Here you'll find my thoughts, questions and sharing on what it means to teach, lead and play for worship. You're gonna get JJ uncensored and real here... not for the closed-minded!
Picture this: it’s the caveman-internet era. You’re a young, enthusiastic mega-church musician. There’s a huge shortage of worship guitarists at the cell group level, and you come up with a system: a way to teach strumming without needing standard notation. It’s brilliant. It works. Suddenly, more groups have guitarists who can hold down the chords and keep worship going.
Then the knock comes: “Hey, what about piano? Can you do the same for us?”
Now, what’s the fastest way to get a pianist “ready” for worship? Simple. Treat them like a guitarist. Give them one (maybe two) shapes per chord. Show them a couple of comping patterns. Drop them into the songs. Done. Congratulations: you’ve just created the guitarization of worship piano.
Fast forward a few years: what do you get? Pianists who can play “patterns,” but not music. They can thump out chords, but can’t adapt when singers go off-script. They can fill space, but not lead people. Worst of all? They start believing that’s all there is.
When such people see my piano playing at church, they miss the principles and dive straight for the formula. They don’t want to learn how I build vocabulary to support the song; they just want more stock phrases to dump into their playing, to impress themselves with their own cleverness. It’s the musical equivalent of forcing kids to memorise “风和日丽,” “my jaw dropped,” and “my face turned pale” for PSLE “creative writing.” That, applied in spades to piano, is what many of those “pianists” want.
But that’s not music. That’s mimicry. Real playing breathes. It reacts. It listens. It anchors the song and opens space for others to sing and respond. The goal isn’t to copy what sounds impressive, it’s to serve; it's to make the whole team sound like one body instead of five individuals fighting for air.
The piano can be so much more.
As long as people are effective and they can serve, I won’t criticize. Plenty of pianists are happy to just strum along on 88 keys, and if their churches are blessed, that’s enough. But if you’ve done enough of that and you’re restless for more (or you’re classically trained and the cookie-cutter chord approach gives you musical acid reflux) know this: you’re not crazy. The piano really can be more.
When I sit at the piano, I don’t want it to be a large, heavy and loud guitar substitute. I want it to breathe, to carry, to shape the worship. And if you feel that tug too… well, maybe we should talk.
Preservice rehearsal. Small team. Worship leader on guitar, another vocalist, me on keys.
Worship leader: “We sound monotonous. How can we vary the dynamics?”
Me: “You know why we sound monotonous? Because you’re strumming non-stop.”
Him: “Okay… then some parts I play softer?”
Did I stutter?
People wonder why I’m such a grumpy old man. But frankly, I don’t blame the guitarists. I blame how they were taught.
If they came from a cookie-cutter, mass-production school, odds are they were made to memorize a few strumming patterns by rote. Instead of learning to build rhythm from the ground up, to adapt to chord changes, to accent key parts of the singing, just be glad if they can even keep time with drummers at different tempos.
Critical details, such as:
Where to strum
How to use the palm for percussive drive
How to move between whisper-light accents and floor-holding power
…Forget about it.
In the rush to churn out factory-preset guitarists, basics are always the first to die. Same as with drums: stick drills reveal if the wrist motion is correct. Strumming has its own checkpoints too, but they take time, they take correction, and correction doesn’t sell.
Because too many adult learners don’t like being corrected, and too many teachers won’t risk losing students to the “fun” music school down the street. So what we get is a generation of guitarists who sound the same, no matter the song. In a small group or prayer meeting, the continual spamming and right-hand spasms might still be tolerable, but in a church band? You should see the horrified expressions from guitarists when I suggest they maybe take a break during the verse and let the pianist anchor, just for sonic variety.
So what’s the answer, JJ?
I don’t have one. God didn’t appoint me the Church Music Standards Police. I’m not issuing chord-offence citations every time someone abuses G-D-Em-C. And I’ve got no interest in starting another cookie-cutter factory school to compete with the ones already out there, cajoling adults who think learning skills are supposed to be as easy as casual hobbies. I’m too old for this.
