Occasionally I get to do a workshop at an event or a conference. I’ll get asked to speak on “something about worship” to a group of worship leaders or team members and a few other curious stragglers. I’m not a big name or someone most folks would have any compulsion to look to for advice, but I love doing it when I get the chance. I try my best to prepare, usually over-so, but I’ve learned over the course of several of these things that I really like when people ask questions and give feedback. I may have an outline and a plan, but I find it best to respond to what the folks in the room really want to discuss and do my best to roll with that. I feel more confident and fired up when I feel I’m actually directly addressing the pertinent issues in the room. Plus it helps avoid that awkward moment when you get the sense 10 minutes into your talk that everyone is looking at you thinking, “Yeah, we knew that. Yawn.” (more…)

 

Do you have one of those things in life that just haunts you? I’m not talking about, like, a deceased relative with unfinished business to share with you through Jennifer Love Hewitt or something. I mean a question or phenomenon that, whenever you encounter it, lights up your synapses like a something-less-cliche-than-a-Christmas-tree. Maybe it’s magicians. Excuse me. “Illusionists”. Maybe whenever you see David Copperfield you can’t stop asking yourself, “How does he DO that?? And what does this have to do with Charles Dickens??” Maybe it’s mechanical stuff. Maybe you see things like cars, toasters, or that thing with the paddle and the ball on a string and think, “How does that work??”. (more…)

 

He’s a weird dude, no doubt.

I heard Jewish-Texan-folk-hero Kinky Friedman interviewed recently, and needless to say, I don’t share his entire point of view or artistic choices to say the very least. That said, he did drop some doosies when it comes to one-liners. Here are a few examples: (more…)

 

Recently I headed to picturesque Prince Edward Island (home of Anne of Green Gables and now Kelly Ripa) with a gaggle of fellas I’ve known far too long. We’ve been making an annual golf pilgrimage weekend together for almost a decade now. Inevitably, the weather always sucks, but we always have a blast one way or another.

On one particular round, as we were hunting in the rough for our consistently-errant tee shots, I noticed a gallery was following us. We had fans. (more…)

 

I recently “attended” an online conference (or “experience”, as they call it) put on by Leadership Network called “Staff Infection”. Maybe you did too. I stumbled on it via a tweet/link from Twitter, and spent an hour or 2 listening in on these rapid fire teachings on team leadership and staff dynamics. I found some great nuggets of teaching and some interesting stuff in there (although it was a bit like drinking from a fire hose). (more…)

 

My dad owned a couple of insurance agencies until he retired a couple years ago. The older I get, the more I learn about his “business life”, and the more I’m impressed. (Someday I could (and maybe will) do a blog series on “Principles I Learned from My Dad” or something, but that’s for another day.) Back then, if he happened to have had one of those days, he was known to drop a great one liner or two. One such quote I often heard him say was, “If it wasn’t for employees or customers, I’d have the greatest job in the world.” The irony is pretty obvious, but we all get the sentiment. (more…)

 

I saw a comedian recently talking about the dynamics and differences between men and women. Cutting edge topic for a stand-up, I know. He was giving out some insight and advice to ladies about the nature of men and he said this:

“The thing about men is we want to be alone, but we don’t want to be by ourselves.”

Everybody got it, the men clapped, women threw elbows. I actually thought it was a pretty clever way to deliver what can be an over-used angle. And then I thought a little bit more about it.

I thought about church. I thought about corporate worship. I thought about how that could sort of be true in our worship gatherings as well. Is that true of our corporate worship culture today? We want to be together, but we want to be alone? (more…)

 

Earlier today an exchange on Twitter caught my eye and I had to jump in on the convo.

Derek Webb and Robbie Seay were talking about The Man, The Myth, The Legend….Mr. Fred Rogers. (more…)

 

A friend of mine, Jay Muir, is the worship pastor at a big church in my town. He and I have been friends (and even bandmates) for a long time. If you talk to him, he may not admit that, just warning you. This weekend I was at his church doing some recording for a local band who was leading worship there. Jay had just started this new worship service/event at his church called “Worship 12:1″ based on Romans 12:1. The next day I was back there to pick up some gear, and he and I were talking shop as colleagues and friends. I had asked him how he thought things went, given this was the first night for this new endeavor. Through the course of the conversation, he said something that I thought was an interesting statement and question. To paraphrase, he said something like this: (more…)

 

I like Twitter. (Why does it feel like admitting a secret shame to say that?) I’m not alone. In fact there’s a good chance you ended up here reading this post via Twitter, one way or another. It’s kind of interesting how the Twitter culture has evolved over time. You can observe the etiquette and transcribe the vocabulary and vernacular. For some reason, I wondered to myself recently if there might be anything for us to learn from Twitter about leading worship. So here’s my attempt. A few thoughts about leading worship inspired by – and categorized in – terms from the Twitosphere. (more…)