operate today.

Instead of starting students on stick drills, they drop noobs straight onto the kit, dazzling (and distracting) them with the bells and whistles of toms and cymbals. Instead of building secure counting, they push rote-memorized beats and fills.

And cynically speaking, I get it. That’s how you retain students in this ADHD age. You keep them entertained (but not equipped), they keep showing up, and they keep paying.

I ought to have done the same thing. Earning more by doing (and caring) less sounds nice. But alas, a conscience is an inconvenient thing…

Why Shortcuts Fail

Here’s the problem: for students who start this way, the standard advice doesn’t help. Pointers don’t fix it. Telling them to “practice more” just means they get really proficient at being wrong. At best, they sound bad and drag down the worship. At worst, they set themselves up for long-term damage. Carpal tunnel syndrome is no joke.

What Happens Without Counting

I’ve seen the fallout of skipping foundations more times than I can count. Years back, I wrote on my blog about one such incident:

I was once in the middle of playing a song (to audition someone on another instrument) when halfway through someone sat down behind the drums and tried to play along. He totally messed up because he could only play in one time-signature (don’t worry if you don’t know yet what that is) and the song I was doing was in a different one.

If he had ever learned how to count, how to discern the pulse of the music, he would have either been able to create on the spot something that can fit, or he would have known what little he knew didn’t fit and not messed up the song for other people. When it was his turn to audition, the other musicians started off at one tempo, and when he started playing the drums he couldn’t latch on to their tempo to support them. He immediately dragged the music down to the tempo he knew. Now imagine him doing that for pretty much every song the band tries to do on a Sunday morning…

This wasn’t “rusty skills.” This was no skills. He was never taught to count in the first place. Asking me to give such a “drummer” pointers like asking an interior designer about curtains when she really wants to say: tear down the house and rebuild…

Red Flags for Students

Proper drum teachers know that teaching foundations is a sacred duty. Not every teacher who talks rudiments actually teaches them. That’s why you need to be an intelligent student. 

Watch for red flags:

If you’re dropped straight onto the kit with no stick drills, walk away.

If you’re told to just memorize beats and fills without counting, walk away.

If you see those signs, move on. Find a better teacher.

Two Things You Can Do

First: If you’ve found a teacher who makes you grind through the boring basics, recognize what you’ve got. He (or she) is a treasure. Stick (XD) with them. Recommend them to others. In this ADHD age, where flash sells faster than foundations, don’t take their business survival for granted.

Second: If you want to see what real drum foundations look like - plain and simple, no gimmicks - check out my Drumming for Church: Foundations course. In just four sessions you’ll see exactly how a drummer should begin: a practice pad, a pair of sticks, and a couple of coordination drills I created to accelerate learning. You’ll know if drumming is truly for you.

Choose wisely. Your band will thank you on Sunday, and your wrists will still be thanking you years later…

Why Foundations Matter - Part 2: The Chordbook That Made Me Cringe

The Chord Book that Made Me Cringe 

 In the days before the internet (yes, I’m that old), worship guitarists had two main sources for chords. There were the official Hosanna! Integrity lead sheets (accurate but a little too intimidating for most) and then there were the coveted chord books: just lyrics with the chords on top. Simple. Accessible. Lifesaving… in theory. 

The problem? Many of those chord books were wrong. Badly wrong. 

While in university, I was serving at Faith Community Baptist Church, a well-established church with different ministries. One sincere and well-meaning leader from Touch Forces (our ministry to armed forces personnel) decided to compile a chord book for their own cell groups. He was a good man. I still remember him with his Ovation guitar (the coolest of the cool back then)… but his ear for chords wasn’t exactly stellar. 

The results were, well, obiang (Hokkien for clunky and off). 

The smooth C–G/B–Am progression? Reduced to C–Bm–Am. 

Those beautiful sus4s? Vanished. 

“I Worship You, Almighty God,” third line: that rich Gsus4 resolving to G became a blunt C–G. 

Still, I could tolerate it, because to me sincerity counts for something. What really got me was when I started visiting other campus groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, and saw their guitarists strumming from photocopies of the same book. “The chords can’t be wrong,” they’d say. “This is from Faith Community Baptist Church!” 

I didn’t have the heart to tell them. 

The Chord Sites that Made Me Facepalm 

Fast-forward to today. We’ve moved on from photocopied chord books… only to end up in the land of random chord websites, where users upload their versions of songs and hope for the best. 

