what if you or your musicians aren't that musically talented how do you encourage your musicians and what they're good at and help them grow at the same time how do you create a culture where feedback is expected and received we'll be answering those questions and more in this first of two episodes that address the role of skill on sunday mornings hi good morning or good afternoon or good evening or it's in the middle of the night this is the soundplus doctrine podcast i'm david zimmer and i'm bob coughlin and this is a blast to do together it is it's a lot of fun um so bob how's it going it's going fantastic great and you i think i'm doing well great i'm sure people love hearing us asking each other how we're doing yeah uh this episode is sponsored by jhs petals oh it is not it's not nothing sponsored yeah josh scott's a good friend and we like the pedals he puts out they're great pedals even though i'm not a guitar player and i have no idea what his pedals do hey um so today i would like to talk about um music in the church since that's what the podcast is about i think we should definitely talk about that it is no surprise that for the majority of churches the music in the service is uh not that great do you have any particular churches in mind is this like an expose that's bad uh well yes but i think that what you're saying is true yeah whether it's like um uh the instrumentalists you have or the vocalists or uh even you know the person serving each week leading the songs picking the songs picking the keys um yeah how do you how do you think through that i mean maybe starting with leaders what do you think through leaders of a small church um that's a great question don't have a lot of resources don't have a lot of instrumentalists how do we how do we think through that well we've thought about this a lot over the years like in the worship god conferences we'll usually have some you know seminar that's uh having to do with worshipping a big god in a small church or leading with limited resources because it's so common it's so crucial i think as all things we need to start theologically and realize you know ground our thoughts in the word of god like sometimes we're working on a problem but we don't see the big picture so we don't get to the right place and we don't have peace in in working on the problem so i think first peter to uh start in verse it talks about our offerings and how they're how they're made acceptable to god so he says as you come to him verse 4 a living stone this is talking about jesus rejected by men but in the sight of god chosen and precious you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices and this is the the point acceptable to god through jesus christ our music is not acceptable because it's so skillfully played or skillfully sung or because the band is in sync and everybody's right with a click track if you use a click track our worship to god our musical worship is accepted like all our offerings because of the perfect offering of jesus christ he took all our sins upon himself he suffered in our place on the cross he was raised from the dead and now he is the one through whom we come to god yeah so same thing hebrews 10 you know 19 through 22 says something very similar therefore brother since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of jesus not not by how well you play the chart right or how you know in time the drummer is so that just brings a lot of peace i would hope to to anyone who is in a small church and you're thinking you know our music just is not that great right i mean it's just it's just you know our congregation doesn't sound that great we don't sound that great so i think we got to start there every church has the gospel which is the power of god we have the word of god which performs its work in those who believe we have the holy spirit who is the the presence of god and who works in us and through us to accomplish his will and to glorify jesus and we have the community of redeemed saints that that god has brought together for this very purpose that's what every church has yeah so you don't have to be amazing musicians yeah so i think that's where you start it provides also so much freedom for uh the congregation and the person who's picking the songs and leading the songs and if you're an instrumentalist in the church that we are bringing our best offerings yes but they will not never compare that's right to the offering that yeah christ has paid for us yes so absolutely that is the place it doesn't matter and you know we can give lip service to that we can say of course i believe that i mean probably a lot of people listening right now said yeah of course i believe that but in our hearts and in our attitudes and our responses we don't believe that because we we get stressed out over you know someone singing the wrong harmonies or you know someone coming in the wrong place or you know the band not being as tight as they need to be so i mean we're revealing in those responses where we're really placing our trust we feel bad every week that you know the band's not as good as it could be it will never be as good as it could be for one but even if it was that would not make our offerings acceptable to god only jesus does that so that's on a vertical level yeah however and that's a big however uh skill is important you know god commends skill psalm 33 place skillfully to the lord with loud shouts and um there are numerous places where you know god commands skill proverbs 29 do you see man skilled in his work he will serve before kings he will not