Discipleship Without Agenda

Making disciples - without exception, this is the work to which Jesus called every single one of His followers. Go therefore and make disciples…

In America, we love to make things as efficient and productive as possible, and as followers of Jesus, we desire to be obedient to the commands of Christ. So we can be tempted to approach our Christian calling (make disciples) through Western means (pragmatic, efficient, productive). We think if only we can create the right curriculum, and make sure everyone has a mentor and is investing in another, all we need is twelve weeks for a fully formed disciple to emerge! But humans are not machines, or math equations. We can’t simply plug in the right information and expect a neat, tidy, and timely response. Discipleship is messy work.

Discipleship is the work of a lifetime.

Another subtle way our discipleship looks like less Christ and more self-serving is when we make disciples for the purpose of meeting our own needs rather than to fulfill the Great Commission. When we make disciples for the purpose of filling holes in our team, or leadership, rather than encourage, equip, and enable people to be more closely conformed to the image of Christ we are not actually investing in people we are consuming them.


There is a difference between cultivating the people God has placed under our care and exploiting their gifts for selfish gain.

I am learning that real discipleship has no agenda other than to see Christ be more fully formed in an individual. As I can surrender my agenda, and humbly confess my needs and desires to Christ, I am freed to love and give myself away without ulterior motive. I am observing that this keeps my heart tender, my expectations lowered, and my hands open.

Our teams and churches have needs, yes.

We are called to make disciples, yes.

What would it look like if we were obedient to Christ without reservation or agenda? What if we invest our time, energy, blood, sweat, tears, and prayers into someone who takes that investment and serves another church, or another area of ministry, or walks away completely?

No agenda-free investment into people is ever wasted.

Thanks be to God.

Learning To Lead During COVID-19 (Two Years On)

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote about learning to lead worship during COVID-19. Two years on I am still learning. Maybe you are too. I hope these brief reflections can at least make you feel less alone, and hopefully encourage you to keep going…

I believe that hard things do not change us as much as they expose us. And our hearts and lives have been exposed by COVID-19 in ways that many of us have previously been able to avoid or ignore.

What do we value?

Whose lives matter?

Are masks a sign of fear, and going maskless a sign of faith?

Are vaccines helpful and useful, or reckless and untested?

Are there only ever two sides and two options?

Is everything black or white?

What is selfish and self-serving, what is foolish and careless?

Can I be friends with people who think and believe differently than me, or must we now become enemies?

Are we going to be discipled by culture and politics or by the Gospel?

The ugliness of my heart has been exposed in the pandemic: my tendency to judge other people, other followers of Jesus against myself and my own decisions. To look for specs through a log.

When I am attentive to the conviction of the Holy Spirit within rather than an outward condemnation of the pharisee within, I can see these places of friction as opportunities for repentance and prayer.

If we are willing these are opportunities for iron to sharpen iron. For the Church to truly be what we already are - one people, one body, made up of every tribe, tongue, nation, and language. This is an opportunity for us to image to the world our unity not through ideology, politics, or socioeconomic brackets, but by the unifying blood of Jesus.

This truly could be an opportunity to display the beauty of the Gospel.

To make obvious our adoption as sons and daughters of God.

My prayer as I look out on the faces of the congregation,

as I run into people as they stumble over why they have not been serving or attending,

as I field questions about why we are doing this, and why we are not doing that,

as we wrestle with what it looks like to love and honor God and care well for His people,

as we stumble forward,

and as I become more aware of my own sin, is:

God give me Your eyes to see these people. Let me grieve over my sin more than over the differences of my brothers and sisters. Keep me close to You, and tender toward especially those who are loud, vocal, and combative in the opposite direction from my own convictions. Give me the compassion of Christ, who ‘When He saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ (Matthew 9:36).

May our divisions be an opportunity for repentance. May our divisions turn us to Christ, the One who has torn down the dividing wall of hostility between God and man, who has reconciled us to become people of reconciliation, who has comforted us to be people of comfort. Amen and amen.

Shifting The Culture

We are always building culture.

We shape the culture and the culture shapes us.

As leaders, specifically, those who oversee an area of ministry, we have a responsibility to intentionally form, clearly articulate, and faithfully model the culture we are seeking to cultivate.

Intentionally form. You are forming the culture of your team right now. Rather than haphazardly letting it grow wild, cultivate, till, prune toward the kind of culture you believe with honor God and serve His people - both the congregation and the team - well.

Clearly articulate. Much teaching and training is caught, but it is also important to teach, train, and articulate the kind of cultural values you are seeking to develop among the team. We cannot expect people to embrace and embody a culture if we articulate it one time, this is an ongoing, repeated conversation.

Faithfully model. Our behavior reveals our values. I can say that I value being healthy and in shape, but if I do not consistently eat well, and exercise, those are just words, not values. As leaders we always go first - we must show our team how to carry the culture. Do not give up, or lose heart. Consistency is essential in establishing and shifting anything meaningful.

