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If you’ve ever watched MTV2, or Nickelodeon, you’ll notice a few things. If there’s not a commercial on, they are using every bit of square footage they have on the air. Buffer moments between shows are geared to hook the viewer in hopes that they will not lose them to channel flipping.

On Nickelodeon, you’ll be watching your average kiddie show, followed by an upbeat 2 minute interview with some random kid about his pet kangaroo. And before you know it, you’re into the next show. In an article about their programming strategies, MTV2 execs referred to this as using every part of the “grid.”

In designing worship services, are we examining and using every part of the grid? It is a question I am starting to ask my teammates every week. In working with students, it’s absolutely necessary to look at every part of the grid, since we are competing for a generation’s attention.

Too often we look at the pieces on the grid that take up the most space – the songs and the speaking. Not to say these pieces aren’t important, but what about the other small portions of the grid we are overlooking? The easiest parts of the grid to forget about are transitions.

After observing service after service, trying to figure out why our students are starting to “get it,” we realized that part of our success has been realized due to our attention to the details of transitions.

Look at your service, and notice what transpires whenever you are transitioning from one element to the next. Here are some questions you can ask when examining your grid:

1. What happens between the time the students enter, and the time the service starts?
2. If someone is praying on stage, does it fit the mood and the pace of the moment?
3. How can we use even basic lighting to enhance transitions?
4. Whenever a person goes up to the stage to speak, what is happening at that moment with the screens, lights, and audio?
5. If we are moving to an altar or response time, most likely that transition hinges on the words of the person leading it. Are those words being chosen carefully enough to handle such an important transition?
6. If a video is being used in the service to make a point, is it placed on the right spot of the grid to achieve maximum results? Furthermore, how do you transition out of a video?
7. How do you transition either before or after an announcement time in a way that is not distracting or jarring?
8. How effective is your band transitioning between songs?
9. Does your speaker handle transitions between points in a way that maintains the group’s attention?

These are only a handful of questions that you can use to start examining your grid. Attention to detail results in attention from your audience.

If we don’t use every bit of the grid, we have to realize that those parts of the grid will be empty, which means we risk people falling through the cracks. If we have the most important message in the world to deliver, why should we strive for anything less than to use up every bit of the grid that we have to communicate effectively?

In part two of this article, we’ll talk about the process of determining what and who should be on your grid.

I have been in bed with the flu all weekend. I’ve never had the flu, so it’s been interesting. I hardly ever get a fever when I’m sick, so experiencing my temperature go up a little over 102 was quite an experience. A slight delirium, somewhat pleasant yet disturbing dizziness, compounded with the need to sleep for hours on end.  Since Friday night I have caught up on 2 television series and watched 5 movies, including Rocky 2 which was on at 4 this morning.

As I type this, the twentysomethings service that I lead worship for is getting revved up for the evening. The band is rehearsing, the media people are getting things lined up for the evening, our volunteers are starting to put all of the pieces into place. And I’m not there. Not even close. I am in bed with my Mac, and some Jello.  And as I continue to form words and sentences, I struggle with a small, distracting voice that is pulling at my ear, telling me that something is wrong. Very wrong.  The voice is telling me I should be there.

We are all kingdom builders.  Working in ministry we are constructing a kingdom, brick by brick, every day.  The real question is, whose kingdom are we building?  Are we building the Kingdom Of Me, or the Kingdom of God? Are we constantly building structures and systems that hinge solely around us?  Have we placed ourselves as the chief cornerstone in so many threads of our ministry that when we are sidelined for whatever reason, things fall apart?

When we build the Kingdom of God, we have to look at what that means practically in a ministry job.  It’s nice to say and all – “I’m building the Kingdom of God today!” – but come on – what does that mean when it’s your job?

I am a rookie in this business, but I am learning through hard knocks that building the Kingdom of God is all about investing yourself in a small handful of people. Period.  There’s no religious 34 point strategy, no holy-sounding discipleship plan, it’s simply about relationships.  I used to think my job was all about creating systems.  Creating systems for communication, systems for meetings, systems for agendas, systems for creativity, systems for artists, etc.  I have abandoned my cold hearted search for the perfect systems and dropped everything to find that investing in my team of people has done the unthinkable.

When you pour your life into the ministry team that immediately surrounds you, systems create themselves.  We can’t attack it from the reverse.  If we spend all of our time creating systems, in 10-20 years, someone else will come in and uproot everything and implement a new system.  If we pour our lives into people, the impact on their lives is eternal, and the relationships themselves develop systems that work.  In turn, we create a team that knows our heart, vision, and can implement those things in our absence.

Examine your team members, and figure out their language.  Camp out there.  If you take notice in people’s passions, interests, and lives, something amazing happens – they show up. They are on the same page.  You don’t have to twist their arm anymore.  Figuring out their rhythms and what makes them tick develops a system and work environment that yields quality work and eternal, personalized fingerprints on the Kingdom of God.  Too often we create our systems first, and then try and invest in our people through the confines of those systems, only to find it doesn’t work.  I am beginning to find this particularly true in the case of working with artists.   But let’s save that for my next article.

Building a Kingdom that doesn’t revolve around you simply means that when you can’t be there, things don’t fall apart.  That’s the less than spiritual application here that seems to be more telling than anything.   Building the Kingdom of God essentially means taking my nameplate off of the door. It means dissolving behind the forefront of my team, still reinforcing them and supporting them, but not having to be the name and face that goes out in front of the calvary.  It means that when I’m gone, I’ve invested in my team enough to know that we share one vision, to the point that the details will get covered just as if I had been there.  At least that’s what I’m shooting for.  And if it means talking for hours on end about Radiohead with a team member, I’m willing to take the time.