serve before obscure men i think we've mentioned that on the podcast before um but it's still true regardless so god does care about skill so you know let's let me take a scenario because there are a lot of ways we could go after this yeah i think maybe a lot of people who are watching or listening to this podcast would be in church about you know 100 200 300 yeah and your musicians maybe it's your piano player maybe they only play uh chart uh only i'll play notes by notes yeah or your your piano player just isn't very good they play like a lot of piano players just a lot all the time yeah maybe it's your drummer um they just speed up and slow down you don't have the technology do a click so it's like we're starting a song like this yes then it gets to be like this in the chorus and then it's like this and then it's back to this so exactly that's like so you know you just have or you have vocalists who you know god bless them they want to sing harmony all the time yeah but they're only sure what that harmony is like half the time and so the rest of the time they're singing notes they are notes they're genuine notes but they aren't like really having anything to do with the song missing yeah so how do you handle that yeah well like i said you start with a theology okay this is not like making things unacceptable to god jesus god the father hears all this through the offering of christ so you know it's perfected amen but the people in the congregation can be affected yeah so so i think you know it depends on how you think about membership on in your band or among your musicians i try to be slow to add people rather than quick to add people even if in a small church because it's much easier to wait to add someone than it is to take them off the team to ask them not to play yeah it's just a lot easier and i remember a guy daryl was his name he came to our church he had sung in other churches he used to use tracks you know sing the tracks and but great guy and uh he said you know i've had this experience i've done this and and um said uh you know can i join the team and you can be part and i said well you know what we really like to get to know people here you want people to be a member we want you to get to know us want to make sure you're here for the vision of the church and not just to use your gift because you're a part of a body you know and it's through being a part of that body you discover what your gifts are and just because you did it somewhere it doesn't mean that's exactly how god's gonna use you here so yeah that's great so he heard that and it was hard he told me later but he came back a year later he eventually did get added to the team and uh he said you know i just want to thank you for for telling me that i couldn't be part of the team uh because really i'd been to churches where they just added me right away yeah i came in the door they knew i could sing they added me right away right and you know i got the sense that they weren't as concerned about me as they were my gift we don't want to give people that impression we don't want to treat people that way yeah we want to treat people as members of the body of christ yeah through whom the spirit will you know operate and their their gifts will have an effect on the rest of the church but that's not why they're there they're there because they're a part of the body you're a part of the family i i love that yes part of the family i'm so thankful i'm so thankful um that you're speaking to that because there is such a tendency i mean in in so many churches that we want this to sound as amazing as we possibly can yeah and so can you play on sunday can you come in and coming from los angeles that's you know like every church yeah it feels like that's very much like you're good at what you do and you come in and you do it and then uh and so i just i love the heart behind it this isn't just a place you're playing yeah yeah you're joining into a community of people we're doing life together and someone could join the team wanting to be a vocalist uh and you could realize your gifts are so much better serving us outside of you being a vocalist yeah you know and that tends to be uh even the case with all instrumentalists like wow you're serving in this way in this way and they say and this is just an extension of what you're already doing yes i love that yep so going back to the practicals because i want to get the practicals um you have someone on your team and they're just not they're just not that good well you got to decide um you know how do they get there sometimes people inherit musicians right you know it's the pastor's daughter she's a vocalist she really can't sing in tune um or maybe it's a drummer you only have one drummer you know fred and uh fred has a good heart great heart just doesn't play very well just can't play in time very well i think the you know you you've got to have standards and i think a good standard is just to say we're not going to put anybody on the team who will be a distraction because that would go against first corinthians 14 where paul talks about everything that's to be done is to be done for the education of the body building up of the body yeah so if something's going to tear down the body by being a distraction that's not good yeah so if you have a you know piano player who or a keyboard player say who's just always playing uh guitar player might be a better example guitar players keyboard players they're always pretty much doing the right thing i didn't want to say that but uh guitar player who's you know doing leaks and