Immediate Prayer Request

Guys, there is a situation happening right now that really needs prayer. I will try to explain it in a short version and a long version. Take your pick, but please pray :)

The Short Version

Please pray for spiritual guidance for our leadership team and for myself as we come together to figure out the best way to approach a delicate situation on our young adult worship team. God's work is being inhibited by one individual's tight grip on her reigns of power and inflexibility to accept some changes that are needed in order to foster a spirit of worship and the ability of this team to lead worship. This situation is on the point of eruption. Because it has been so delicate, it has been avoided at all cost in the past. But a few members of the leadership are really struggling under the reality that one individual is allowed to retain an unhealthy role which does not encourage worship but rather stands in the way of it. As a whole, the leadership team discussed this issue in our meeting on Tuesday and now something has come up that steps up the urgency even further.

The Longer Version

There is a situation on the young adult worship team where the woman who has the most authority is making some poor choices in her leadership decisions, ones that do not reflect an understanding of our primary goal being to lead worship or an understanding of how to create an environment in which to encourage the most from the musicians. This situation has been years in the making. But as she has felt threatened by the presence and experience of a few new people who have been involved in worship this year, things have possibly gotten even worse.

This is the woman who's place I helped fill while she was gone a few months at the beginning of my time here. This leader, unfortunately, wants to lead everything except worship because she is uncomfortable leading spiritually. Rehearsals have gone steadily downhill since her re-involvement in the fall. The band is fighting to maintain a sense of their true desire to worship and lead worship for others. Individual members of the team do truly have that as their primary desire. I have spoken to her privately and also made suggestions in front of the entire team in order to help us take steps to have an environment where we are free to worship rather than distracted by stress. Lately she has been making us do too much new material (two new songs per week in some cases) and she makes changes to the songs that are very abstract and make remembering them more difficult. She is unwilling to see that her ways of running things are not encouraging a healthy atmosphere and are not positive for worship. But my suggestions are met with the response, "Am I the leader, or are you the leader?"

There are a lot of things that come into play in all of this on a spiritual and personal level. She has done the church a great service and is a steadfast and dedicated servant. She stepped up a few years ago in a time when nobody else did. She has great qualities as a leader if she is willing to understand that part of that role involves taking all assets of the team and making something truly great out of them by combining ideas and experience that can compliment and add to her own.

I have talked about things recently with the leadership of the young adult ministry and two of the three are completely on the same page. They see the same things and have seen them even before the time that I arrived. It would have been nice to have the luxury of some more time for us to all come to a better understanding of how to approach this and to all be completely of the same vision.

However, this person really played her power hand this evening by putting three new songs on the setlist. We will not have our usual Thursday evening rehearsal this week, but rather only rehearse on Saturday before the service. I have great respect for our musicians and what they are able to do, but I recognize when too much is too much. These are not professional musicians and they have busy lives. I can also put myself in their shoes and remember what it feels like to struggle to wrap my mind around too much new material and have it ready to "perform." And approaching new songs this way does turn it into a performance. The musicians have to try very hard to focus on what they are doing, not in the sense of worship but simply just to get through the music.

I have addressed these issues personally with this woman over the last few weeks, but she has stepped things up a notch rather than cooling off and accepting reality and remembering the pinnacle goal of the team. Since the ultimate cost of these desicions is worship, the very thing we are supposed to be doing, I sent her an e-mail in response to the setlist. I readdressed the issues I have spoken with her on in the past and asked her if she is willing to try some new things and to view leadership as a responsibility to "benefit from your own experience and from other people's experience and put it all together for something really great and very powerful."

This situation needs prayer. There are many of us involved and we need wisdom. We need to know what God is saying for right now and what maybe needs to wait. He knows how He wants to work, and we don't until He tells us or guides us with the right words to say at the right time. That's what we need at this point.

This individual also needs your prayer. She needs to know she is being held tightly in God's arms at every moment and that He loves her. To understand that this love does not call for fear or protection of oneself but rather enables open eyes and a responsive heart.

I hope to be able to meet with this person tomorrow to discuss things that have been coming up. I guess I will find out tomorrow whether or not that is a possibility for her. That conversation is another specific aspect to keep in prayer.

Thanks for helping. God can really use this situation for His glory. He can do great things and I know that He finds great pleasure in seeing them through.