This has been a crazy yet historical week at NorthWood. Check it out here. (I am linking to the NW blog as a whole since there are so many posts for this week. Check out the last week in July posts regarding the Vietnamese Communist delegation coming AND us totally ticking off John Hagee because of a letter Bob signed in the New York Times.)

Fred has a great post here. This made me reflect on my approach to Creative Time. It is vital for us to have creative time. Here is my advice. You will never see creative time just drop in your lap. For context, Friday is my one day off a week (and I ain’t complaining about that at all, better than planting rice all day long 7 days a week like some of my Vietnamese friends. Plus, one day was good enough for God, so what’s my gripe and technically I have my Saturday mornings until 2 PM). I schedule Thursday afternoons for creative time, so I have to pace Monday-Wednesday like that is all I the time I have. My goal is to keep delegating more until I get all day Thursday as creative time. Then two years from now, add Wednesday afternoons and so forth. It all comes from the base of raising up leaders whom you can delegate effectively to. Once again, raising up leaders should 51+% of ever persons job in ministry.

What do I do during that creative time?

1. sometimes I walk and reflect on key decisions

2. a trip to Barnes and Nobles or Borders to see a) what is selling b) titles of books for creative metaphors c) perusing periodicals on various topics

3. blog reading of sites on worship, theology, technology, and design of various sorts and types.

4. an occasional trip to the museums in Fort Worth (The Modern especially)

5. listening through all the new release samples on Itunes, Urge etc.

I have done previous posts on conferences. I have also put on for three years a conference that attracted over 1,000 students anually (the now defunct Clinic for Student Worship Leaders). I know how the “conference game” works to a degree…a big name label says they will co-sponsor the conference and then you notice a push for “their guys” to end up on the bill (something we were able to never capitulate to fortunately…we got exactly who we wanted and told the rest of their recommendations, “Sorry, we have a specific direction we are going this year and that isn’t it”). Here is my soapbox for the week.

Why are all conferences speakers predominantly songwriter types? Why are most sessions geared only around what happens on the platform? Last time I checked, I spent about 40 hours of a 50 hour week off the platform getting ready for the service through working in the 3 of the 4 trenches (people, process and design) and only a small, though grantedly important, piece of time in the implementing trench. I would like to see more systems guys involved in the national worship conferences. Guys and gals who address things like how to build people, deal with conflict, convey information to participants in the worship ministry more effectively, and theological frameworks for worship design (Isaiah’s model, Banqueting Table framework, etc.). I know this is not as glamorous as having penned the latest worship hit or being blessed with a voice that is stellar, but it is VITAL to the success of a ministry in the local church context. So national worship conference planners, take the challenge. Resist the need to only have top songwriters/public leaders as your keynotes and breakout leaders. Do the unglamorous and get some solid systems guys on your bill to help us with the “during the week” trenches as well. Thanks and soapbox concluded.

I’ll never forget eons ago standing backstage when Louie Giglio was keynoting the Clinic for Student Worship Leaders which we were blessed to have him keynoting. It was in a chit-chat moment we were having that he dropped a bomb quote which has echoed in my head for years, “If someone has ‘itty-bitty’ worship, it is because they have and ‘itty-bitty’ view of God.” I call it Louie’s Worship Equation. My experiences in 19 years of worship leadership would validate this statement. Most of people’s worship would look different if they would catch an enlarged view of God. Whenever I see someone spell checking a bulletin during worship, I instantly know how big their view of God is. Whenever we “open” a series at NorthWood, we always try to start with the doctrine of God and how it relates to the particular series. (For example, when we did our Trapped financial series, I did a message the first week entitled Cows on a Hill aka Eternal Hamburger and pointed out the self-sufficiency of God. He doesn’t need our money. He allows us to give it as an act of yielding back in worship.)

How do you enlarge someone’s view of God? There are ways to cognitively go about it and there are ways to experientially go about it. Both are required.

1. 1. Build in the doctrine of God in some way in every sermon you preach. Go especially strong on who God is in relation to the series’ thesis at the beginning of each series.
   

2. 2. When you sing a song about God’s bigness, point out with sound byte or text His grandeur.
   

3. 3. Read or screen roll verses about His immensity. We use a Isaiah passage quite a bit for this.
   

4. 4. Experientially, have a strong challenge for people to serve in a ministry in a way that is beyond their own abilities. Then, when they fulfill that ministry, they’ll know it was only by God’s bigness they accomplished it. Be cognizant as a staff that those opportunites are available to people. I’ll never forget when Bob announced that anyone who wanted to sign up for our project assessment trip in Afghanistan only 3 months after 9/11 could. He told them they might not come back alive. The sign up list was huge.
   

5. 5. Tell tranformation stories about how members encountered God’s bigness in their situation.

