Welcome back. You belong here.

There have been many lessons in leadership for me these last few months, mostly good. Yes, I’ve had the occasional moment of wanting to hang the painter who the day we were supposed to get our murals done, decided he had something else to do. That was fun.

But I’ve learned a lot about humility while leading.

I’m the music and performing arts guy at Bethany. Don’t ask me how I ended up here, I just did. I’m also worship leader for our Resonate emergent service, modern experiential, blah, blah, you know the type. I also do the morning contemporary deal. It’s crazy.

When I started doing Resonate at the beginning of the summer I wanted seperation and uniqueness from the AM services, while maintaining unity in the values of our church such as the 4b’s, life change, spiritual formation, etc.

Resonate had an amazing music group early this year. By the beginning of the summer, most of them had quit. Way to go new guy! Was it something I said?

But for the last two years, on the sidelines, while the old Resonate band led, had been 4-5 young men and women who have been wanting to be the ‘next awesome thing’ in Resonate, and instead, bummer for them, here they get me. Btw, I was asked to do Resonate and turn it around, not the other way around.

My choices were two:
1. Do my thing, my songs, my style and ‘call people to my vision’ doesn’t that almost sound good? Which would have been stupid! or
2. Humbly learn from the 4-5 young men on the sidelines, allow them to lead WITH me, not FOR me, actually learn their songs, have them input into the order of things, the room set-up, etc. and instead of calling myself the MAN, I changed their strings, put batteries in their effects, cleaned their guitars, bought them a drum set and bass rig, bought them power bars for our rehearsals and had them (and their many other hungry friends) over to my house for a bbq. Genius!

The band sounds amazing, there is trust in the team, I’ve learned a lot of United songs which I didn’t really like at first, and the future of Resonate is in place. And I get to lead worship together with them and see people actually get into worship (as compared to the AM crowd).

You see, that takes humlity and vision. Humilivision, vishumility, whatever. But most don’t like it. It would make me look better if I came in the first day and said, this is my show, my songs, etc. You follow me. Other staff would have said, “wow, David is really in charge over there!” Instead, I served them, learned from them, fed them (often), earned their trust, visited them at LBCC (where most attend), and now we are leading together. And in that trust we have built, I am now able to say to them, “let’s do 5 songs and a Scripture reading, instead of 10 songs and a lot of hype…” I can now say to them, “we all get to set-up the drums together, that means no one gets to worship while the drummer is working.” Stuff like that.

I should be a worship consultant. I could make millions! Maybe I will someday.

The other day, a fellow staff came in and saw what we’ve been doing, the best comment was what he said in the car, “what you’re doing there David is genius, real genius.” God is good.

Now, I get to do the same with three actors, one of which recently wrote a poem we now call the “penis poem” which he read at a church event. Bad idea. Three dancers who are too busy to dance except they keep calling me to dance, huh? Two painters who I think are in love, and 6 band members who feel like the old guy who came in to improve Resonate is actually helping them.

Have a great day.

Into the future,

davidT