Dan Wilt lists the basics for in-ears use.

It’s going to take time to get used to using IEMs, so decide now that, because you can’t go back, you’re going to keep getting better at using them. There are things to learn about how to wear them, how to keep the relational environment that is worship intact as you do, and how to create a monitor mix that works for you and the overall sound.

1. Wear Them Correctly, And “Relationally.”

Take the time to learn how to wrap your IEMs around your ear, and insert them correctly so they stay well. If this hasn’t happened, you won’t hear well. Put cables down the back of your shirt, or at least around your back. The more obvious it is you are wearing headphones, the more clearly you send a message of disconnection (think of a teenager with their headphones in at a family gathering). Be as inobtrusive as possible. (For drummers, especially behind a shield, sometimes using isolating headphone with bigger ear muffs is not so bad. Heck, everyone knows you’re already isolated! But avoid that for the bass player, and everyone else.

[Remember – everything messages on a stage. Like a music stand raised high and between us and the community messages some level of disconnection, so too constant fiddling with our tech can message the same.]

2. Give Yourself Time To Get Used To Them.

Wear them around the house, and use them with your iPhone or Android. When possible, come in early to practice and fiddle with your mix based on some of the ideas here. Over time, using your in-ears will become easy.

3. Take A Few Minutes Before Rehearsal To Set Up Your Mix Correctly.

Take the time during sound check to set up your mix properly. Ask questions if you’re having difficulty. If you get them right from the outset, you’ll have less tweaking and fussing to contend with as you go, and your part in the music will sound better. It’s exactly like getting the gain-structure right as a sound engineer – if you don’t take the time to do it properly, you’ll be fighting the sound for the rest of the morning.

4. Start With The Master Volume Low And Work Up.

Your ears are sensitive, so care for them from the gate. Start with your master volume low, then work up until it’s feeling clear. Then, work with each individual instrument to get only the level you need. This goes with the next one.

Continue reading.

Marc Brown offers ideas for what to do when a group of people from your congregation leave to begin a new work.

As worship pastors, we spend ourselves working and asking God to build a team (a choir, an orchestra, a band) that will help our congregations hear, know and respond to God. As our ministry grows, usually the personnel needed to fulfill our calling increases. The expectation for musical and spiritual excellence also becomes great. If your church happens to be located in an area with high turnover, the need for more personnel and necessity of excellence makes ministry even more challenging.

Regardless of these challenges, everything can be clicking right along, when one day, God breaks in and calls a significant group of people from your congregation to begin a new work. The new work could be a new multisite location, a house church network or other significant ministry initiative, but as far as fulfilling the ministry to which God has called you, it doesn’t really matter. All you know is you are left with fewer people to accomplish the same amount and quality of work. Even if considerable effort has been spent raising up and training leaders, the sudden exodus of so many can leave you scrambling to fill vacancies.

This problem isn’t unique to worship ministries or even churches; it can happen to anyone in any volunteer organization or business. However, when this happens in a church, there can be one aggravating component. Those who are departing may dominate the focus of the church to the point that you are tempted to feel as if your role, and the role of those who remain with you, has suddenly become insignificant. We should never be surprised or bothered when people depart because they see better opportunities to reach the lost, but we also need our struggles to be acknowledged. We need encouragement in the crucial ministry God has called us to continue.

Unfortunately, it can seem there is no way to express these feelings without seeming petty or unspiritual. The necessary role of new works to grow God’s kingdom is beyond question. But, for those of us left to maintain vitality and quality of worship in the mother church, it can be discouraging, especially when it feels sinful to even voice your feelings or point out the challenges you face. What can we do in circumstances like this?

1. Pray for and support the new work and those leaving to be a part of it. I have read several compelling studies that seem to indicate new church starts are significantly more effective in reaching unchurched people than established churches of the same size. These brothers and sisters in Christ deserve our love, our prayers and our unconditional support, not our criticism and resentment. In addition to prayer support, we should also demonstrate a posture of open hands with regard to sharing equipment and other resources.

2. Look to see how God is already filling your needs. I got an email from a volunteer ministry leader informing me of her intention to join the new work just four weeks before the start of the new school year and our annual kick-off for fall ministries. I assumed this unfortunately timed decision was the death knell for the ministry she led. I was wrong. In just a few days, God provided a new leader who was just as capable and even more passionate for the ministry. While all open ministry positions have not yet been filled, several have. Don’t assume that the start of something new means the end of something old. God’s plans involve you, too.

3. Rally your people. If you are feeling this way about your church’s new work, chances are others in your ministry are also. Those who remain with you need to know that there is still important Kingdom work to be done where they are. Prayerfully lay plans for your ministry and cast that vision to your people. Get them excited about what God has in store for their ministry.

Continue reading.

Hillsong’s Matt Hann says excellence is about growth and maturity.

Excellence is not a set level of quality or perfectionism. It’s an ever-changing dynamic in both our personal journey and the collective journey of our teams.

It’s about growth and maturity. Excellence should be a moving target of sorts. The quality of your craft and serving today should not be the same as the quality of your serving yesterday. It should be increasing and moving forward, not stagnating!

