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The In-Between: When Clarity Puts You On Hold

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Hey ministry leaders, do you really need to build a platform?

Rich Kirkpatrick7289 views

As I was assisting the unpacking this new church’s first sound system, the young pastor asked me something I thought strange in the moment. “Rich, by now shouldn’t you have a couple books out by now?” The conversation centered around his view that my ministry career should be at a certain level of achievement given my supposed status. He mentioned his path was to start this new church, and as it grew he would write a book, and then there was the platform that was needed in all of that. At that moment, I was in a big church and yet taking time as a friend to help set up audio gear in his large suburban, three-bay garage. His church had not even held its first public service, but his personal platform and achievement was center of what he wanted to talk about.

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5 Sins of Social Media Users – How to grow a flimsy, fake following!

Rich Kirkpatrick22359 views

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram are now not only personal expressions but company branding machines. With the proliferation of this new media, I have identified five sins that create weak impact—unless you are into rewarding stupidly bad behavior. And, they drive me crazy! The dark side of social media might hurt you more than help. Many companies see added stats to follower lists, but do they know that their supposed social media manager is cheating a system instead of engaging people? 

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5 Lessons on how influential blogging actually works

Rich Kirkpatrick6255 views

There is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and many techniques to draw people to click to our blogs. But, how do you have a conversation that actually influences and reaches the right people? It is one thing to attract traffic to your blog or social media. You can get people’s attention once. However, that could do more harm than not if your desire is to actually influence thinking. Is your message worth a discussion or simply a click?

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Utility versus Beauty: When the bottom line invades our worship

Rich Kirkpatrick0373 views

In our society, what works and produces profit is what we value. While we hunger for a post-modern identity and story, the structures, all around us scream utility, conformity and results. Money rules. This might even be true in our houses of worship as we may have unintentionally turned business metrics on our expression of worship. The question is this: do we value utility more than beauty in our worship? The answer is that our culture-infused church in modern America apparently does.

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Crowdsourcing Church Tech: 5 Ways the Cloud Empowers Volunteers

Rich Kirkpatrick11317 views

I have enjoyed being part of worship and music ministry in the local church since the days I used to develop Kodak Kodolith slides projected over a cyclorama curtain. The changing colors and the sharp, crisp slides were all in analog, including the spelling errors! The Saturday night ritual of developing in my darkroom-closet was quickly terminated upon the purchase of our church’s first digital projector. Then, the horrors of PowerPoint as applied to congregational singing commenced.

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FEAR: Media’s Motivator, Our Trap

Rich Kirkpatrick16348 views

Old stories such as “Hansel and Gretel”  and “Little Red Riding Hood” were meant to put fear into children. Lessons such as Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” were likely to prevent a child from basically ringing the fire alarm for fun. Fear is a motivator. It works. Fear of losing your job can be leveraged to keep you and your coworkers from offering legitimate grievances and used in turn to add hours and workload without additional compensation. From TV news to Facebook posts about the ending of the world, fear sells and gets our attention. Our fight or flight chemistry is amped to the max. It’s a science and it works.

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Musicianship Matters! Five identifiers of a skilled worship musician.

Rich Kirkpatrick281K views

From the first note to the last, what is played musically in church matters. Music is one of the historically prominent and powerful vehicles for our Christian worship–today as well as in the past. Whether the worship is expressed on a Fender strat or sung by a choir in full robes the music matters. Like the beams of a building need competent engineering, the execution of our music leadership requires skill. You can compensate all you want with automated loops, tracks and auto-tuning but in the end polished bronze is still bronze. Gold is the real thing. Just because something is shiny does not make it valuable or worthy in the long run. Is what we are offering as valuable as we think it is? Good musicianship and the several components that it contains matter.

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Rockstar Monk – The role of the worship leader?

Rich Kirkpatrick47549 views

At least two extremes exists when describing the role of the worship leader. Today, we ask for rockstar-monks to lead us in worship. I have heard an influential leader say repeatedly at conferences, “Your role is more important than mine as the preacher.” Really? This made me feel important at the moment, but reality says something else. As a worship leader we prepare people to hear the word, lead them in prayers, but how is that more important than leading and forming a congregation spiritually through preaching? As a worship leader, my role is surely significant as I serve the whole congregation and have a part in the spiritual formation, but not a superior part. I am simply just a part. And, to put that on me or any worship leader is to raise this role to monk status. 

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Relevancy and worship music styles – It’s complicated

Rich Kirkpatrick23360 views

We want to be relevant with our worship music and need to have spiritually vibrant worship. A church itself is described by many leaders by the musical “ style” offered. There is traditional, gospel, contemporary, and modern as some words to describe just a few of the menu options. Music itself appears to how we brand our worship. If we brand worship as a music style what message does this send? I may have bad news for those who would be so pragmatic. We want something that works. Would we rather have something dumbed-down that we can control, or something that actually is culturally relevant, powerful, or engaging? In a discussion about styles of music in worship, we have to ask about the intent. Why do we want to be germane with our music? My point is clear. It’s complicated.

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How We Worship Matters: Physical space can kill your worship

Rich Kirkpatrick0676 views

I will be periodically posting a series of essays this year: “How We Worship Matters: Essays on the Worship Battles We Should Fight.”

As human beings, we live in the physical world. Our spirituality is connected to this and there is nothing like the Incarnation to give us a picture of how this mystery exists. Jesus is fully God and fully human. What did Jesus display to us? Spirituality is housed in people, not in stone temples or in only one physical spot. 

The arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost only amplified this by entering the life of every believer on the planet. We can now pray in concert with people all over the world because of our connection with the Holy Spirit. Our worship is empowered, no matter at a mountain campground, warehouse turned house of worship, or country chapel.

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The dance: Create to tell a story. Innovate to solve a problem.

Rich Kirkpatrick0269 views

There are two types of creativity needed as humans. We have presented issues that need addressing and to be creative in this case mean people work to solve what needs to be solved.  After all, necessity is the mother of invention. Things that are “needed” get the resources, the cash, the spotlight. This is true in our spiritual leadership, as well. Culturally, we are locked into a love affair with making things “work” which is not entirely a bad thing. The problem comes when the other leg of creativity is neglected and even denounced. You see, aesthetics are hard to justify as expenditures when your only vision of creativity is one of utility. This modernist thinking clashes with our souls, yet we still in our leadership worship “what works.” 

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