As to theology, I am extremely gun shy from two particular strands of theology primarily because they have the potential to reduce the bigness of God. These two positions were unpacked on a friends blog and got me to thinking. They are:

1. Open Theism- a newly emerging theology (Pinnock and others) which says that God does not know the future. Some strands say that the future doesn’t exist for God to know, others say that He self-limits Himself from this knowledge. This runs counter to the historical doctrine of the Church and its Biblical precedents are suspect. In no possible worlds do I see how this doesn’t reduce one’s view of the bigness of God, hence affecting worship.

2. Arminianism-I consider myself a “Pauline Doctrine of Electionist.” I might find myself to be wrong at the gates of heaven but I will be okay with that rather than erring the other way and being wrong. Why? If I am in error, I will be told, “Jordan, people had the responsibility for their decision, you were wrong.” I still share my faith to the same degree that I would if I were Arminian, since I don’t know who is elect or not. So I accidentally applied a human action, choice, to God. Whopdeedo. If I was an Arminian and wrong, I’d hear, “Jordan, you robbed me of some of my glory because you took some of my grace-work of effecting salvation fully and ascribed a portion of it (choice) to man.” I’d still get into heaven, but I would have lessened the worshipers’ concept of the bigness of God, in that He actually accomplishes every facet of salvation. Who knows, if you make the second error maybe you get a big UFC smackdown by an angel right before you enter, just as a reminder, it was all God all along (although a UFC smackdown is as bad as a boxing punch to face because everyone knows boxers are better than UFC fighters).

Really think about how big a God you present to your worshipers. What other ways can we show His bigness?

Every year, at the beginning of the year, I schedule two trips…a family vacation with the wife and three kids (which we just got back from…sorry for the delay in approving newbie comments) and a separate get-away with only Piper and I. Ahhh, sweet vacation. Here are a few things I have learned for maximum refreshment.

1. I always schedule a couple of more days at home to “recover” from the vacation. I try to miss the weekend at the end of the vacation rather than the first weekend.

2. Every vacation needs to varied in pace. This year’s family vaca was a slower paced one in San Antonio. While staying with Mimi and Papa, in their friend’s home in San Antonio (the friends on live their in winter), we skipped Sea World this year and instead went to the Wildlife Drive-Thru (really cool) and the Natural Bridge Caverns (cool except for my claustrophobic sis-in-law). Some days my kids played with their cousins who also were staying in the large home. I chilled. In contrast,when Piper and I got our trip to London and Bath, England, we woke up and ran from venue to venue from morning to night, maximizing our time.

3. I have been at NW for 9 years, so I have three full weeks. Every year I vow to use up every vacation day and every year I fail miserably, having non-roll over vacation days burnt for no reason except my bad habits. I PROMISE to do better this year. Somebody comment here at the end of the year and ask how I did.

4. Taking off four Thursdays in a row to shorten the weeks for a month can be a good thing (we get Friday’s off; I have to be there every Saturday night along with Bob, our lead pastor, when he is in town. I am either preaching or leading. All the other staff get every other Saturday night off. We have three Sunday services.)

5. We are the king and queen of the audible on scheduled trips to get a deal. Our London trip in 1999 came when British Air dropped fairs to $250 and we realized Piper’s cousin still lived in Crewkerne near Bath. We staid with them three days and then took the train up to London for three more nights. All this had to be organized in 1 month to get the deal. Same with a Hawaii trip. We house sat/8th grader sat for a couple who offered us a day in their million dollar Kona condo for each day we house sat. We looked at air prices and realized we couldn’t afford it. Another lady in our small church plant at that time didn’t know we had that chance and offered us her flight attendant miles. We did the Hawaii flight and room/board for $127 each. God is good, especially if you are willing to act quickly to pull the trigger to take a trip.

6. Take an “Office Vacation.” We simplify our services in June and July intentionally to give our work environment a slightly more laid back feel. In August, we ratchet back up to 110% as everyone is returning and we usually do an all out “seeker/sought” series to reach the unchurched. Then in October a more doctrinal series. November is missional focus, etc. We stay pretty ramped up until May of the next year.

Leave us your vacation hints comments. And get some rest!

O moving background, O moving background
Why are you so overused.
On every church that’s “so trendy”
You are so overused.
Just because you can be done,
Does not mean that you are fun
O moving background, O moving background
You’ll (hopefully) soon be out of fad

Have your tech/design team sing to the tune of O Christmas Tree. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you always should. Ask yourself, why am I using this over a static (read stable) background. People barely get the content of our worship without the craziness of moving backgrounds. If you use them, use them sparingly (think on a special, or for a certain service). Always ask yourself WHY before CAN.