just you know not hitting the right chords and stuff but just you just say you know what i appreciate your heart well let me do this quickly so you have someone like that who's actually a distraction somehow they're on the team yeah uh you have to have a conversation with them yeah i want to talk about that conversation yeah so i'm a pastor so i can talk to that person as a pastor if you're not a pastor and you're and you're leading the music it might be good to involve your pastor if you i mean don't be afraid to do that to say to your pastor uh you know i need help with this this is what's going on yeah involve other peoples yeah and all the involve other people in the conversation so you you realize okay this isn't going well i should say it it can be helpful before you talk to an individual make sure there are standards for the team in other words to have some kind of meeting with your musicians where you're saying well you're just teaching from the word just sharing from the word how god values skill and how it builds up the body and you know when the temple was being built the holy abbe and bezalel were men that got it gifted with skill to do those particular tasks right it's not a bad thing to have skill so we all want to be growing yeah in our skills so set those standards and then you maybe go to a person and uh say hey how how do you think you're fitting in with the team yeah you may not need to have this conversation they may already know yeah no it's unless they need to take a drummer who can't play in time they may already know you might want to go to him and say hey i love your your desire to be a part of the band always start with encouragement because if you're not starting with encouragement you're not seeing that that person the way god's seeing them he has encouraged us in christ we are in christ god sees things in us that we generally miss yeah because christ is in us so it might be their heart to serve so you know thank you for being a part um and then i talk about it from the edification perspective you know love what you're doing but you know do you realize that like you're not always in time and obviously there should be some experience there in other words you should be able to point to some times when yeah you tend to always rush in there yeah so i talk about you know can you think of any ways that you can get better at this and the person might say well i mean i just can't practice and you know i don't have a drum set at home and then you've got a choice you've got to decide whether you really want drums that will be a distraction or you go without drums maybe you put them on a gem bear cajon yeah or maybe you put someone else on a cajon right and and but you've got to make that decision what you can't do and i would encourage you not to do is have someone on your team just because they want to be on the team yeah because someone's desire to be in the band does not require me to include them because it's not about their the use of their gifts it's about the edification of the church right right yeah that's a such a good point so going back to um having that conversation where you had some like honest and difficult things to tell this person yeah you know it seems consistently it's out of time or how do you create that culture among your musicians and your vocalists that you could have those sort of honest conversations yes like you have been pointing them to um the body edification of the body yeah but to be able to say those words i don't i think you're playing too much or i think it's it's not sounding in time or it might be a distraction how do you create that culture among you that is a great question uh i would i would suggest two things one is creating a culture of encouragement and creating a culture of evaluation so encouragement i mean yeah if you're leading a team and you're thinking every sunday these musicians are losers this is so bad they're gonna feel that yeah you know yeah yeah that's good you have got to come to the place where you can see good things you know and i'd start with is a person showing up that's great are they helping to set up you know something that's great are they are they singing with passion that's great yeah i mean if you can find nothing to encourage about this person on the team my question would be you probably should be exactly right i mean there's got to be something unless you inherited them every sunday yeah you're closed you come in closed every sunday um i mean if if you do inherit someone there is you may have to have that conversation where you're you're going with your pastor maybe saying yeah you know what i i'm not sure this is the place you should be serving and those can be hard conversations but it's you're not you're not serving their preferences you're not serving their desires you're serving the the church yeah and so you might have that you might have to have that conversation with him yeah well and bringing in the the pastor is is wonderful because we're we're he he's preaching the sermon for the edification body right right we're playing the instruments for the advocation we're pointing them back to uh these words dwelling richly yeah with the word of christ dwelling this richly that's that's what we're seeking to make happen right you're not just by yourself trying to get whip the team into shape yeah yeah doing this as a service together yeah with your pastor so culture of encouragement you uh on sundays i will just come in with the mentality and this this feels natural to me now i think at one point it wasn't i'm just going