But if you’ve ever felt stuck, if you’ve wondered why your strumming sounds the same no matter what you play, maybe it’s time to stop memorizing patterns and start learning rhythm for real.
I was at a small conference not long ago. Two instruments sat there waiting: a shiny digital keyboard with every patch you could imagine, and a plain Yamaha upright. I went for the upright. Why? Because when you’re leading worship in an unfamiliar place, with no idea what might collapse mid-set, you don’t want to gamble on gadgets. With the acoustic, it was all or nothing. No transpose button. No space age pad to cover weak voicings. Just ten fingers, muscle memory, and guts. That’s how I like it.
The Shortcut Whisper
I don’t mistrust the transpose button because it fails. I mistrust it because it works, all too well. It whispers: why wrestle with a tough key when one press can move the whole world? Same with capos. I carry one in the guitar bag for emergencies; if someone insists on singing in E♭, fine, strap it on and get through. But capo-as-lifestyle? Second fret so you can play G-shapes in A? That’s when you’re no longer learning the instrument. That’s planting your rear end in the baby stroller and refusing to learn how to walk.
From Crutch to Cage
And here’s the problem: shortcuts feel like freedom at first, but they turn into chains. Soon you cannot imagine life without your trusty crutch. Effectiveness pays the price. Capo up a few frets and you’ve sawed off your low end; you’re basically strumming a six-string ukulele. Keep leaning on the transpose button, and you’ll never know what to do when it’s not there. Try leading worship like that. Good luck when the leader calls for a spontaneous key change, or when the only instrument around is the upright piano in the Salvation Army Chapel.
The Hard Road That Built Freedom
When I look back, I see how God used my lack of shortcuts to train me. On piano, I practiced songs like As the Deer in all twelve keys. On guitar, I had no instrument of my own, only whatever warped-neck loaners people were willing to bring along. Try forcing barre chords out of those. Frustration? Plenty. But the payoff was huge: today I can pull off mid-neck voicings in A, or throw shimmering chords in E that sound like the wind from heaven. People see “expert.” Truth is, it’s just years without safety nets.
Why It Matters for Worship
And here’s the ministry angle: worship isn’t a studio. It’s not about playing safe with your toys. It’s not about what makes you comfortable (God, how I despise that word!). It’s about service. Sometimes you’ll be in a big church with every gadget. Sometimes you’ll be in a village with only an old upright. Sometimes you’ll be leading prayer with just an acoustic guitar and your voice. At that point, shortcuts won’t save you. Only foundations will.
Your Turn
If this hit a little too close to home, good. That means it’s time to change. That’s why I built my Worship Piano and Guitar Mentorships: to help musicians trade shortcuts for skill, safety nets for real freedom. [Click here to explore them →]
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…
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.
Many adult students I have think it is much easier for
children to learn a music instrument. Having taught young children before, I
can tell you they face the same difficulties as the adults do: learning
physical coordination for a unfamiliar form of movement, learning how to read
music and think in the music language (especially the counts). I see them
struggle the same way we adults do.
The main advantages children have, compared to us, are:
They are used to struggling to learn anything.
They have just learned how to walk, they are in the midst of learning languages
and maybe even mathematics and all that. Everything was a struggle, they
learned nothing effortlessly. We adults are used to knowing what we are doing,
and sometimes the struggle of learning new things catches us by surprise.
Sometimes we let that overwhelm us into thinking things are more difficult than
they actually are. Nope, they are not. You want to know what’s difficult? A
young child learning English. That is so difficult it is a miracle that some
people succeed!
They have fewer demands on their time. It’s
easier to get kids to practice an hour a day, or even more. We have to juggle
practice with work, family and church. That is why I respect those people who
make themselves available to serve at church even at a moment’s notice. Every
church needs a few of those in-case-of-emergency-break-glass people. It is a
big deal in my eyes!
They also have parents to pay for the music
lessons for them. Admit it, people. No matter how much you currently earn, you
would still rather someone else pay for your music lessons and buy you your
first instrument, right?
But since we are adults, like it or not, we’ll just have to
make do with the time and resources we currently have. What then can we do to
best optimize our limited practice time?