Recently, I had a nasty flashback to the bad old days. One guitarist, sincere, eager, willing to serve, sent me screenshots of the chords he pulled from one of those sites for an upcoming worship session. My job quickly became emergency editor. I spent way too much time correcting the PDFs, fixing clunky progressions and totally wrong chords. 

But then the real problem surfaced: he couldn’t actually play the corrected chords. Esus4? Not happening. C#m–B–F#? Looked like a foreign language. Amaj7? Forget it. He just defaulted to a plain A. That was the best he could do, and I don’t fault him for it. He’d never been taught better. 

But here’s the hard truth: if you leave your musicianship at the mercy of random chord sites and the algorithm gods of YouTube, you’ll never rise beyond “tolerable enough.” 

If you want to be better than that: if you want to grow past the shortcuts and have real confidence in your guitar serving, if you want your foundations examined (and maybe rebuilt) so you can soar higher and grow faster, you need guidance from someone who’s been there, not just a faceless upload. That’s why I created my Worship Guitar Mentorship. It’s not about hype or hacks, but about giving you the solid ground you need to play with confidence in worship.

Back then, it was chord books that spread like wildfire, filled with mistakes that became “official” just because of who printed them. Today, it’s random chord sites and YouTube tutorials doing the same thing, leaving eager musicians stranded with bad habits and half-baked skills.

If we want worship that’s strong, sustainable, and life-giving, we have to stop leaving our musicians at the mercy of bad sources and start investing in proper foundations.

That’s why I do what I do. Come check me out. 

Why Foundations Matter - Part 1: Expo Hall Noob Mistakes

I went for a couple of worship sessions recently, hosted by one of those local worship groups who apparently think they’re ready to “equip” others. 

Well, I saw noob mistakes, live, on a mega church scale. 

1. Wrong Key, Wrong Time

First one: the worship leader tries, on the spur of the moment, to lead the people to sing Lord, I Give You My Heart. Problem? They’re in C. The song is not. So what happens? Worship leader drift. You know the move - they sing one or two lines, ease the mic to their side, away from mouth as they raise the other hand upward, looking like their favourite worship leaders on the worship album CD covers. The congregation tries their best to keep on singing and the worship leader looks really good on the video-cam. In reality, however, the leader realized too late they were in the wrong key, and if they kept going their singing would crash and burn in front of everyone. 

And look, you think a small congregation croaking their way through the wrong key is painful? Try an entire Expo hall of croaking voices. That’s next-level judgment seat stuff. 🤣 

Worship Leaders: always be aware of what key you are currently at and the workable key ranges of whatever songs you want to switch to on the spur of the moment. If you are noob to worship leading, it will take you a while to get familiar with all this. Get mentorship and training from worship pastors or worship leaders who served long enough (or know worship leading well enough) to grow past this stage sooner rather than later. 

2. When Formulas Fail

Second round, same thing: start in C (I think), then the leader started singing the chorus of Here I Bow. Same leader drift, same Expo hall croak-fest. This time the bass player (most likely the Music Director) tried to salvage the situation. After one croaked chorus, the band hits the IV/V chord of the next key and waits for the worship leader to begin singing. Nice save. Almost worked, except that for Here I Bow, all the parts of the song (verse, chorus, bridge) all start with chord IV. The IV/V the band did would have worked IF the song sections began with the chord I. But they didn’t.

Essentially, that moment was less about knowing the formula to change key (IV/V of the new key) and more about knowing the song itself so they can tell when the standard formula won’t work or needed to be modded to apply. THIS is where you see the diff between a musician with merely formula & templates vs a musician who knows music. 

3. Band Leading ≠ Worship Leading

Then there was the whole business of the worship leader repeatedly turning around to flash the “C” hand sign at the band. Great. The musicians are cued. But what about us? The congregation? We are left guessing, spiritually speaking just that half beat behind. Functionally, that’s not worship leading, that’s band leading. And let’s be blunt: if you can’t cue your congregation, you’re not a worship leader. You’re just a frontman. There’s a difference. 

So forgive me if I don’t swallow the whole equipping others in worship leading, prayer & intercession and effective communications stuff. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Communicate? You can’t even communicate to a hall full of eager worshippers about singing the chorus again. 

4. Non-binary B minor

And don’t get me started on the guitarist. God, that non-binary B minor chord… You know the one: low E and high E strings both left open, musically nails on the chalkboard. Total clash with the vocals. The only reason no one noticed is because the guitar was buried under the rest of the band. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t teach that to any other guitarist who asks you for lessons. Does it really hurt that much to say “you’ve been playing guitar for a few months now, you should start learning barre chords”? 