The voice of the Kingdom of Me will still nugde from time to time. It will never be completely silent.  We will eternally have the urge to be everywhere and up in everything.   Sometimes we have to be sidelined to look at the cold, hard facts.  When we’re sidelined, that’s when our kingdom is exposed.  I wish I could say that I have this figured out, but I am still learning. Some days I can see some beautiful strands of the Kingdom of God shining through my work, and somedays I can see the Kingdom of Me crashing down at my own hand.  Tonight as service is about to begin, and I am about to combat another round of fever, I really hope that my people do a better job than I could have ever done. I really hope that I am not missed.  I hope that the time I’ve spent with my team shows up tonight in their comittment to excellence, attention to detail, and passion.  More than anything I hope that when my Kingdom is exposed, what’s seen is an eternal investment, and not a temporal self-gratifying strutcure.

(this article was written while listening to Anberlin, and was fever-induced, which means it might not make sense.)

I’ve been working as a “worship leader” for seven years now, and this weekend I looked at some numbers. Let’s see, for the first 4 years or so, I was doing an average of around 4 services a week, and in the past 3 years, it has narrowed down to 1-2 a week. You figure an average of 4-5 songs per set. You figure in some extra gigs here and there, and in those collective seven years, I’ve done around 5,820 praise songs.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.

I’m just going to throw this out there as well, since we’re being honest here. I am tired of songs. They exhaust me with their predictable formats and their trite, emotionally charged, selfish responses (and as an author of such, I’m pointing the finger at myself). I’m tired of coming up with new, top-40 intros to praise songs to catch people’s attention, and I’m tired of the same 5 songs in the key of D that I can string together as one gigantic big finish.

Psalm 33:3 says to “Sing to Him a new song,” but I mean, really, is that even possible? We only have so many chords, we only have so many words to throw around down here. After decades and generations of music evolution, it seems we’ve turned over every stone only to find the words of Ecclesiastes ringing in our ears – there is nothing new under the sun.

But you see, if I’m tired, it’s my fault. If a song is old and tattered, it is because I have withheld the one, unique, precious thing I can bring to that song – my life.

When I hear Bob Dylan sing “I Shall Be Released,” I can hear his life bleeding through every lyric. There’s no doubt he’s searching, struggling, finding, and it’s right there in his voice. When Damien Rice sings “Elephant,” you can tell he’s lived every line of heartbreak, and that he would give anything to forget her. When I hear Fiona Apple’s “Sleep To Dream,” you don’t have to convince me that she’s been burned. Why? because her life has been infused into the song.

When you were in high school, you would sing “I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever,” and it was what it was – a song. When you were in college, striking out on your own, battling loneliness, you would sing the same song, and it was…different. Life had changed. The song had changed. And after you graduated college and your parents divorced, you sang the same song, seeing it shift just a little in the light. Different. And that one night you were on the floor, grabbing at the carpet, tears streaming down your face, the next morning you sang the song in church, and it was – different. Life had changed. The song had changed.

Worshiping through song is a complete farce if you don’t bring all of yourself to the experience. Songs will always ring hollow if they aren’t fueled by your story. Songs are a beautiful tool of release for the human soul, but if we don’t allow ourselves to exhale through them, we won’t experience the beauty of praise. Before we know it, they become old, tired, lifeless structures that are desperate for the very breath we deny them.

Take the one song you are tired of the most. Yes, that one. Take the lyrics, and think about the last year of your life. Take those lyrics, hold them up, and allow them to catch light. Hear the echoes of your story through the halls of each space between the lines. Take every ounce of courage you have, and let it go. Let your story run rampant through every phrase, and sing. Sing a new song unto the Lord Your God, because He is good, His love endures, and behold – He is doing a new thing.

I have a new hobby. Remixing songs.

When I was in college, I was first introduced to the world of putting music together via computers, and fell in love with the process. I was in the studio at all hours programming away, and became addicted.

Flash forward, after a couple of years of letting GarageBand sit on my computer, I decided to play around with it one day, and I was hooked. Instantly  But it wasn’t enough fun to just record my own songs  I wanted to rip stuff apart and put it back together again. It was a strange craving.

So I stared with your standard emo-pop ballad, sped it up to twice it’s speed, and began. First I began the painstaking journey of matching a drum loop, determining the tempo, and syncing it up with every phrase. Then, I added a groovy synth bass line. Miss a few notes? No problem – drag and drop it to it’s new location. A shaker here, and additional drum loop for texture, and I was done. What a geeky, technological rush of adrenaline.

There is something amazing about taking something and seeing it in a different light. But sometimes in order to do so, you have to take it apart. You have to expose it. You have to let some parts stand on their own, and you have to mute others.  You have to try new pairings of ideas.  You have to cut, paste, and shift.  And more than anything, you have to be open to the synergy that arises when the newly arranged elements begin to evolve into a new monster.

In ministry we spend so many hours trying to reinvent the wheel, when instead what we need to do is use the wheel.  We spend hours at our coffeeshop haunt trying to come up with new snazzy ideas, and beat ourselves up trying to come up with teaching that noone has ever stumbled on before, all in an effort to keep ourselves from being bored of using..the wheel.
But we forget. Many people have never seen the wheel before.  Ever.

We can’t throw it out and start over – why would we?  If we’re not careful, we will turn around and wonder how we got so far away from the basic, fundamental, functional elements of the church that people so desperately need to experience.

Familiarity breeds comfort.  You hear a song you know, you are set at ease. You hear a few new tweaks and changes here and there, and you appreciate the new context. More than anything, now they’ve got your attention.