Keep turning up for lessons.
Over the years I’ve seen many people will cancel a lesson if
they have not been practicing. By now I have taught even more adults than
children, and I know with absolute certainty these people end up not practicing
in the long run. This just doesn’t work.
You people know I
don’t do a prima donna thing or throw tantrums during lessons if you don’t
measure up. If you don’t get things right I will tell you, but I still try to
show the fruit of the Spirit during lessons. I also pace out the lesson
contents so that as long as you keep turning up for lessons you WILL improve,
even if you don’t practice. And if you are having any difficulty getting the
hang of any particular lesson, lesson time gives me a better chance to figure
out what is actually going on and to help you work your way around your
difficulties.
So keep turning up!
Important point – when it comes to drums, turning up for
lessons is even more important than for other instruments such as piano.
Playing drums is a very physical activity, and if you are intending to practice
a lot by yourself I need to keep an eye on you to make sure you are not picking
up any bad habits.
Fit practice into your lifestyle
I was always the weird guy in secondary school; I carried a
pair of drumsticks in my school bag every day. It didn’t help my dating life,
but I certainly got a lot of practice done! I have heard of people who work for
themselves, and when they want to learn guitar or keyboard they actually keep
those instruments in their offices and squeeze in some practice during their
lunchtime or during quieter afternoons.
Doing the same for drums is of course a challenge, but there
are still things we can do to get more practice done. A pair of sticks and a
drum pad allows us to practice our single strokes and all that even on long bus
journeys. Listening to a metronome app on your phone while tapping your feet
helps you develop your sense of tempo even further. And any time you get to sit
down for a couple of minutes, on a train journey or waiting for your food at a
restaurant, is an opportunity to train your limb coordination with the ABC
drill.
Don’t think you can practice effectively only if you have
the proper drum set at home. In my generation, most drum students didn’t have
supportive parents or easy access to equipment, so we would make do with drum
sticks on the phone book (Yellow Pages), or set up cushions on the family sofa
just to have something to bang on. It actually allowed us to focus on getting
our movement correct (wrist, not arm) instead of getting distracted by all the
bells and whistles on the drum kit.
Those improvised practice sets could not
totally replace practicing on the actual drums, but they made sure that by the
time we could sit down there to practice, we could practice just what we needed
the kit for. No point trying out advanced snare and tom patterns if you can’t
even manage your sticks correctly, agree?
Focus on the foundations
As I just said, there is no point trying out advanced snare
and tom patterns if you don’t manage your sticks properly. The foundations of
drumming are still essential and you still need to keep practicing them (I still do).
Basic stick control (drum rudiments).
Hand-foot coordination; and
Counting (music pulse).
All these can be practiced with 2 chairs, a cushion (or drum
pad) and a pair of sticks. When you start practicing fills you can get away
with using 2 drum pads (to simulate the hi-hat and the snare). The point is
that you have to show yourself faithful with the little first before you can be
entrusted with much. We are now at the point of the lessons when we are
learning drum fills and how to apply them. Your hands have to move from the
hi-hat to the snare, the toms and the crash cymbal. If you will still continue
to practice those foundational skills you will find all of the other stuff you
are learning now much easier.
So do not despise
doing the paradiddle exercise I taught you in the first lesson. I still practice
that myself to maintain my basic coordination and stick work!
I hope all these thoughts help you get more out of your
practice from now on. See you at the next lesson!
Some days I still get awestruck at the sheer volume of music teaching available on Youtube. If you price each lesson at $20, the total price of what has been shared there is well over the millions, of that I am certain. Sometimes I bemoan the fact that Youtube wasn’t available during my early days of learning music. If it was I would probably be 3-4 times better than I am now!
That said, however, the fact remains: you will ALWAYS need drum teachers, teaching face-to-face, live and in person. Even video conference lessons aren’t good enough, especially for beginners, for teaching the basics and foundations of drumming.
