www.chrisdenham.co.uk

I’ll be spending the next couple of days in Sweden thanks to an opportunity to attend Scott Wilson’s Eurolead.net conference with keynote speaker Paul Scanlon.

It’s a conference specifically aimed at senior pastors and leaders so it will be interesting to see how much time is taken up discussing the events of the past few weeks in the Christian World!

Anyhow - as I’ve decided to leave the trusty laptop at home - it’ll be good to be away from it - you can follow my trip on Twitter. I’ll be sure to post some of the best thoughts when I’m back!

I’ve really wondered how to write this blog post as since yesterday the blogosphere has been fast building up with a million comments on what has happened in Australia with Mike Gugglielmucci. If you’re not aware then confirmed reports are coming out that Mike has admitted to making up his entire illness - for what gain or why no-one yet knows.

I found out yesterday and to be honest my brain didn’t believe it for about half an hour as the whole thing just seems so unreal. But the truth is out and we have to deal with it as leaders and people who have been moved and challenged by the ‘testimony’ of Mike. I was even inspired by his song and the ‘testimony’ recorded on the Hillsong DVD to preach on healing the other week in church - showing a 3min clip of Mike talking about his ordeal. It all just seems unreal…

So how do we deal with this? I found this article from Mal Fletcher really helpful because I know Mal as a senior global leader who also knows Mike personally and his family.

Mal writes:

I have known Michael since he was a little boy and have always loved him - I still do. Our hearts, of course, go out to those closest to him.

Though Michael’s is not a household name, his music gift and speaking talent, along with his very charismatic personality, have made a major impact on many young lives, in a number of nations.

I write about this here, with some discomfort, because some regular readers of this editorial will know Michael and will be trying to understand the situation.

I write also because the issues here are bigger than this individual case. From time to time, Christian ministers and leaders will fall. People of faith must be able to face the inevitable question: ‘How can this happen - and how should we respond?’

I think Mal’s comments and direction are the best comments I can find at this time because here is someone who carries the respect of tried and tested leadership mixed with the emotion of personal involvement.

Read the full article here - in the meantime - let’s be praying for Mike and his family - that God’s grace will move and turn all things for good and the Glory of His name!

I’m sat writing this as my wife sits with a couple of friends of ours who’ve written a book on dealing with being middle-aged or above. Next week on my list of ‘jobs to get done’ is the formatting of 2 books from Pastor Dave which he’ll be getting published sometime in the next month or so. Plus it seems most of the pastors whose blogs I follow have some new book in the pipeline, being released which is going to be the next best read in your life.

So it seems everyone is writing a book these days… I wonder if I have one in me? There’s so much happening in my life I’m not sure if I can bear thinking about writing something other than the odd blog post right now but I wonder - if I did make time to write - what would I write about?

Tell me what you think - what should I write? Or what would you write about if you could be bothered to!

After too much time spent in CSS and on Photoshop the brand new davegilpin.com is now ONLINE!

There are a whole host of articles that we’ve carried forward from the old S4 Leadership days - but Dave has some awesome new stuff to release including the full online E-book ‘Manboobs’. ‘What is that’ I hear you cry - well you’ll just have to go look!

I’m certainly looking forward to more of Dave’s little video blogs - I just hope he doesn’t put us serious blog readers down everytime he records one… (Dave’s problem is that he is a Nerd in Denial!! lol)

Anyhow - seriously good stuff on there so make sure you check it out and Subscribe to the RSS feed! The Podcasts should also be on iTunes soon as soon as I can work out why iTunes won’t read the feed! In the meantime you can get them on the site itself!

It was another great Sunday in Leeds this week with more new faces and a great atmosphere of faith and expectation as we move into an exciting season within the church. There’s growth and increase taking place, lives being changed and of course in a couple of months we’ll be moving into our new building. Here’s some highlights from day:

• Congratulations to Josh and Beth who are now expecting their 1st child
• Awesome to have Joyce & Henri join us who have been our missionaries in Gabon for a couple of years and now spending time in Leeds ahead of the birth of their 2nd child and for Henri to do some studies.
• Our worship team have been doing so well over the Summer as it’s effectively a bit of a skeleton crew with people away. Yet the power and presence of God in worship has never been more evident! Keep it up guys!
• Great to see loads of new people joining us and enjoying themselves. A big hi to the new Taiwanise couple George and Joan (I know - I thought it really funny that they had such English names until they told me their Taiwanise name and I was so glad they had English versions…). Hope you enjoy yourselves whilst here for the next year!
• Dale preached a great message on how to do the journey between weakness and strength in God using the story of Gideon in Judges 6 as his text. The key thought for me was that in every breakthrough and moment of transition you need to have an ENCOUNTER with God - it takes REVELATION not will power to move you forward on this journey. Watch out for the podcast to listen to it in full!
• 1 person made a decision to be a Christ-follower which is the most amazing part of the day. We had a really long season in the first half of this year when we saw no-one making decisions on Sundays. But for the last few weeks we seen people EVERY Sunday which is a real breakthrough!
• Summer Picnic - it was our annual trip to Roundhay Park for the bif family picnic. It almost looked like we might be rained off, but the sun came out and we had a great time. Everyone was really social and sat around in the park for nearly 4 hours chatting, eating, playing footie and then we also kicked off the 1st ever Big Family Walk round the lake which is a good way of dealing with all the junk food you just ate!