to encourage every person i see you know how are you doing uh you know during rehearsal thank you for that that was great you know if i hear something that sounds like oh that's good you know rather than thinking oh finally they're playing something good no encourage anything that they're doing good i like the way you intro that that was great you know i like what you're playing in the course just pass encouragement around liberally because that's catching that's contagious people will start to do that as well and they'll see that you're not just looking for those moments when people do something wrong right you know i say nothing until someone does something wrong right and then you're going to hear from me you know cj my senior pastor has modeled this for us for me for for the musicians i've played with for years decades where every sunday when he's preaching even even to this day he will turn around after the end of the meeting gives the benediction turns around and just thanks everybody and and gives very specific comments on you know what they did that was so good i've tried to learn from that and and be someone who you know will find the people in the band say i really love what you did for that you know thanks for recovering you know you recovered from that you know whatever it was um so just building a culture of encouragement could be notes you send hey you did a great job so we had a new guitar player um play with us recently and i made it a point both during the rehearsal to tell him where he was doing good and then afterwards just say thank you you know it just it i thought what you played was so good i like the textures i like the way you came in i like the way the fact that you didn't play all the time and i just looked for things so i want to set up that culture of encouragement yeah but you also need to have a cultural evaluation yeah talk about the standard that you said previously in the evaluation process well the the standard is you don't want to be distracting so it's possible that we're doing things that are distracting we don't even know it we don't even know it so playing all the time for instance if you're in a band you're playing all the time that can be distracting yeah at the very least it keeps any you know may keep people from being heard other people from being heard yeah um it may be you're singing harmony all the time and when you sing harmony all the time one you're probably not going to sing accurate harmony all the time two it just lessens the effect of harmony so you may you might not know that yeah so it would be in rehearsals when i'm working with vocalists um just saying to them things like um hey that that part you're just saying i'm not sure that quite works let's you know let's try this after a meeting saying yeah what was going on right there and kind of do it in a joking way you know not what did you do at the end of that turn what was that yeah but you know yeah it wasn't quite what we expected there at that turn was it we were you know uh but you've already laid a foundation of encouragement that's right so it doesn't feel like you're passive aggressive it feels like we're all we're all uh trying to um play our instruments or sing better yes for the sake of the church yeah and there's nothing wrong with that yeah for the glory of jesus there's nothing wrong with wanting to get better and having you help me get better right that's right and i i encourage our team and you would know this because you're in the band um to encourage you to encourage and evaluate each other yeah so so it's great like the drummer might say to the to the guitar player hey maybe you could try this there you know or what you're doing right there it doesn't quite work doesn't seem like it's working now i'm talking in a context where we come up with our arrangements on sunday morning we're not just copying what's on a cd and right we could do a whole podcast on right the the advantages and the disadvantages of doing that yes we don't do that right and i'll just say one thing about that because those who record cds aren't always thinking about what your church is like and you might not have the instruments too exactly to play what's on the cd so it just can be a standard that's not only unreachable but unnecessary yeah so we we pulled together the arrangements that morning and so that's where you'll have some advice and counseling yes some some remarks about well that's good that's not good but i encourage that you know among the team members not everybody feels confident to do that but some do and some are gifted to do it so yeah hey i'm not the only one who has musical ears and and i'm not always right so let's hear it from some of the other folks on you know how things could be better and then we'll we'll often do it at the end of a meeting um just talk about things that might have been better especially i would do it if like a vocalist is new a newer but even you know i have a guitar player play with me i'm always thinking what can i say to them that will be encouraging and helpful there's something that could be changing you know that's what was modeled for me for through cj for years and it just was so helpful both the encouragement and the evaluation now you didn't ask about this but i wonder if it'd be good to talk about when you have to say to someone you know what you probably really shouldn't be on this team yes yeah uh because that that does come i mean that time does come and you know again there are a number of ways of doing that we we schedule people uh you know irregularly someone