Why? Because drumming is a very physical art. A typical beginner starts with very poor kinaesthetic awareness. In plain English, most people aren’t very aware of where their limbs are, doing what and when. And that is why you people keep hearing me go like this during lessons:
“Use wrist…” “Less elbow…’ “Wrist…” “Shins 90 degrees to the ground” “Wrist…” “Wrist…” "Elbows more to the front…” “Wrist…”
Because drumming is very physical, you all need immediate feedback and correction when you are doing things incorrectly. Bad habits are hard to break, and they affect not only your playing but also your physical health. That is why I start our lessons off with warm-ups that improve your joint mobility. These exercises help rehab your arm joints before modern life messes them up for you, and help prevent problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
If you have difficulty coordinating your footwork with your hands, I have to prompt you during your practice as well, either by demo-ing before you in mirror image, or even by gently prodding your limbs with a drumstick here and there.
During every lesson I am also listening carefully to your playing and counting. I am listening out for hints of where you are unsure of the counts. If your counting is hazy, your playing will be hazy too. I change tempo on the metronome often to check for this as well. I don’t want you to end up being able to play beats or fills at only a few speeds and totally messing up at other speeds.
Many beginners mentally miss out the very last eighth-note count (quaver) of the bar. When that happens it affects your fills. I’ve heard countless wannabes who speed up the tempo after every drum fill. 80%-90% of the time it is because they mentally shaved off that final count of that bar, bringing the start of the next bar even sooner. So the song gets more rushed as it goes along.
Most of the time this is merely irritating to trained musicians. But playing drums for church has become more musically demanding over the past 10 years. Songs like “Beautiful One” by Tim Hughes or “Hosanna” by Hillsong are quite unforgiving; you have to get the tempo correct and maintain it for the whole song, or the worship leaders and the congregation can end up struggling to sing those songs properly.
That is all part and parcel of learning what it means to count, to establish and build upon the pulse of the music.
We are also starting to see the connection between what we sing and what we play on the drums, especially with what I call the “Stand-by-me beat”. This is my biggest value-aid: I teach drums based on what best supports the worship leader and the congregation. This is when counting aloud in earlier exercises start to pay off. The connection we established between your mouth and your limbs will help you match your drumming with the singing.
That makes your drumming a better support for the singing. I worked with drummers whose playing was based more on whatever funky grooves caught their fancy rather than what helped the singing. No matter how good they are, their playing would mechanical and disconnected at best. Very often the playing was distracting, making it hard for the congregation and worship leader to pay proper attention to what they are singing.. Of course I could tell such drummers what to play, but they would easily forget and go back to playing distracting stuff. The musicality was not built into them at the very beginning, so it got more difficult to add that in later on.
So this is what we are studying at this stage of your journey. Work hard on all this material now; we will soon be moving on to things you will actually be playing on the drums for worship.
How to keep the wrong people out of the worship team
Pro 14:15 - The simple believes every word, but the prudent considers well his steps. (NKJV)
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how gullible some worship ministry leaders can get. I've seen many of them taken in by people who say they are serious about serving in the worship team, yet are not willing to put in the effort to get training. Sometimes those leaders approach me and say things like "That person is very serious about worship ministry, he has the heart for worship, can you help him?"
This, by the way, is usually an indirect request for free music lessons. People in church can be like that. This comes from a spirit of poverty upon that person, but that's a topic for another day…
I know I sound uncaring and calculative, but I've done this way too often and I have NEVER seen my efforts bear fruit. Such people never practice what I tell them to practice, never put in the work they need to put in and as a result never become effective in service. So don't waste my time!
Pro 20:11 Even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is pure and right. (NKJV)
I wonder how much heartache and frustration would have been averted if ministry leaders kept the wrong people out of the worship band. In this day and age people have no excuses to not have the skills for whatever instrument they wish to play. Youtube has easily millions of dollars worth of music lessons available for free. Anyone who is serious but lacking in funds can easily head over there and get loads of good instrument and vocal teaching.
Of course it takes more work to organize and understand the material, but a serious person won't let that stop him or her!
But how about the heart? Would every good Christian musician have what it takes to do well in the worship ministry? Not necessarily. Here's a simple list of what they need to be an asset to your worship team.
