Guitarization of Worship Piano

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.

Where to find me? Over here

Why Foundations Matter: Part 5 - Why Your Strumming Sounds the Same

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.

[Click here if you’re ready to trade cookie-cutter strumming for real rhythm →]

Why Foundations Matter: Part 4 - Shortcuts Cost You Freedom

The Acoustic Advantage

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 →]

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

Videos? No Competition

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.

See you at the next lesson!

Your Drum Journey

Congratulations on starting your adventure into the world of drums! It will be challenging, confusing and yet satisfying, I assure you. Just so you know, here is the big picture for your drum lessons for the next 3-5 lessons. You will start learning the 3 foundations of playing drums, which are 

1. basic stick control; 
2. hand-foot coordination; and 
3. counting (music pulse).

1) Basic stick-control

What’s the difference between just banging out rhythms on tables and walls (teenage boys do that all the time) and actually playing on the full drum kit? On the kit your playing has to be expressed through drumsticks. If you do not learn how to control the sticks properly, everything you do through your hands on the drums will be flawed. Once you have to play challenging stuff the flaws will become obvious.

So we aim to get some basic stick control first. Correct holding, correct wrist movement and all that. We all start with one hand weaker than the other, and the basic stick drills I teach will help you even it out for both hands and get both hands better. 

It is important to do this from the get-go. I’ve seen way too many people think they can skip this stage at the beginning. By the time they have to work on it properly the bad habits are too strong, it is very painful to fix. I’ve had to undo my bad habits for piano and drums before, and I know: it’s much easier to get things correct the first time!

2) Hand-foot coordination

This is the alphabet of drumming. They are not complex, but most normal people aren’t very well coordinated. The first few lessons help you build new connections within your brain, so that when new patterns and combinations come up your body is already primed to do them. You will also develop independence between your right hand and right foot. This is one of the trademarks of someone who has taken proper drum lessons before. 

3) Counting

This is about taking the pulse, the beat of the music, and knowing where everything you do on the drums fits in. People who are hazy about that are hazy in their drumming. Even worse, they are unable to adapt when the tempo of a song changes.

I’ve been involved with the worship ministry for about 20 years by now, and sat through countless practices and auditions. 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… 

If he had been taught to count he would not have messed things up in the first place. But he never learned how to count. You can never say such people are rusty in their skills, they never had the skills in the first place! 

Counting is vital. The drummer has one job in the band – to count. He or she has to count musically, to count dynamically, but to count. A drummer who cannot count is no drummer at all. And problems in any of the basics cannot be handled with a few tips and pointers during band rehearsals, they have to dealt with one-on-one in proper music lessons. 

Adaptability

In the end, the goal of proper basics is to give you the ability to adapt. Without proper basics, “drummers” can play slow, they can play fast, but cannot manage anything in between. Without proper basics, drummers can play soft, they can play bleeding-from-ears-loud, but cannot manage anything in between. The basics are very important.

Final note: don’t try to find shortcuts around what I teach you. Everything I teach now, and the way I teach now, is to prepare you for everything you’ll need to know for the next 4-6 months. If you come back to this post in a few months time you’ll understand on a deeper level what I am talking about here. 

See you at the next lesson! 

The Missing Piece

(This is Part 03 of my story. If you missed it, you can read Part 01 and Part 02 now)

Back to the story…

So there I was in my Christian life, enjoying results and fruit in my worship ministry, knowing that as long as I can play the guitar I can successfully lead worship almost all the time. I had some interesting experiences because of that ability. There was once I visited a friend’s church’s prayer meeting and was asked to lead worship with just one song. OK, I took up the guitar, asked if they knew the only song I could think of (the group was almost entirely made up of strangers), and then not only led them in worship, but also flowed from there into prayer and intercession as well.

Hey, it was a prayer meeting, right?

But what was missing? Imparting that ability to others, so other people can successfully do what I do.

2 Timothy 2:2 (NIV) - And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

You see, I had invested hours and hours of time into my personal devotions, music practice and all that in order to do what I did. And that was fine when people are younger and have less demands on their time. Try telling a harried mother of 2-4 kids that in order to fulfill God’s calling upon her life she has to spend an hour a day on the Bible & prayer, and yet another on a musical instrument.

That’s NOT going to work!