Excellence is our ever-growing personal and collective best, as an offering to God!

It goes hand-in-hand with humility, not counter to it. Everything that we do in our serving – all the weekend services, late-night rehearsals, conferences, travel, songwriting – it’s all for Jesus! He deserves our best, and our best today is different than our best from yesterday – our best for tomorrow will be better still.

So how do we become more excellent and in turn make our teams more excellent?

1. Excellence looks like personal practice
Getting better at your craft. If you feel as though you’re “good enough”, please re-check your approach. Excellence takes hard work and means we are continually getting better.

2. Be aware of where you want to be and set realistic goals for yourself
Don’t be content with staying where you are. God wants our best and the bottom line is our best will constantly be changing with more time, work, and experience.

Continue reading.

Steve Hafler debunks that old saying.

I’ve often heard the argument that a person should dress for church like they’re meeting with the president. Perhaps you’ve heard a similar argument — that a pastor ought to wear a coat and tie on Sunday because NFL commentators still wear classy suits on Sunday (they wear them on Monday and Thursday too). This argument is used by well-intentioned people, many of whom are rightfully sensitive to a drastically changing culture. However, as I consider this particular argument I come up short when trying to connect the logical and cultural leaps with theological bridges.

Here are five reasons why the meeting with the president argument fails to persuade:

Frequency: How many meetings can the average person expect to have with the president? Perhaps a single five-minute appearance? Certainly that person does not expect to be granted several hours each week. Normal people would never leave a meeting after an official introduction and handshake and post on social media that they’ve become close friends with the president.

Purpose: Why would a person choose to wear a suit or formal dress to meet with the president? Because it’s:

• an official meeting,
• with a person who bears the highest human title in the country,
• who occupies an office of far-reaching influence and power,
• who meets with guests/strangers in a setting of high-level government, and
• they desire to make a good impression (something we never need to do with God).

Reality: There is a kernel of truth that surfaces when comparing a meeting with the president to our ‘Sunday’s best’ for God. The disturbing reality of this parallel is what it actually does reflect — a sterile meeting with a stranger and the complete absence of any real relationship and transparency. This illustration exposes the nominal Christian’s relationship to God — distant, infrequent, formal, absent of any true affection, and void of any real relationship apart from an official appointment on Sunday morning. I wonder if those who use this argument wear their ‘Sunday’s best’ when they meet with God through His word on Monday morning or Thursday evening? It leaves me wondering who they are really dressing up for? Perhaps it’s a high view of the corporate gathering, or possibly it’s a disconnect stemming from a false dichotomy

Continue reading.

The Washington Post weighs in:

The designation “Too Big to Fail” usually makes us think of large banks, propped up by taxpayer funds during the 2008 financial crisis. But the central questions it raises—When do we have a responsibility to save an institution? And who should be on the hook to save it?—apply beyond the finance industry. Each of us has our own ideas and interpretations of which institutions are the most valuable to society, and what the possible failure of an institution would mean in our daily lives.

For me, that resonates nowhere more profoundly than with our country’s churches. Megachurches, those with over 2,000 regular attendees, are a large piece of the American religious landscape. And as the big get bigger, they also have farther to fall.

Twenty years ago, there were only a handful of megachurches in the United States. According to Hartford Institute, now there are 1,300 churches in America with more than 2,000 weekend worshippers, and 50 churches with more than 10,000 weekend worshippers. Those numbers appear to only be growing.

We recently got a sense of their massive influence by witnessing the reaction when two major pulpits were vacated. Dr. Myles Munroe from the Bahamas Faith Ministries International died recently in a tragic plane accident. And Mark Driscoll, who led the multi-site megachurch Mars Hill, resigned over a leadership controversy—leaving behind a weekly attendance of over 12,000 people.

So what happens when these charismatic pastors, who galvanized their congregations’ growth, disappear? More often than not, there is no one waiting in the wings to ensure the church’s continuance.

Continue reading.

Jim Denison compares Internet churches to the televised churches of the 70s.

Have you heard of “Text Neck”? That’s the term therapists use for the effects of texting on our spines. They tell us that the average human head weighs 10 to 12 pounds. Tilting it down to look at a mobile device increases gravitational pull, so that the neck experiences a force of 60 pounds at a 60 degree angle. This is equivalent to putting four adult-sized bowling balls on your neck. Since the typical American spends an hour on his or her smartphone a day, spinal stress may lead to early wear, degeneration, and possible surgery.

Text neck is not the only unintended consequence of the technological revolution. The Islamic State continues to broadcast beheadings on YouTube because their videos shock the world and advance their cause among jihadists. The cousins who massacred Jewish rabbis in their synagogue on Tuesday knew their actions would bring instant global attention to their cause. (For more on the recent violence in Israel, see my article ‘Violence in the Holy Land: my view.’)

Twitter has now made available every public tweet sent since the service began in 2006. Who knows what embarrassment lies ahead for those whose long-forgotten tweets are reported to the world? Social media fueled the Arab Spring, but most who joined the movement are still waiting for the democratic reforms they sought. And the plague of Internet pornography is destroying lives and marriages around the world.

Continue reading.