Another Source of Worship Ministry Conflicts

Some time back I talked about one of the causes of worship ministry conflicts, people placing different levels of priority on performance and participation. There is actually another cause of conflicts and misunderstanding in worship ministry, and it is how we see worship ministry through the eyes of our own personal giftings.

1 Peter 4:10 (NIV) - Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.

What usually happens is that people will tend to fellowship with others with the same gifting. Teachers will enjoy hanging out with other teachers, prophets with other prophets and so on. This is how they develop themselves to be even stronger and effective in that particular area. The problems arise when they assume that they are the only ones who are right and the others are wrong. And THAT can lead to massive conflicts, strife and even people leaving the ministry.

Let's see how it works out in the following scenarios

1) Choosing songs for a worship set –

If you are a teacher, you'll probably prefer songs that are Scripture set to music and those that have solid lyrical content (like hymns). If you are an evangelist, you might prefer invitation-type songs such as So You Would Come (Hillsongs). If you are more prophetically inclined, you may prefer songs that are more figurative, poetic or symbolic, such as Dance with Me by Jesus Culture.

You can already see from here how conflicts can arise. Not many people are at the level of maturity when they can see the differences how other people approach worship ministry and celebrate them.

2) And how about worship music?

An evangelist will prefer what appeals to the pre-believers, exciting, performance-style music. Why? Because it is more likely to bring in the crowds for him or her to preach to. A prophet will prefer more a repetitive, droning style of music. A teacher will prefer more laid-back, unobtrusive musical accompaniment that does not distract the people from the lyrical content.

3) What if the church is spiritually dead in the area of praise and worship?

A prophet will be more inclined to think finding an anointed worship leader or on-fire worship team to minister to the congregation will work. This is more like the style of Old Testament prophets; they would seek God, speak to God's people to bring them the message on God's heart, and things happen. A teacher will try to get a worship trainer or pastor to teach the congregation. A pastor will be the one who worries about whether there are groups of people within the congregation who are alienated by any changes in the worship ministry or style, because it's unacceptable to him (or her) to rejoice over the 99 sheep who remain and write off the 1 who leaves (Luke 15:3).

Conclusion:

Of course, we know everything isn't that cut and dried in real life. Many church leaders have a mix of giftings. For example, many pastors have the teaching gifting to some degree, in fact, Paul puts it as a requirement (1 Tim 3:2). Timothy was supposed to both teach (1 Tim 4:11) and do the work of an evangelist (2 Tim 4:5). And Peter, in Acts 2:17-18, says:

Acts 2:17-18 (NIV) – "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy."

This suggests to me that every believer has the potential to move in the prophetic gifting in some way. By the way, Jack Deere has written a chapter on how the key people in the history of the Presbyterian denomination (such as John Knox) actually moved in the gift of prophecy. It makes an astounding read. It's in his book Surprised by the Voice of God. Do check it out, it's a very good example of how a teacher (Jack Deere) sees the gift of prophecy from a teacher's perspective.

Anyway, many people I have met slant their thinking along one particular gifting, and have the priorities that come with that gifting. So I hope that this post will help you see your own slant and understand the perspectives of those around you, so that we can understand each other better, have less conflict and work together for the glory of God!

Be blessed!

P.S. Jack Deere's book, Surprised by The Voice of God, is a well-thought-out, Scriptural look at how God speaks to his people today. It has my highest recommendation for every believer, especially those who are seriously want to hear the voice of God in their lives and want to avoid the common mistakes. You can get it here!

Bible Regime

“…reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.” (1 Tim 4:7, NKJV)

Though you know by now that I am a worship leader and musician, not a Bible teacher, a number of people have commented favorably about my grasp of Scripture. I’ve been asked if I was a seminary student at some time. Flattering!

For those of you who have the New Year’s resolution to have a firmer grasp on God’s word this 2008, I decided to share two of my basic attitudes that have helped me tremendously in this area.

The first is found in 1 Tim 4:7, “…exercise yourself toward godliness.” The NIV has it as “…train yourself to be godly.” This tells me two things: first, that godliness is NOT natural for us. If it was we wouldn’t need to train ourselves for it, right? Second, that godliness can be uncomfortable. We need training to get past the stage of discomfort and godliness becomes a trained reflex, an ingrained reaction.