So if I wanted to have people able to do what I did, I had to distill everything I did down to its barest form, the most essential elements. I had to show them principles that could guide their decisions and choices, and those principles had to work even without people having to put in the same kind of time and effort I had already put in.

Then One Fateful Day…

As I shared before in my book Invisible Worship Musician, I was engaged by a music school to teach a course on playing the piano for worship. It was during the lesson on playing intros for worship songs that I suddenly realized the purpose of worship music: to unify the praises of the people.

2 Chronicles 5:12-14 (NIV) - All the Levites who were musicians—Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives—stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the temple of God.

So I shared this passage with the very first class taking that very lesson. And from there I showed them how to create song intros that start to do exactly that. It worked very well for the class, they were happy that they got something simple that they could use after 3-4 lessons.

As for me, I continued to meditate on the implications of that very same passage for many years after that. It explained to me why what I did worked, and allowed me to give good reasons for why I would lead worship and play for worship the way I did.

If you do NOT have this understanding…

You end up with one of two extremes.

1)      You have people blindly copying EVERYTHING from someone who inspires them. At one point of time, as a certain Christian singer inspired many lady worship leaders in Singapore to dress, sing and pose in a certain way (one arm held out at a particular angle). Even though she was supposed to be a worship leader, she was more a lead singer, as she would sometimes pitch songs in keys 180 degrees away from what was suitable for a congregation. And she wasn’t good at leading the congregation…

I sometimes wonder if those Singaporean lady worship leaders ever caught on to the fact that what they were copying didn’t really help their church congregations in worship very much. If they did, did they ever figure out what went wrong? Or did they just blame their church congregations for being lukewarm?

2)      You have NO discipleship whatsoever. There may be one good worship leader in the church, someone who can make things work, but the other worship leaders want to do their own things in their own way. And those things and ways don’t work. After some time, some of the congregation may walk out or skip worship when they see who is scheduled to lead worship that day.

I’m not saying that is the right thing to do, but it is better than these people totally changing church because they are frustrated during your worship time, right? Of course, these days quite a number of believers don’t recognize well-led praise and worship because they have been misled into confusing a song-and-dance routine with true worship. If they leave your church because you are not giving them the show they want but what they really need (a genuine encounter with the living God) that’s understandable.

What is unacceptable is when you know you can give them the real deal but choose not to…

Conclusion:

I’ve now shared with you the core story, why I do and teach what I do. I hope that sharing my journey will help you understand me a little more, and maybe help you on your own journey also. Be blessed!

The Turning Point

As I shared before, I served in the worship ministry before I had ever encountered God in worship. Or maybe I did, but thought that it was just the effect of really cool music. So coming from that perspective, I ended up assuming worship=music.

And that meant that getting better worship required getting better music. Whatever “better” means…

When I believed that, and didn’t have any conclusive encounter with God through worship, it led to two problems:

1. My own personal worship life was very weak. Why invest time in it if I believed I had to be in a large congregation with a hyper-cool band for it to work? Worship in your own personal prayer time does not always feel good immediately. If you don’t believe in it you will give up easily.
2. I became frustrated with small group worship sessions. I didn’t encounter God in worship there, so I didn’t believe it was possible. Looking back, I realize that it was because most of the worship leaders in the small groups I attended didn’t have enough understanding to stay on a good song long enough for the singing to be unified. A technical issue. And also, they would shy away from the presence of God and choke down everything before things got really intense. Probably a sin-consciousness issue.

But one day…

The leader of my worship team sat us down and said “We’re a worship band, so we’re going to worship God!” And he proceeded to lead us in a worship session that honestly felt like being brought to heaven and back. This session shattered all my wrong ideas just like that. It was a small group (5-6 people) and had simple music (one acoustic guitar). And I KNEW, deep in my heart, that I had just met God in worship.

And I was hooked. Totally hooked!

Not only that, I also wanted to share that same experience, encountering God in worship, with every believer I could. I became totally obsessed with worship and worship ministry; I kept bugging the band leader for his ideas, concepts and opinions.

Now he wasn’t that much of a teacher; he just kind of stumbled across what works, but he couldn’t really explain to me how or why it worked.  So I continued with the smartest thing I ever did: I copied him wholesale. He led worship on solo guitar and it worked, so I started learning how to play the guitar. He would use certain songs and lead them in a certain way, so I would work on the same songs and do them the same way.