Basic level of skill with the instrument or voice – easily checked during the audition. And as a side benefit, if someone has a basic level of skill with an instrument, it shows that he or she is capable of putting in consistent work over a period of time. This basic level of discipline is very useful for many areas of life, not just music.
Willingness to take a supporting role – you have to explain this during the briefings and auditions. Why? Because many immature musicians who are more impressed with flashiness rather than good taste, can hear a mature church band (playing only what is necessary) and think they are called of God to join the team and show the rest of the musicians how to rock the church building for the glory of God. They are expecting that once they show off their stuff on the guitar fretboard or piano key, for example, all the rest of you would immediately affirm them and say "That's great! If only you joined us earlier!!" And Sunday worship would be made up of them "humbly" displaying their skills to the glory of God…
Don't wait until they start overplaying on Sunday before you tell them that they need to restrain themselves. Tell them early and let them decide if they still want to join the worship team.
Willingness to follow direction – this is the most crucial point.
If I tell a musician to play something in a particular way, and I know this musician has the necessary skill for it, this musician has totally no excuse for not following my instructions. "I'll try" is an unacceptable answer. If they cannot remember my instructions, then they should write them down on the chord charts I take time to prepare for every session I lead worship.
(Or they could just simply follow the chord charts. It takes only a couple of months to learn how to read them. A musician who plays solely by ear may be stuck in his/her ways already. Teaching them how to read chord charts is a quick way to see if they are still teachable and humble…)
Of course, I can be that dogmatic when giving specific instructions to other musicians. That's because I understand music, can play 3 instruments and have loads of experience teaching adult learners. If you don't have that level of skill and understanding you may have to be more careful when issuing such firm instructions. But at a minimum, you should expect musicians to follow the chord charts, just as you would expect singers to follow the song lyrics you give, and not keep changing the lyrics every time you do the song. People who will not do that do NOT have the necessary heart to serve in a worship ministry.
On YOUR part…
… if you are the worship leader or the leader of the ministry, you have to make every effort to make sure your followers have no valid reasons to not follow your directions.
That's why if I lead worship I prepare my own chord charts, ensure they are sent out a couple of days before, going through everything during the rehearsal and check if the musicians and vocalists can hear me and the anchor instrument I am using. As a leader you need to anticipate problems and deal with them or move around them.
How do you check if a musician can follow directions?
You have to build all that into the audition process. Give them directions and see how they follow. One idea is to tell them to repeat a chorus three times and build up the intensity each time. Give them some leeway in how they do it, but see if they do it, or at least try. Then decide from there.
Conclusion:
Never be desperate to take in just anybody. It's a recipe for trouble. The last thing you want is a worship "team" made up of individualistic players, each off in his or her own world, contributing more noise than music and giving you attitude problems in other ways as well. Keep the wrong people out and exercise your faith to believe God to provide the right musicians, those with a genuine heart for worship ministry.
May you and your worship team grow both in size and skill, in the name of Jesus!
Announcement:
I've noticed that some people have purchased my Invisible Worship Musician e-book but have not signed up for the special lessons and updates emails. If you are one of them, please email me so I can put you on that list. I have some lesson materials that are more private, and kept only for the people on that list. Thanks!
One of my friends, Chingmei, shared this video with me via Facebook a few weeks back. I think it's a great video, with a drumstick exercise that I find pretty challenging.
Here's the vid.
If you find it useful, share this with your drummer friends! And if you don't play drums, watch it and you'll discover that a drummer's life isn't as simple as everyone else thinks it is... :)
Awesome in Power (Rick Founds, CCLI#631526) is a simple and powerful song that works well in many worship situations. This vid is about how I'd teach it and lead it for a group of people who don't know the song. Enjoy!
As you'll see from the video and the notes, this is a easy song for people to latch on to and use. If I had to lead worship for a group of people whom I totally don't know, and if they don't know each other either, I might as well use a song unfamiliar to EVERYONE, so they all start on the same page. And when they get it, they get it together. Awesome in Power allows that to happen quite easily and quickly, IF you do it the way I did.