will usually play singer play you know one time a month maybe twice a month um you can just kind of stop scheduling them and and yeah and they'll email you um but i haven't got an email from you in like six months you're kidding i must have lost your email address i'm so sorry um yeah it may be time to say to someone you know i well let me say before this i'm always telling people look as the church grows they're going to be more people coming um so we want to make room for them yeah and we should be rejoicing in that yeah and i let people know look that we have in our church we have like eight ten acoustic guitar players so if you which some people just heard that oh my gosh we want one yeah sorry we should probably send one to you um but they're not going to play every week you know they're just not yeah yeah so that's that's to be expected but there will be sometimes uh a person you can't keep them in reserve which i encourage you know leaders to do don't don't cut people off of your team too quickly you might need them just like a football team has i don't know 40 some players only nine are on the 11 or on the feet right right i'm terrible at sports this isn't a sports podcast it's not a sports podcast that should be very obvious so you got 22 people about 24 people who are being used yeah um what are the other 20 guys doing well they're in reserves they're they're ready to play so so you might have people like that on on your in your band but if say you know the person's not even that and you realize it it may be time for them to move on then you go to them and say hey thank you for what you've been doing how are you feeling about your position on the team yeah how do you think it's going and they might say well i love it i don't serve as much as i'd love really left i'd like to and then you need to be honest with them and say you know i would love to use you more but but to be fully disclosing i think we have a lot of people right now who do what you do who are actually better than you and love your heart to serve love your character but um it's just hard for me to schedule right now i wonder i wonder if god's you know has other opportunities for you in the church and if you can suggest some that's even better like i've known people they're fantastic at greeting you know you want people coming into the church meeting these people right right right and that's where they should be yeah or maybe that's with kids or maybe it's with counseling maybe it's you know maybe there are other things other ways god wants to use them that that they can't do as well because they want so much to be a part of the band right we're doing them a favor we are loving them to say you know just because you're not a hand just because you're you know a knee not a hand doesn't mean you don't have a place in the body the body needs the knees yes we need the knees you may not know you may not have noticed this but your body needs your knees and to lose the knees it it it it mobilizes the body so if you're trying to be a hand i mean paul talks about this first corinthians 12.
Um if you're trying to be a hand and your knee that's not only not serving the church it's not bringing glory to god you're gonna be a lot happier doing what you're called to do so i'd have that conversation with him and again if you're not a pastor you might involve your pastor in it yeah and let me say that conversation may end great but it may not end great i was just gonna say when you said that sentence like there are people that do this better than you i mean i know you uh and i've probably even heard this conversation before that you've had with someone and you're just you're marked by humility bob and generosity and love but so i just i heard the groanings of a thousand worship leaders in in this in the just thinking like i could never say that or that would blow up in my face or that would be terrible or that would never go well but i i think going back to what we've been saying through this whole podcast is that this is for the building up of the body yes and sometimes it's for my sanctification as well yes and it's not just we're looking for the you know the absolute best and we're looking for people to serve and not be distracting and if it's marked by um a spirit of humility and great graciousness with grace it's going to be a conversation that you can have with this person it's not just uh you've been cut off yeah it's because you love them yeah and because you believe god has a specific purpose for them but it's not in in the band it's not as a musician and yeah you can you can have that conversation and trust the lord with the results absolutely well uh we're definitely out of time but uh i would like for our next podcast to be four uh leaders who are leading in song how to not be a distraction with the songs you pick oh keys you pick them in and i'm hoping that that could be another conversation that we could have in a future podcast that's okay and also i'd like to talk more about just cultivating skill on your team like the process of working with band members vocalists drummers guitar players who who just you they can grow but you want to help them grow yes another time if after lord wills yep amen thanks for tuning in have a great day yep thank you for listening to sound plus doctrine the podcast of sovereign grace music sovereign grace music exists to produce christ exalting songs and training for local churches from local churches for more information free sheet music translations and training resources you can visit us at sovereigngracemusic.org