Noob mistakes. Expo hall full of croaking. And yet these are the people “equipping” the body of Christ? Lord, forgive my cynicism. Now you know why I pretty much never go check out other worship groups in Singapore. It’s better that I stay away and have you think me a grumpy old man, than to turn up and remove all doubt. 🤣🤣 

Core takeaway - Look, we all make mistakes when we’re learning. But if you’re positioning yourself to equip others, the basics need to be solid first. 

1) Know your songs and their keys.

2) Cue your congregation, not just your band.

3) Play chords that actually fit (like a REAL B minor chord)

Because at the end of the day, if you can’t hold the floor steady, you’ve got no business building a second storey.

Still here? Then check out the training I offer at What I Do

Reverse Rapture - Part 3 - The Insider Itch

Reverse Rapture Part 1

Reverse Rapture Part 2 

I am frustrated. So deeply frustrated.

Sixteen years ago I wrote about grief when a pastor I respected turned his back on Christ for Judaism. Today? The grief has hardened into something else entirely.

A Pastor Fell

Back then, the One New Man movement hit Singapore with obviously noble intentions: teaching about Jewish roots of faith. But people got drunk on “insider” knowledge. Suddenly they weren’t learning; they were standing apart, superior to the rest of the Body who didn’t get their special understanding.

It was never about Hebrew songs or shofars. It was about the itch, that hunger for secret knowledge, for feeling closer to God than the ordinary believers around you.

That same itch fuels today’s reverse rapture nonsense. And here’s what makes me want to scream: we have zero excuse for falling for this garbage anymore.

In my university days, working a few hours at McDonald’s could buy you a copy of the Bible in your own language. Go back fifty years and you couldn’t even take that for granted. What believers could only dream of a lifetime ago, we carry in our pockets: endless translations, free of charge, on devices more powerful than supercomputers. Greek and Hebrew interlinears with full search capability. You want to know how “logos” and “rhema” are actually used in the New Testament instead of parroting some preacher’s made-up distinction? Five minutes of research. You can even argue with AI to test your theological ideas against objective logic that doesn’t care about your feelings.

Given all that, people really should not be falling for amateur-hour false prophecy. But they are. Why?

Because the itch isn’t about information. It’s about status. 

And sometimes that drive for status is powered and energized by trauma. I know a sister who got abused by her boyfriend, abandoned by her church, and instead of doing the hard work of healing, she went shopping for a cause that would make her feel important again. The vaccine wars became her altar. Refuse the jab, join the remnant, judge everyone else as compromised.

I get why medical institutions lost credibility. My father ended up in ICU after one dose, and watching the gaslighting that followed was infuriating. But turning health decisions into salvation tests isn’t discernment. It’s lazy theology disguised as spiritual warfare.

The tools are right there. The resources are free. The excuses are running out.

So what do we do? The same things we should have been doing all along, but with less patience for excuses:

1. Use the tools. Stop outsourcing your brain to YouTube prophets. You have access to better biblical resources than any generation in history. Use them. Start by reading your Bible and grow from there.

2. Test everything. Does your “special knowledge” make you more loving or just more judgmental? If it’s the latter, stop and check where you left the straight paths. 1 Corinthians 8:1 is still in the Bible, the last I checked... 

3. Stop coddling spiritual laziness. Yes, care for the wounded, but don’t enable their refusal to think. Compassion doesn’t mean accepting garbage theology.

4. Build churches that actually disciple people. If your congregation can’t tell the difference between Scripture and conspiracy theories, that’s a leadership failure. And for God’s sake, when someone reports abuse, investigate it properly. Don’t be the kind of church that forces God to work around your negligence.

5. Call out the grifters. These false prophets aren’t innocent mistakes. They’re businesses exploiting vulnerable people. Treat them accordingly. That's why i actually wade through this frustration to write all this stuff. 

The pattern I wrote about in 2009 is still here: people wanting to feel superior through “special knowledge.” The difference now is we have no excuse for not recognizing it.

The reverse rapture isn’t a prophetic event. It’s a spiritual tantrum. It’s people floating away on balloons of superiority because doing the actual work of discipleship is harder than joining a club that tells you you’re already special.

If you’re tempted by the insider itch, if you find yourself looking down on other believers because they don’t share your particular obsession, here’s my advice: Get over yourself. Read your Bible. Join a church. Learn to carry your pain without turning it into a weapon against the Body of Christ.