Try it out yourself and let me know how it goes for you?
I’d be talking with some business people, and they’ll tell me what kind of customers they want, usually those who would mindlessly buy all their products at prices way above the market rate. Fair enough. I mean, if I was in business that’s the kind of customers I would want too.
And when I ask, “What are these people like? What do they care about? Where can you find them?” I usually get blank stares. Or they say “Can you help improve the English in our advertisement so that we can appeal to those people?” They’ve probably realized that their advertising isn’t working, so they hope that a quick fix (like improving the grammar) is enough to have hordes of crazed customers banging down their doors, begging for the chance to give them tons of money…
If business was THAT simple, shouldn't I do it myself and take all the money? Come on!
(“JJ, I thought this is about worship ministry?” - I’ll get to that in a moment!)
Those business people don’t realize that you cannot create something, present it to your ideal customer and try to trick them into buying it. Unless you are the only source of a product everyone needs, you have to know what your customers are looking for, what matters to them and how to give them what THEY want to buy, not what you want to sell to them.
Makes sense?
Just as clueless as the business people I mentioned earlier are many church leaders when looking for worship musicians. They approach recruiting church musicians with the same amount of care, planning and thought those businesses approach acquiring customers – almost zero.
Let me put this to you in business terms: when you are recruiting church musicians, you are doing sales. You are selling people the opportunity to be used by God in a powerful ministry that can deeply touch the lives of people, and can oftentimes unlock many other hidden giftings within the servers as well.
And what is the price? The price they have to pay to buy this opportunity is time; time spent on lessons and practice to acquire the relevant skills and knowledge, as well as time spent on rehearsals and service. This is time that can be spent with the family, on the career or the social life, or studying other areas of interest.
(Taking me for example - the biggest reason I am currently a socially-inept worship ministry geek is because of all the time I spent practicing during my younger days. That was the price I paid. This is why I can’t do youth ministry. I totally don’t understand youth, because I spent my youth on scales and drum rudiments!)
Besides time, many musicians have also invested considerable sums of money, both in their lessons and to purchase their instruments for practice. Let’s not include the opportunity cost, all the money they could have made if they spent their free time working instead of practising!
From this we can see that it takes a certain personality type to become a musician. Working with this type of people is like marketing to the affluent. If you try to sell products and services to the affluent without understanding what makes them different from the rest of the market, you will fail.
Dismally.
There is one thing many worship musicians have in common. And if you understand this ONE feature, you will know how to recruit them, how to handle them and how to lead them.
What is it?
Worship musicians very often lack confidence.
This makes sense if you stop and really think about it. Music is very wide ranging and diverse, and after some time the musician become aware of all the areas they are still not good at. Sight-reading? Arranging? Playing in a particular style, such as baroque, classical, jazz or R & B? Playing by ear? Improvisation? Transposing?
This lack of confidence applies across the board, whether the musician started lessons from young or took up an instrument later on in life. Someone who reads notes feels inadequate when facing a musician who plays entirely by ear. Musicians who play entirely by ear often feel insecure because they know that there are many things they cannot practice and train in unless they can read notes. Some of them feel like they are musical fakers, without genuine substance and music skill. And this nagging sense of insecurity remains no matter how much praise they receive for their music and how much encouragement others give them.
This lack of confidence colours a lot of what musicians do and how they think, yet it is something they HATE to admit to. So if you put them in a place where they have to admit their lack of confidence or show that their skills are lacking, they won't turn up.
That is why, when churches are recruiting worship musicians, I tell them to put up their list of worship musician criteria up on their website. Don't be lazy and say "We'll tell them our criteria when they tell us they are interested". It's very likely that the vast majority WON'T. They will scan through your church website and see if the info is there. If it isn't there, many of them are NOT going to ask. They don't want to bring up the topic, find out that they don't measure up, and then have to admit that to you. They hate that feeling.
This applies if you are announcing your recruitment exercise from the pulpit. Unless you stress that there are criteria and the musicians who wish to join your worship team can find out what they are in a non-threatening way, you are making it hard for them to approach you. If you put the criteria some place where they can check it up themselves, it is a lot less threatening to them.