Applying it to the Bible, it means that if we want to know the Bible, we need to put in sustained consistent effort on a particular aspect of it. Talk with runners and sportsmen, people who are intimately acquainted with the nature of exercise, and they will tell you that you will not get the full benefits of a particular exercise by doing it just once and leaving it alone for a year. They will recommend doing the same exercises daily, or at least 3-4 times a week, for 4-6 weeks. So if we take this idea and apply to studying the Bible, we should have 4-6 weeks of reading the same book, chapters or verses over and over again in order to get intimately familiar with it. 

One thing you will discover though, is that once you start getting into the swing of seriously studying one part of the Bible, you take less time to understand other parts. After I spent a lot of time training myself in the book of Psalms, (I tried to memorize about 30 Psalms, spent more than a year on them) I found that I could recall other parts of the Bible (like the Gospels) more easily when I needed them. This did not make sense to me when I first started, but now I realized that, after all, it’s all by the same writer, the Holy Spirit, right?

The second idea that has been useful to me is that of the Scripture being food. In Hebrews 5:12 the truths of God’s word are both milk (for infants) and solid food (for the mature). Here’s something to ponder: Do you honestly think a baby contentedly feeding at his mother’s breast understands or is aware in any way about the immunoglobins, antibodies and the colostrum in his mother’s milk? And is he shortchanged in any way by his lack of understanding or awareness?

I knew that in Matthew 13:19 it says that if we do not understand the word of the Kingdom sown into us, the wicked one snatches the word away. But here’s my question: how then can we get ourselves to the point when we do understand God’s word?

“Think about what I am saying. The Lord will help you to understand all these things.” (2 Tim 2:7, International Standard Version)

And the word for ‘think’ in that passage is noieo, which literally means “to exercise the mind towards” (Strongs #3539). Yes, the idea of exercise again! That suggests to me that the understanding will not always come easily, but that we need to spend time on the Word, thinking about it.

Our job is to think, to meditate, and to exercise our minds towards God’s word. The Lord’s role is to give the understanding. If we do not fulfill our role in this matter, we are making it difficult for the Lord to fulfill his.

The key point of what I am sharing is this. Very often we hear testimonies of people sharing about encountering God in a very real way in his word. They tell us about how the eyes of their understanding were opened on that special occasion and share the powerful insights they receive from the Bible. And we go back home, open up our Bibles, and, like every other day, nothing much happens, at least, nothing that we can see, feel or even articulate in words. And we think that means nothing is happening within us as we feed on God’s word.

Because we want something tangible quickly, it is tempting in this day and age to let other people do the thinking and studying of God’s word for us and then turn up for their Bible study classes. That way we at least have some information that we can share or articulate with other people, and we believe that we have benefited from the time spent exposing ourselves to the Bible.

Also take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:17, International Standard Version)

Having spent a significant amount of time training in kenjutsu (Japanese fencing) believe me when I say that you can truly acquire skill in using a sword not by simply watching others swing theirs around, but taking one up yourself and seriously spending time on it.

It takes time to get really familiar with a tool to the point when you can use it not only for its obvious applications, but for others which are not so obvious. There will be seasons of frustration when you think you aren’t making any progress at all. But you have to persevere through these seasons in order to reap the benefits of regular consistent training.

So it is with God’s word. Talk with those who spent years in full-time study of God’s word. You will discover that most of the time it was ho-hum and nothing exciting. And yet through that time God was sharpening their understanding of his word. But it takes faith and patience to persevere to that point they have such a grasp of the scriptures.

Do your best to present yourself to God as an approved worker who has nothing to be ashamed of, handling the word of truth with precision. (2 Tim 2:15, ISV)

During difficult seasons, I faced the upheavals and trials oftentimes using the very same passages that have brought me through previous tough times. When everything is changing and not all the changes are good, facing difficulties with a familiar sword in hand (the crisis Psalms, what else?) is a source of comfort. The more familiar we are with the Scriptures, the better we can adapt to the increasing challenges we face as we mature in Christ.

Well, here are my thoughts on becoming skilled in our handling of God’s word. I am sure there are other viewpoints and ideas that are useful also, but I thought sharing my own ideas on this might be useful to some of you.

So have a great and blessed 2008, and may God’s word come alive to you even more than it has before!