Leadership Archives - Page 3 of 4

Five BAD ideas that will make your worship services FAKE!

Rich KirkpatrickApril 18, 2016141.1K views

We have all been there. Everything may sound fantastic, look attractive, and planned with purposeful intent. But, something just doesn’t seem right. You feel fake vibes when hoping for authentic ones. Regardless, what makes a worship service fake might be boiled down to a few things even though there may be many things we can put on a list. Here are five ideas that promote the “fake factor” in church worship services. The worship team is performing like they are in a stadium and only 200 people are in the worship center. Just means over-scaling your team, sound and presentation might not be helping you. The energy put into production shouldn’t outweigh the value of building relationships with the people in the congregation you serve. Your haze machine cannot fill that gap. There is no context of God’s character, just our experience. We can sing “we worship You” all we want, but who…

Hype, Manipulation and Other Unseemly Ministry Tactics

Rich KirkpatrickApril 12, 20166563 views

Photo Credit Sophia Louise Creative Commons It was repeated several times in a church staff meeting, so it was nothing new this time. The pastor instructed us to essentially be his “amen corner” during the sermon and exuberant charismatics during the musical time of the service. Laugh, visibly take notes, and clearly “leading” the crowd around you to respond to the platform. Of course, if the staff were lazy slobs and sleeping during the sermon and eye-rolling at the worship leader I might expect a reprimand. But, it was clear the goal was to create a more charismatic response through manipulation rather than instruction. Might the congregation say amen if the sermon was better delivered? Might the church sing louder if they were invited rather than coaxed into it? Authoritarianism Versus Egalitarianism In 2015, a movie called The Experimenter told the story of famous social psychologist Stanley Milgram. His experiments…

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

Rich KirkpatrickAugust 28, 20157289 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.

Crowdsourcing Church Tech: 5 Ways the Cloud Empowers Volunteers

Rich KirkpatrickJune 18, 201511314 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.

Musicianship Matters! Five identifiers of a skilled worship musician.

Rich KirkpatrickMay 26, 2015281K 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.