Imagine that you are a shopowner, you've got many customers walking into a shop but your shop staff ignore them and don't even TRY to give them some information on what you have for sale or find out what they are looking for. As a business owner, should you tolerate this kind of sloppy service? It's costing you business!
But if you have a website or blog for your church and you don't put up your criteria for worship musicians up there, that's costing you worship musicians who may otherwise be a blessing to your congregation. That's fine if you have too many musicians already serving in your church, (let's say your church is smack in the middle of Nashville), but if you don't…
In the end, do you have a heart for your musicians?
If you know what matters to musicians, you will know how to communicate with them, are better able to give them what they want and help them give you what YOU want. But you have to be willing to understand and care for them, not try to make them fit YOUR idea of what worship ministry is like or see them only as resources to be exploited.
Don't give me excuses, saying "This is not how we do things in this church, this is not our culture." If you have musicians who come on board and soon quit, something is wrong. If your church is unable to recruit enough musicians in the long term, something is wrong. And you either fix it or go without good worship musicians. Or you are bouncing from one worship ministry crisis to another, wondering when will a large part of your musicians and worship leaders quit and leave you scrambling to recruit people again.
But if you engage with your worship musicians and work sincerely with them, you will find that you too will grow in understanding and maturity. And remember that the musicians in your church are God's people as well, redeemed by the blood, dear to his heart. Don't look at them only as useful to your successful running of a contemporary worship service. See them as people that God wants to love through you.
Remember, you are selling them the opportunity to be used by God in a powerful ministry that can deeply touch the lives of people, and can oftentimes unlock many other hidden giftings within the musicians too. This is a great product, and we know it will be a blessing to them. Are you willing to do what it takes to get this product to the right people, that they (and you) may be greatly blessed?
The ball is in YOUR court now!
P.S. if you find this useful, please tell your church friends and leaders about this blog. Thanks!
I've read the Twilight Series, the series of vampire-themed novels by Stephenie Meyer.
For those of you who want to understand the appeal of this series without having to plough through four thick novels, this series is essentially Cinderella writ large. Ordinary girl attracts the devotion of a fascinating male with immense physical powers, loads of money, a rich history and the kind of good looks we attribute to Greek gods.And then she herself undergoes that same transformation to rise up to his status, to become his equal, just as Cinderella became royalty through her marriage with the prince.
There, now I've saved you the hassle of reading four thick books. You now have more time to read the Bible and all my emails!
One interesting thought that occurred to me as I read through the books: many worship musicians are similar to the vampires in that series of novels. We have three areas of similarity:
1) Heightened Sensitivity
First, just as the vampires in the series have heightened physical senses, we worship musicians also have a very much higher level of sensitivity to sound, pitch and tempo. The vampires in that series can hear a human heart beating from across the road ("no big deal, JJ! I can hear coins dropped in the NEXT room!"). Musicians are likewise more sensitive to musical nuances than the average layperson.
This can range from being able to tell if someone is singing a little out-of-tune or is playing the snare drum a millisecond delayed on the 2nd and 4th counts, to the subtle different in electric guitar effects. When I was a piano newbie I didn't understand why people insisted on me using the correct sustain pedal technique. Later on I found to my surprise that I could hear, while conducting a group class, the sound of ONE student using the wrong pedalling technique. It was just so obvious to me after years of hearing it done right.
Being more sensitive to all these musical nuances is great when you are trying to tune up and refine your own musical skills, or the skills of your students. It often causes frustration, however, when it applies to relating with non-musicians. Ever been in a small group worship setting when you, the worship leader, are the ONLY person in the room singing in tune? Some musicians cannot listen past the discordant sounds to hear how the people are singing their hearts out to God and encountering God in worship. All many musicians notice is how everyone else is out-of-tune when trying to hit the high C# note. This can lead to much frustration in the hearts of impatient musicians.
Remember, in a worship setting all music technique (singing in pitch, instrument skill) is meaningful only to the extent it helps the people sing out their praises to God. Serving the people is the end objective. NEVER let the music distract you from serving the congregation, and never let it cause you to despise the people!