And it worked for me too!

Of course there were refinements I needed to make along the way. Things like what key to pitch songs in, how to use music to properly support what I was doing, and nitty-gritty things like that. But I had already achieved what many other worship leaders I knew could only pray and dream about – consistent success in leading worship. I would be able to bring the worship as deep and as intense as it could go that session, and the worshippers would encounter God, be blessed by him and want to seek him in worship more and more.

So, is that it? Was that all? Did I live happily ever after, end of story? Not quite. There still remained one more important step to reach and milestone to achieve. But it’s getting really late for me now, so I’ll share with you the story next time. In the meantime, be blessed!

How I Started in Worship Ministry

I still remember how I got started in the worship ministry…

I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was young (less than 12). Because I wasn’t attending church after that, my faith took a backseat to role-playing games and music. But there was always this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that God deserved a lot more seriousness than what I was showing him during those years. So when I finally had a chance to attend church services I jumped at the opportunity.

The pleasant surprise for me was discovering that church had music!

One thing about me, I’m quite capable of going on with something if I was convinced it was good for me. I didn’t need it to be entertaining, exciting or enjoyable, it just had to be meaningful. I was ready to not enjoy any aspect of the church experience but just keep turning up anyway.

So having enjoyable music at church was an unexpected benefit!

Because I didn’t know the songs, I couldn’t join in the singing. But I did appreciate the music. Unfortunately, that became my habit – paying more attention to the music than what people (and I) ought to be singing to the Lord. It’s not that I was a total reprobate during that season; I would seek God in prayer and in the Scriptures. And I would encounter him there.

But encountering God during the worship? No, it didn’t really happen.

And that meant that, if I was put in charge of a team of musicians at that time (I wasn’t, thank God!!), any decisions would be made based on what would sound good musically, rather than whether it would be spiritually pleasing to God or helpful to the congregation.

The Point of What I Am Saying…

… is that if your church has decent music, it’s quite likely that there are people like me in the congregation. And this means:

1. Your pastor may have to regularly preach and teach on encountering God in worship, yearly or half-yearly if your congregation has regular growth; AND 
2. People like me may apply to join your church worship team. And you have to start thinking and praying about how God wants you to handle such people.
   

Of course not every church musician is like how I was at that point of time when I first started serving in the worship ministry. Some knew God first, before they discovered their interest and talent for music. You may encounter different challenges with these people, compared to my sort.
Then again, I wasn’t exactly the most mature and easy-to-handle person in those days either!

So that was how I started serving in the worship ministry. I have another two major milestones to share, but those will have to wait for future emails and posts. So in the meantime, be blessed!

Behind The Pastor's Back

As you probably know, I serve at a few churches during the week. Just yesterday, as I was running errands, I met someone who regularly attends one of those services I serve at. It was an interesting conversation, because he basically wanted me to change my style of playing.

Him: "the way you play when Pastor leads the people in prayer after preaching, very stagnant. No flow. You must flow…"

Under other circumstances I would have asked him what he meant by flow. After all, it could refer to a musical flow (which I know I have) or a spiritual flow (which I believe I have). However, I felt there was no need to find out more, because I wasn’t going to change my style of playing.

Me: "I'm playing the way Pastor wants me to play. He told me to play this way, so that is how I am going to play."

Him: "I've known Pastor for a long time already. And I've been playing for 40 years. I went to Berklee (a famous college for contemporary and jazz music). You cannot play like that, you must flow…"

By now I suspected that he meant to play more spontaneously, to use Pastor's exhortation time as an opportunity to display whatever musical chops I have. Whatever he meant didn't really matter, because I already had instructions from the Pastor. And I'm not going to change stuff like that without checking with the Pastor first.

But why would I need to check with the Pastor anyway? He's got a lot on his plate, and he already has the habit of telling me whatever he wanted me to know. Bugging him about trivia like that is implying his instructions weren't clear enough, or that he didn't know what he was doing. No thanks!

So I took the easy way out.

Me: "Since you say you have known Pastor for some time, how about YOU talk to him about it? I'll just do what he tells me…"

Him: "Cannot, he's not a musician so he won't know. You must change it yourself."