Such a great day! Can’t wait for next week!

So I’m feeling almost as happy as Team Sprint GB thanks to blogging friend Scott Rodgers who decided that my bribe to take him out on the ‘perfect curry night out in Leeds’ was worthy of the Gold Medal - or in his case a copy if ‘IT‘ which I will duly read and review for all of you who have no idea what I am talking about!

I love his comment on the blog though saying that he has ‘no idea what a perfect curry night out means’ so he’ll have to give it a try - which made me realise HOW FORTUNATE I am to live in the amazing Great Britain!

Our athletes right now are competing in probably their best games for as long as I can remember. There’s a sense of victory in the air that seems to be compelling the athletes on. I’ve found myself watching snippets of the olympics this week and seeing a country that seems to have lost its boring quiet optimism and graceful sportsmanship and instead got back a Lion’s roar - and it shows - we’ve started winning things!

I love the fact they were interviewing the Cycling guys this morning and it wasn’t “Well, let’s hope for the best…” instead it was “We can do this - we’ve never been better, never been more on form…”

It took us 7 days in the Athens Games to get our first Medal - after 7 days in Beijing we have EIGHT and we still have one of our best weekends for winning medals to come with more cycling, rowing and athletics to come.

Brits for years have been known as ‘plucky’ - the underdogs who seem to keep on coming back and trying and trying again. And yet our heritage is that we are a nation that conquered and led most of the known world.

I guess its time for the Lion to start roaring again.

You were never born to be ‘plucky’ - you were born to be a Kingdom builder, more than a conqueror - you were born a winner from the very first moment that you won the race to the egg!

Which randomly brings me back to the best curry night out in Leeds - because that’s something else we can be proud of. After all - the Brits invented curry - it’s true (in a way) - and if you’ve never been out late on a Friday night in the middle of leeds and took in a late night Tikka Makhani at my favourite Akbars Restaurant then you’ve missed out on something. You can guarantee that most of Team GB will be sitting around supping their energy drinks and chomping on a protein bar with dreams of Olympic glory interupted every now and then as their minds wander back to the first thing they’ll do when they get home to a much greater Great Britain… go out for a curry!

Even before the entire global economy went into meltdown I’ve not been one for spending money on stuff without thinking whether I’m getting a good deal for my money. It seems that even buying a bag of crisps will set you back a months salary these days and so the idea of ’shopping around’ is ever more on the agenda if you want to get a good deal. You can even shop around for your electricity these days!

However, after a number of attempts to Google the entire planet in search of the cheapest possible means through which I can buy a litre of milk and a tin of beans I’ve decided that I simply don’t have time to shop around.. so I’m just going to have to ‘faith’ it…

I haven’t come to this conclusion wildly either as I’ve recently had two occasions where I’ve bought something on the spur of the moment and the nudge of the Spirit and walked away with an amazing bargain. And I did it without a shopbot in a mile of my fingertips. I like to think of it as Holy Speed Shopping!

The first occasion was back in October when I’d had a pretty cool day and things were going well when I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me and say - “why don’t you check out the Skoda Garage today?”… Now you might be thinking that here’s God having a bit of a laugh with me.. but the truth was I’d been thinking about buying a Skoda Octavia for a few months because they’re big, reliable and relatively cheap. So after finding myself down at the dealership and scouting out the Octavia’s on show, I come across a gorgeous silver Honda Accord, about 2 years old with only 8000 miles on the clock and its Automatic as well! (For anyone reading this from a developed country - the UK for some reason still sells mostly Manually operated cars as opposed to the labour saving automatic gearbox). It’s ticking all the boxes including the fact its NOT a skoda and by the end of the afternoon I’ve got a part-exchange for £1000 off my old heap plus another £750 of the price through haggling and a deposit paid! Now - how often do you go and buy a car in one day, having looked at only one dealership!

The second recent occasion of Holy Speed Shopping was after thinking about buying my family an LCD TV to replace the heap we had at home. There again came the Spirit nudge and before I knew it I’m in the shop picking up a TV with over £200 off the price…

You may call me jammy - you may call me other names I can’t write down - but whatever it is I’m pretty grateful for the fact that moneysupermarket.com has nothing on doing life with the Holy Spirit. And before you start assaulting me for trivialising my relationship with God down to the level of consumerism - isn’t the idea that we do ALL our life with Him? So if it’s important to involve God in the big decisions of our lives then why not in the decisions that cost us our hard earned cash. After all - every bargain God brings my way leaves more cash in the bank to invest and sow! And more importantly He knows how much I really do HATE shopping around…

Thankfully to the combined efforts of myself and my good IT-nerd-friend Dave we’re back in business… so after I get some work done I’ll post something interesting to say…!

Phew!

Apoogises to anyone passing my blog lately as its seems to have been deluged with problems since I updated to the latest Wordpress 2.6 install….