2) The Temptation to Prey on People
Second, even though the primary vampire family in the series chose not to feed on human blood, they acknowledged that feeding on humans is the natural inclination. We worship musicians may not literally be feeding on the congregation's blood, but we have to fight the inclination to prey on them in other ways, especially for approval and applause.
Beware, especially, the mindset that the congregation owes it to us to appreciate our music. They don't. They don't understand or care about how much effort we put in to ensure we fit our diminished licks into the dominant seventh (flatted ninth) chords, or to recreate the exact horn and orchestral arrangements that we heard from some massive Christian concert. And they are most likely going to lose focus and stop paying attention during the worship if we insist on putting in 64 bars of electric guitar solos every two songs or so.
This calls for understanding and restraint. We need to understand that if we serve the congregation well they are not going to notice the little things we do for them. Only God does, therefore we should look to HIM for our reward and approval, not men. And we need to restrain musical displays at all times, doing only what would serve the people, not draw attention to us and distract them from God.
3) The Need for Deliberate Effort to Understand
Third, the vampire family has to put in conscious, deliberate effort to act like humans because they wish to stay among them. Bella, the protagonist of the story, has to remember a whole list of things to do after she has become a vampire and her dad unknowingly comes to visit. She's got to remember to breathe, to blink, to fidget, to cross and uncross her legs and remember to go to the bathroom once in a while.
We worship musicians have to remember the same thing. I was in the office with Jeff (the guy who did the music notation for my book Invisible Worship Musician) a few days back and he was commenting that he did not want to get involved with teaching laypeople about the lifestyle of worship, because we musicians view the entire matter in a very different way from the congregation.
For example, many musicians cannot comprehend singing along to a 'worship' CD, while for an average layperson in church that is quite an acceptable option. We musicians feel scandalized that people can connect with God without the intervention of us anointed, Spirit-filled, God-appointed worship ministers! But in a practical sense we are replaceable by CDs, MIDI software or Youtube videos.
So if we want to serve God's people even more effectively than a CD, MIDI file or Youtube video, we need to understand the congregation and how they see music. And we use our music to serve them. Sometimes that means playing in a boring way, because we don't want to be a distraction. Sometimes that means more work, when we change or tweak a song so that it works better for the people.
Warning!
And at all times we have to beware the deception of music = worship. In the very first worship band I joined my church called us worship musicians the modern-day Levites, saying that we were tasked to bring people into the presence of God through worship. But this statement never sat well with me, because it raised the question: what does me being a great musician have to do with worship? Does understanding one automatically mean I understand the other? Or will I have to about worship the same way every other believer does, through the Bible illuminated by God's Holy Spirit?
To say that a musician is gifted in worship ministry is like saying that someone who speaks Japanese is gifted in interior design. If you meet a few people who speak Japanese and have studied ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) and use those insights in decorating a house tastefully, that does not mean that the next Japanese-speaker you meet has the same skills and opportunities. Likewise for musicians. For a musician to be effective in worship ministry, this musician needs to be taught the specific skills of worship music and to deliberately use those skills to support the praises of a congregation.
Being skilled in music does not necessarily mean that someone is able to serve well in worship ministry! It takes more than that. It takes an understanding of what the people need and a willingness to use music to serve that need. That is the true heart of a worship minister. May God work in our hearts and grant us the insights and skills we need to serve his people!
P.S. If you are a worship leader or musician, and haven't checked out my Invisible Worship Musician yet, what are you waiting for? In that book I share in detail the understanding, concepts and skills you need to be an effective worship leader and musician. Get your copy today!
P.P.S . Continue to pray for my California trip. More and more of the details are falling in place and I am very excited! Stay tuned for the exact dates and location, they will be released soon!
I'm a catalyst, accelerating change for people looking for breakthroughs in their spirit, soul and body. Expect the unexpected with me, and remember that I usually look at a matter at a few levels (at least) before committing myself to an opinion. Check out my posts, you'll get to see me, raw and uncensored...
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