Err, wait a minute. He's not a musician, but he has been in ministry even longer than I have. Am I to believe that during all that time, having ministered in many different churches around the world, he hasn't come across different styles of music and he doesn't know what type works best for him?

He could see I was not convinced.

Him: "Do you know (mega-church A) and (mega-church B)? I trained their musicians. You think I can only play one instrument? I can play more than one instrument! When I tell the chief musician (of the church I am serving at) to flow, he does it. Even the other guy, who played for the service when you were not there, flows better than you…"

I haven't listened to the worship team from mega-church B, but I did know that mega-church A had a team of immature musicians, who were professional only in the sense that they were being paid, not in terms of their musicality. Those musicians tended to overplay and get in each other's way, and overall the sound would be too cluttered to let the congregation sing their hearts out. So the congregation would spend most of the worship time standing there and watching the show up on the stage.

You can guess that I was less than impressed by his name dropping. I wanted to tell him "So it's YOUR fault that band is so lousy? No wonder…" but I knew God wouldn't approve of me being THAT direct. So I switched back to my one and only argument.

Me: "OK, so if Pastor thinks the other guy is better, then he can tell me to play like him. So far, Pastor hasn't told me to play like him, so…"

Him: "They can flow. Why can't you? No wonder your playing is so stagnant."

Me:"I've played other ways before, and Pastor has told me he wants it this way, so I am going to play it this way."

Him: "He's not a musician, he won't know. You must change, you must flow, then he will come and tell you that you are correct."

OK, this was going too far. One problem that has plagued many charismatic churches – some people think they hear from God better than the pastor does, and they don't want to discuss things with the pastor first. They deliberately choose to ignore or disobey the pastor's instructions on a specific matter. Those people then expect God to vindicate their disobedience by blessing them with obviously supernatural fruit, so the pastor has to swallow his pride and admit they were right all along.   

Hear this from me – no good will ever come out of doing this. Either get the agreement of your church pastor, submit to his instructions or leave to find another church. By this time I already realized that this person was NOT worth listening to. He may have music knowledge, but his understanding of the things of God was very lacking.

So I brought up the only topic that seemed to bug him, the pastor.

Me: "How about this? How about YOU play, then we let Pastor decide?"

He didn't like that, so he changed the topic.

Him: "Why, when you play, you don't play there and there (indicating the higher and lower parts of the keyboard), you only play here (indicating the middle)? I might as well chop off the top and bottom parts!"

God is my witness, he was THAT inane, thinking that playing solo piano accompaniment for worship was to be done the same way as playing for some show at Berklee. If other Berklee grads are like him, Berklee ought to get me to teach Musicianship 101. The fellow went back to his mantra of the day.

Him: "You must flow!"

Me: "You can flow?"

Him: "Of course!"

Me: "OK, then you play and show Pastor. We let him decide, OK?"

I guess he really had no answer, so he started getting personal.

Him: "I can flow, but can you follow it or not? Your playing is like sleeping! You ought to humble yourself. Other people can follow what I tell them, why not you?"

Me: "OK, then you play and we let Pastor decide, OK?"

By this time I guess he had enough. So he walked off. I wasn't too smart yesterday morning, it took me so long to figure out how to drive him away – keeping mentioning the Pastor! It was like showing a cross to a vampire, it might take a while but it will work in the end. Now I know what to say to him the next time we meet at the service…

The Point Is…

As you can tell from my previous posts, I can be very dogmatic. When I have the authority to tell musicians what to do, I fully expect them to follow my instructions. I don't want them changing things behind my back or without checking with me first.

And because I believe in treating people the same way I want to be treated (Matt 7:12), this is also how I follow instructions from my leaders as well. Don't expect me to try out suggestions and ideas from other people without checking with my church leaders first.

If you find yourself in the same place I was, with someone trying his or her best to get you to disobey clear instructions from your church leader or pastor, you may also find it helpful to do what I did – suggest that THEY themselves go discuss with the pastor or leader themselves. If they are sincere and have nothing to hide, they would be more than happy to.

But if the suggestion only seems to frustrate them into insulting you or arguing with you, you know they have an agenda and something to hide. Don't let yourself be manipulated by such people, OK?

Be blessed!

Going for the Heart

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!