Because the moment you start believing you’re part of some special remnant that’s smarter than everyone else, you’ve already been raptured... right out of the humility that makes faith possible in the first place.

Reverse Rapture - Part 2: Who Falls For This Stuff?

Reverse Rapture Part 1

After writing about that whole “reverse rapture” prophecy, with all its specific, verifiable claims that we can check against reality on September 24, this one question keeps bugging me:

What makes people fall for this stuff? Over and over again?

You’d think that by now, after enough failed rapture dates and “God told me about Bitcoin” prophecies, Christians would develop better discernment. But every few months, someone with a YouTube channel releases another “word,” and just like clockwork, it spreads through church WhatsApp groups like wildfire.

I so wish it was just stupidity or lack of Bible knowledge. There’s a whole ecosystem that creates this vulnerability. Lemme give you a quick introduction to the types of people you'd meet there.

The Shortcut Seeker

I meet these Christians all the time. They want prophecy, fire tunnels, soaking sessions... anything except the slow work of sitting with Scripture. They’ll chase the latest “deep revelation” but won’t work through a basic Pauline argument in Romans.

They want spiritual six-packs without doing the reps. But there’s no shortcut to what only time and deliberate, dedicated surrender can build.

The Disillusioned Drifter

These break my heart. They’ve been burnt by church (sometimes legitimately). They saw hypocrisy, bad leadership, maybe even abuse. But instead of healing through the Word, prayer and humbly seeking out healthy fellowship, they ran from church entirely.

Now they don’t trust traditional church, but they’ll trust Telegram groups full of “anointed intel” with no accountability, no test, no grounding. In American-ese, they rejected one kind of Kool-Aid and started drinking another.

The Chronically Undiscipled

Let’s be direct: many of our churches failed these people. They can quote Philippians 4:13, but they’ve never been taught how to handle Scripture properly. If their pastors had substance, they might have wondered if they'd lose attendance from the services by feeding the people anything more substantial than sermon-ites for christian-lites. Oftentimes, fearing that they would lose their congregation to the latest fashionable church, the pastors dilute and dumb down the meat of the Scriptures. End result? A flock who are fundamentally children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of  men. (Ephesians 4:14)

So when someone says to them “God showed me Ezekiel 40 is about cryptocurrency,” they genuinely can’t tell if it’s false teaching or just revelation they’re too immature to understand yet. They’re not gullible because they’re stupid. They’re gullible because they’re starving. And sometimes they don't even know it...

The End-Times Entrepreneur

This type fascinates me. They love prophetic charts, geopolitical decoding, Nephilim timelines, AND they also believe God wants to make them rich through end-times investments. They don’t want discipleship. They want to front-run the apocalypse and call it obedience. That's fine if they keep to their own circles, among people with their kind of appetite for risk. It isn't that fine if they drag in the church janitor and the small scale English Tutor and lose their money in some fancy investment scheme that collapses just before the returns were supposed to be paid out. 

The Hungry and Overlooked

These are the ones who really get to me. They’re not trying to manipulate anyone. They’re just lonely, powerless, spiritually malnourished. Nobody ever discipled them properly or taught them how to test prophecy. When someone finally tells them they’re part of a chosen remnant about to receive wealth and purpose, they believe it. Because they desperately need to. They’re not chasing prophets. They’re chasing hope.

They are often the sort who are quiet at church, who might turn up for events a few times and realize no one notices if they were there or not, then quietly fade back into the woodwork. They don't fit into our preconceived image of the successful churchgoer, those who have the best faith, the right doctrine, the pithiest sayings of "humble" yet confident faith. God sees them as important, but do the rest of us at church show them how God sees them?

Why This Matters

False prophecy spreads in an ecosystem of shallow teaching and deep spiritual hunger. Behind every ridiculous YouTube prophet is a crowd of Christians who never got the tools to distinguish truth from garbage. We can’t just cringe, roll our eyes and move on. If we want people to stop falling for this stuff, we need to address the conditions that make them vulnerable in the first place.

So, yes - first go read your Bible. Really read it. Not for quotes or proof-texts, but to let it train you. There’s no substitute for that slow, sometimes boring work of learning to hear God’s actual voice. Then open your eyes at church and see if you recognize amongst your churchmates any of the above groups I brought up above. Or the next time God lays on your heart someone you haven't seen in church for a while, you might want to send them a text and just see if they are doing ok. 

Because sometimes the best defence against false prophecy isn't just good doctrine, it's a church community that actually sees and cares for its people. This is how we stop having to ask this question again in six months... 

Reverse Rapture: Part 3