Should “secular” songs ever be used in worship? (See our Imagine book link for a great discussion the false bifurcation between the secular and the sacred, hence our reason for the quotes here.) We use “secular” songs for the following reasons:

1. To create a learner need moment that the Sermon-worship will answer.

We did Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower in a message series entitled The Panic Room (one of our rare movie ripoffs). The song’s lyrics basically say the whole world is coming to an end yet people are unaware of it. During the song, the screen was filled videos of Chernobyl, riots, kidnapping, disasters, etc. At the end of the song, we had a little girl singing lines from “He’s got the whole world, in His hands” over a picture of a nuclear explosion. It made the hearer’s say, “Does God really have things under control, or is that just the Sunday School answer I have?” Then we answered the question in the message.

2. To get people out of their ecclesiological bubble to deal with the questions the world is posing.

Many times the church is answering questions the world isn’t asking. To counter this, we use secular music to broach the questions. We once showed the Smashing Pumpkins Rat in a Cage video and Bob dissected the video’s presuppositions and a biblical response to that worldview. It made a lot of our church people realize that the world was voicing questions in a different language then they often spoke. Very cool service.

We DON’T use secular music:

To make lost people feel comfortable or have a point of identity in the service.

We might do a total of 5 “secular” songs all year that are actually done by the band and not a video backing or somesuch. It has to be a really tight fit for us to go that way.

A must read article by one of the best writers in America, Roy Peter Clark on telling stories rather than spin. Just tell honest stories even when they hurt. Check it here.

Check out this visual information graphic my friend Josh Williams, founder of Firewheel Design, just sent me. What does it reflect about your county’s religious adherents? How can you reach those people?

Here is a loose paradigm that sits in the back of my mind when I select songs for a service. As long as we don’t get too far on one end of each continuum, we are okay. All our planning starts theologically as a response to the Word that will be preached. We definitely aren’t “top 40″ worship jockeys at NorthWood. To supplement that theological foundation, here are the background questions in no particular order that ruminate in my mind as we design.

familiar vs. unfamiliar– How new is the song? Is it a close your eyes and let it rip or now what are the words to the verses song? This is why a song frequency chart is important. __song-statistics-master-redone-7-09-2007.xls

objective vs. subjective– How many of the songs selected are objective statements of who God is (ex. reformational hymn type stuff) and how many are subjective about my experience with God?

uptempo vs. downtempo– Don’t string songs together because of BPM. But, do think of how the pacing of the music will flow. Is there a fall off the cliff effect between tempos? Do you want that effect?

relative key vs. “unrelative” key– How many key changes will be necessary within each section. Are they easy switches like a fifth? (Once again, if a song theologically fits, I’ll do it no matter the key difference, but if there are several that would fit, I consider keys).

second person vs. third person– How many songs are testifying about God (”He/him”) versus to God (”you/your”)?

top line blessing vs. bottom line responsibilities– check this out here.

hard to execute vs. easy to execute technically– Do I have the rehearsal time to pull off this set? If we have a special that will require a lot of band rehearsal time, I don’t want to put in three corporate songs that are difficult and no player in that particular band has played yet. All of the songs will suffer in execution because of a finite amount of rehearsal time. Better to keep it simple and save some of those harder to rehearse songs for another week. . .live to fight another day. (I know which players have played which songs, so that helps a ton.)

natural transition to next song vs. unatural transition– this is a kissing cousin to key and tempo issues above, yet it goes beyond that. I think of the mechanics. For example, All Bow Down ends with a heavily delayed electric riff. If I want an immediate start to the next song that has an entirely different electric sound, either someone needs to kick it off or I’ll have to live with a quick break for pedal switching. If I need to switch a capo, can we sizzle the ending of the previous song to cover a gap? Does someone else kick of the song?

An Exercise For You. Go through several of you last service orders and see how balanced you were in your design for that service. In the future, run the service through these paradigms before you execute it and see if you catch anything that would enable the service to be a better bridge for people. Feel free to comment with any other ____________ vs. _____________ you use.

If you live in Dallas, sports are huge. So are our owners. Each sports franchise owner has a distinct approach that has implications for the worship leader. Try to figure out which “owner” you are. (Please keep in mind, I have never met these guys face to face. I am sure they are all personally nice people. I am writing from the position of a sportsfan who gets his sports info from the two newspapers and The Ticket radio station).

Tom Hicks–Grade D-

Tom owns the Texas Rangers, who have left me in the dumps since I was a child. He also owns the NHL Dallas Stars. Tom recently acquired the Liverpool Premiere Soccer Team in England. Tom’s approach seems to be, “If they fans would show up and pay for tickets, then I would do things to make sure we have teams that win.” Since they don’t win, he takes no significant actions and the clubs get caught in a catch 22. He runs an extremely low payroll and says he refuses to lose money. Therefore, he loses and no one comes to the games. Liverpool will soon be in the dumps if the pattern follows suit, but I don’t know that Liverpool fans will accept that (perhaps the hooligans will torch the stadium). Rangers fans take it on the chin year after year; they don’t throw a fit…they just become very dispassionate and don’t attend.