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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!

Worship Leader Basics

About two weeks ago, I attended the funeral wake of my grandmother-in-law.

It was a Christian funeral service, because she received Jesus as her Lord and Savior for quite a few years already. I wasn’t close to her in the first place; the Singapore pace of life makes it hard to build decent relationships amongst relatives and friends. So it was out-of-sight-out-of-mind for her, and I'm not proud of that.

Because I wasn’t emotionally close, I was emotionally detached enough to observe the worship leader and musician trying to lead worship for the service. They stumbled over some of the basics. I haven't talked much about worship leading basics before, so I had better mention some of them now.

1) Sing Appropriately

One of the songs they used was 轻轻听, (it was a Chinese service). This means "listen gently", but if you don't understand Mandarin Chinese you'd never have guessed from the worship leader's singing. She was bawling it out for the entire song. Her dynamics ranged from loud, very loud and voice-distorted-on-the-mike kind of loud. I spent the 4 minutes or so cringing and feeling embarrassed for her.

So please sing appropriately. Match your voice and singing volume to the lyrics of the song. Don't sing a rousing song timidly, and don't belt out a quiet, contemplative song at the top of your voice. If you do, it shows you aren't really paying attention to what you are singing in the first place.

2) Rehearse

They sang Amazing Grace (but with Chinese lyrics) next. The worship leader and musician stumbled over the song for the first verse. Why? Because the leader was singing the song in three-four time (which is how it was originally written, and how many Singaporean Christians know it) and the guitarist was playing in four-four time.

What made it even more of a waste was that the people really tried to sing this song. And it was all choked up by the guitarist. Now if the leader and guitarist had rehearsed the song before hand, they would have been able to come to an agreement (three-four or four-four?). That would have allowed the two of them to start in sync, which would have made a large difference.

I recently got tagged into a discussion on Facebook about rehearsals. A lady was questioning the need for rehearsals. Her thought was that since it was worship, God was the recipient and the sincerity of heart was the most important, why practice so much? We don't practice our prayers, do we? She believed that practice was for performances unto men, not to God. So we should just spontaneously sing and play unto God, right?

Now I could go into her points the way I was taught in my university philosophy course, go straight for the assumptions behind her points, challenge the assumptions and then demolish them with Scripture passages. But I understand where she's coming from. She's reacting to the extremes of performance music in church. Performance music tends to have structure imposed for structure's sake, so she, like many others, went the other extreme by rejecting all structure.

She even said that the musicians and singers at the dedication of the temple just spontaneously played and sang unto God. From that we could easily guess that she never tried to coordinate 288 singers and musicians (1 Chr 25:7) as well as another 120 priests with trumpets before, or she'd quickly discover how 'spontaneous is best' would epically fail on her…

Just so you know, the idea that worship was supposed to be spontaneous also came out in the book Pagan Christianity. But just because an idea is popular doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct!

So practice. Rehearse. The only time you won't need it is if all the worship team is doing familiar songs. In other words, if the rehearsals are already done!

3) Match the intensity of the people

Leading worship for a funeral service is tough, because there may be visitors there who are not yet believers or who come from a different church and worship culture. So they may just stand there and not sing.

When that happens, it's difficult to generate momentum in the worship. The worship leader that evening tried to do so by singing louder and later singing in tongues. Maybe that would work in her home church, the congregation may take that as a cue to sing in tongues together with her, and there would be some participation at least.

But at a funeral service? With outsiders, people from liturgical churches and non-Christians?

1 Cor 14: 23 - So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? (NIV)

As I said, I understand how difficult it is to lead worship properly at a funeral service. If you are the worship leader, you have to be ready to feel as if you are singing all alone. If the people DO sing, they usually sing in a lack-lustre way. It's tempting to try to rouse them by hyping things up a bit.

Don't.

Go as far as you can for that session and that's it. If the people aren't flowing with you, don't try to force them. One objection some Christians have to contemporary praise and worship is that they see it as emotional manipulation. And if you try to hype up the worship when the people aren't responding, you ARE doing exactly that.

Conclusion:

The basics. If we have been serving in the worship ministry for some time it's easy to assume everyone knows the basics. But once in a while, just to be sure, it's good to go back and re-visit them again. And share them with your worship team also, especially the newer members!