For a start it shouldn’t look like this…. all thanks to Permalinks issues on Windows Servers so if you have any bright ideas then do email me…

I hope to have it fixed asap!

(argh!)

I’m no amazing worship leader but I am a Pastor and one of the things I need to attempt to do is ensure that whoever is leading worship in my congregation is doing a good job. So I found the latest blog at churchrelevance.com really interesting as it lists the Top 10 Peeves about Worship Leaders as compiled by an American pastor. Looking through it was quite surprising to see what was in there but made me think as to exactly what I DO like to see from our Worship leaders… so you can read the Peeves here but here’s my 10 response to those Peeves so as to explain what I’m looking for:

Peeve 1: Asking the Congregation to do Something

It was interesting to see that people disliked it when they are told to raise their hands in the air or turn to others and say hello or shake hands. Funny cause we do both! But I understand part of the sentiment as I do hate it when someone just says in the middle of a particularly charged worship moment… “oohh just raise your hands…” cause I have to ask the question that most un-churched attenders are asking.. “why?” I think if you’re going to give instruction then make it meaningful! Here’s a challenge for every worship leader to give meaningful instruction that draws people to lift hands, sing louder, appear to enter into God’s presence, whatever it be you are attempting to do… but don’t use the phrase.. “lift your hands!”

Peeve 2: Mini-Sermons & Talking

Some worship leaders don’t know when to shut up and some just seem to appear on stage, get lost in their own world and then hand on to the pastor after 30mins. Our format is generally to kick off with a great praise song then a short encouragement to worship and then that’s it apart from maybe a few ‘meaningful’ instructions later on. Key thing is to make sure you have SOMETHING FROM GOD and not just a piece of worship leader rhetoric. Plus I encourage our leaders NOT to pray for the crowd but instead to encourage them to begin to pray… after all you’re leading THEM in worship and not doing it on their behalf!

Peeve 3: Not Focusing on God

This goes without saying really - the worship leader needs to be a worshipper! So you need to be confident that they are not just on stage doing an excellent job but that they are also engaging in giving God their worship.

Peeve 4: Unprofessional

We demand a high degree of excellence from our Worship Team because when you practice well, learn the music/words, know the runsheet and can keep tight with the rest of the team - there are no distractions for the congregation and there is nothing to stop the musician/singer from really worshipping God themselves. So we don’t allow any music / music stands on stage, there’s no cue cards, no props - just musicians/singers who value worship so much that they are prepared to put the time in to practice and learn what they are doing.

Peeve 5: Bad Singing

Erm - yes - who wants to listen to a bad singer. I find that it works best when we have a good blend of a number of singers with a strong melody line. Don’t get lost in harmonies because the congregation need to know the melody - especially when doing a new song. So we have harmonies but make sure they are not overpowering or confusing.

Peeve 6: Appearance

Dress code is important and our bands adhere to a casual smart policy - we want them to look up-to-date and ‘trendy’ - but nothing distracting or too flash.

Someone makes the comment on this peeve that they don’t like Worship Leaders with their eyes closed. This is a good point - Worship leaders need to make eye contact with people. I say to my leaders - you can find value in your worship to God by seeing others really getting into it. Obviously there are times in the presence of God when it’s appropriate for the leader to close their eyes - but they should really have their eyes on what is happening around the room at all times so they can ensure the crowd is being led in the right way.

Peeve 7: Inauthentic Prayer

Like I mentioned above - don’t just pray - if you’re leading worship you should come to the meeting with 3 or 4 things that God has been stirring in your heart so that you can pluck from these what the Spirit guides you as appropriate. More often than not its more important to get the crowd to pray. So encourage them to start singing in the Spirit, praying in tongues, telling God how much they love him etc… although make sure you giving them ‘meaningful instruction!’

Peeve 8: Bad Transitions

If you’re a worship leader then you need to spend as much time on rehearsing transitions between songs and links as you do the actual songs as dynamic and atmosphere can be lost in a bad change, awkward silence or horrible chord progression. Also avoid the obvious links / puns - better to say nothing at all! Finally be careful not to rush on to the next song! Sometimes it’s good for people to linger in a place of worship - ears open to the Spirit!

Peeve 9: Improper Lifestyle

As far as I’m concerned its an absolute privilege to be a member of the worship team - even more so a leader. It has nothing to do with our need or their ability and everything to do with character. So if that means we have a guitar and congos and nothing else because there are only 2 people who have their life and motives in line to be a worship leader then fine - cause I believe we’ll have a more powerful worship time with the right people on stage, rather than a full stage with people who are upholding bad character and mindsets. Worship leaders need to be pursuing God with all their heart, mind and soul and be an incredible servant to the whole house.

Peeve 10: Not Catering to the Congregation

I guess this one comes from people who think that the worship is their own baby and they can do what they want. I like it when our songwriter comes up with a song that is directly in line with what has been preached because they are enabling the ongoing revelation of God’s word amongst the congregation. There is no point singing songs too complicated or culturally irrelevant because you need to be able to establish a culture in which the un-churched can find themselves in an atmosphere that draws them closer to the divine touch.

So there you go - what about you? What do you LIKE most about worship leaders… what would you prefer to see / hear more of or see / hear less of?