Jerry Jones–Grade C+

Jerry came in a winner. He brought in Jimmy Johnson. Then things went south quickly as Jimmy and Jerry’s egos could not co-exist. Barry Switzer took Jimmy’s work and won one more Super Bowl for us. Since then, the Cowboys have seemed to be drifting. Subsequent coaches were psuedo-coaches because Jerry was micro-managing systems. Finally, he got Bill Parcells who started to turn the ship but just couldn’t get it there. There were a few more flashy moves that are quite questionable…such as bringing in the divisive T.O. The new stadium will be nice but not as nice as building a winning team.

Mark Cuban–Grade A-

Mark might complain, whine, and get fined a bit, but he takes risks and is willing to use resources to design an organization that people want to come see. More than just “see,” you feel like you are a part of the Maverick’s experience when you attend a game. Mark is an incarnational owner who also leaves the coaching decisions to Avery Johnson, his “largely untested when he started” head coach who is doing phenomenally well. If a move needs to be made, he makes it. People in Dallas like Cuban for the most part because he seems like us (even though he is a gazillionaire). He doesn’t wait for people to buy tickets, he does what he does because it is the right thing to do to build a successful program. People see this and do show up.

So which worship “owner” are you?

Tom Hicks–Are you programming the stuff and do the bare amount of creative work necessary to make sure you have something on Sunday? Are you always thinking to yourself, “If more people would show up, then I would go to the extra effort?” They won’t until you do.

Jerry Jones–In your early days you started with a flash but now things have gotten a bit stale. You use personality to fill seats bringing in the big actors or big events (T.O. type stuff) but the foundational core is just not there. You need to spend time working the 4 trenches to build a strong, unglamorous core.

Mark Cuban–your passion oozes out yet you relinquish control to your captains. Your are willing to take risks and spend energy designing good worship services even if attendance is down (remember, God is there every time). You refuse to put it on cruise control. Your eyes are always open looking for creative changes that might better bridge others into God’s presence.

I know which owner I want to be. (BTW, if you, Tom, Jerry, or Mark, perceive I have wrongly characterized you, I’d be glad to take any of you guys to lunch and hear otherwise. Mark, we can meet at any Dairy Queen you want….hahaha!)

To avoid the dreaded cliches in your songwriting, do two things:

Keep a list of biblical metaphors as you read the Bible to fuel lyrical depth. There is a beauty to the lyric of someone who can develop a metaphor well. For example, if you had read Joel 2:17 before Charlie Hall, you might have penned Between Porch and Altar metaphor or, Isa 45:8, the line “salvation spring up from the ground”. I love Charlie’s use of metaphor. He excels at it.

Also, slow down at times and think of abstract metaphors you experience that convey theological truths…that is what led to the composition of Make My Life A Bridge. I was in Vietnam and had to come to a precarious bridge high over a rocky river while thinking of all the people in the country who stood “on the other bank” who had never heard Christ’s name.  A metaphor based song emerged….Make My Life a Bridge mp3

As You laid upon the cross
Make my life a bridge
To bring across the blind and lost
Make my life a bridge

O and millions stand where I once stood
Across the great divide
And so I’m laying down my will
Make my life a bridge
Make my life a bridge  (copyright 2001 dropknee/Prologue Worship)

Now go write a great worship song for God’s glory….go, go, go!

Sometimes a series metaphor comes to us in a flash of genius.  Many times we have to slog through a long brainstorming process to get to a good metaphor.  Here is a good way to spark an idea.  Type in a keyword that would occur in your sermon thesis in Amazon.com or cbd.com and see what book titles emerge.  Sometimes you can leapfrog off a title to something completely new.

Here are some ideas we got from amazon.

Searched: Purpose and Leadership 
Title that emerged: Barnstormers 
Led to: a thought that the Wright Brothers lived for a single purpose despite naysayers. So should we.  We all have a way that we uniquely glorify God. 
Ended up with Title: Sky’s the Limit

Here is a very non-traditional Christmas Series we are doing this December

Searched: peacemaker, mission, Jesus                                                                                  Found Title: Jonah, Jesus and Other Good Coyotes
Ending up with: The Good Coyote using the metaphor that Jesus crossed borders in the incarnation to bring people into a new country/Kingdom…we, too, should be willing to cross “borders”

I also look at the back of book jackets on a given topic through amazon’s “see inside this book” feature to give me ideas in writing our blurbs for “marketing” our upcoming series on the web, mailers, bulletin, etc.  Don’t copy these are they are copyrighted and you need to be original anyway, but see how they are worded and what questions they raise.  Sometimes they’ll spark a great lead in question to draw someone’s attention to an upcoming series.