Ultimately real change is only possible through the empowering and ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. But if we neglect to continually cultivate our culture, the strongest personalities and cultural forces will shape, and disciple our team. Our cultures will grow either way, so why not intentionally invest beauty, goodness, and truth into what is growing in your team?

Identifying Team Culture

Last week I wrote about identifying the culture of your church. This week I want to take a look at how to identify the culture of your worship team. In many ways, identifying the culture of your team is similar - to identify the culture of your team you must be in relationship with the team members, you need to observe over time, and you need to ask questions. But as a church has a unique culture, so does a team functioning within the church community.

Are you stepping into a team that already exists?

No group of people is a blank slate. These are people who have served together, who have history, who have been formed and discipled, who have shared together. What things have historically been normative? What does the team value? What is the shared language and understanding of the mission and vision of the team?

Are you building something from scratch?

If you are church planting or beginning a new area of ministry within your church - you are the culture. Vision is important - without it, the people will perish (Proverbs 29:18). But we must also be open-handed enough to shift, change, and grow and God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6).

Much of the work of identifying the culture of your team is so you can determine what needs to be celebrated and redeemed, and what needs to be rejected entirely. In what way has the team been formed? In what ways do they need to be counter-formed?

When I was living abroad a fellow American once shared with me, ‘The goal of serving here is not to make people become more American, it is to help them be more like Jesus.’ What would it look like for the people on your team to serve in this culture, with these skills, on this team as Jesus would serve? What would their life and ministry look like free from the weight of sin?

Culture-making is discipleship. And discipleship is the long-long, ongoing work of the Spirit and the community. Learn. Grow. Celebrate. Reject. Be counter-formed by the Gospel.

Identifying Church Culture

People are meaning-making, story-telling, culture-builders. We can identify cultural artifacts from surface observations and interactions like: does the congregation dress formally or casually? Do services begin on time, or is time more of a suggestion? Is the congregation warm and inviting, or quiet and stoic? But to truly understand the culture of our churches, we must be in relationship with the people of our church. Because it is people who make the culture.

In relationship we begin to understand and identify the values as well as the idols of the culture. These are things spoken and unspoken. The often hide just below the surface. These values and idols are exposed in our conversations, our thought process, and the way we spend our time and money. We see our culture exposed in what we fight to defend, in what we ignore, and what we cling to for life, value, significance, worth and identity. We study culture not to pander to peoples idols, but to show people how they have sought to find life outside of relationship with Christ.

Every country has a unique culture. Within a country each state and city have a unique culture. Within a city or state every community and church have a unique culture. Observe over time. Ask questions. Build relationships. Study the history and story of a community. These are the thing that will help us point our churches to a better, truer Kingdom.

Cross Cultural Worship

I am obsessed with culture. Culture is invisible, powerful, and hard to articulate. And because we are swimming in its waters, we are often unaware of how powerfully those currents of culture are shaping who we are, what we do, and why we do it.

My family and I lived abroad for four years. Serving on staff as a worship leader at a church in the United Kingdom. When you are removed from the familiar, your invisible culture quickly becomes visible. The same is true when you inhabit a new culture. In returning Stateside, I assumed that navigating American culture would be easier - it was my culture after all. But armed with the experience of another culture, and with an awareness of my own, I realized that all ministry is cross-cultural.

All ministry is cross-cultural because we live in the world but as followers of Jesus we are not of this world (John 17:16). All ministry is cross-cultural because although we may be citizens of a particular country, our true citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). All ministry is cross-cultural because we are all temporary residents, passing through as exiles in a foreign land (1 Peter 2:11, Jeremiah 29:7).

We minister to those inhabiting a world and a culture that seems normal and familiar. Part of our role is to show there is a greater kingdom, one that is near, now, and not yet. We live as ambassadors of this heavenly kingdom. We must be students of the culture - the one we inhabit right now, as well as the one to come - to point people to the beauty of the better Kingdom. As we study our cultures we can see that all culture-making is an attempt to build what is only truly realized in the culture of Christ’s kingdom.

There is beauty in this world and in our cultures. There are things that can be redeemed, and things that need to be rejected. And part of the work of cross-cultural mission is helping people identify the difference between the kingdom that is fading away and the kingdom that will last forever.

Remembering, Celebrating, Reevaluating

How much time have you spent remembering as we enter into a new year?

Understandably, the last two years have felt like a blur. And it can be tempting to simply rush past remembrance in hopes of finding something better in 2022 than what we have experienced in 2020 and 2021. But what needs to be remembered? These past two years have been painful but they have not been devoid of God’s grace and kindness. What ebeneezers can you raise in your life and in ministry?

Celebration begins with remembrance. After remembrance, what needs to be celebrated? How can you name the sustaining grace of God in your life and ministry?

Everyone of us has learned first hand, ’The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps (Prov 16:9).’ How can we plan for our area of ministry with open hands? How can we reevaluate how we lead and serve? Perhaps our priorities need to shift from planning further in advance, to being more present with people, more attentive to the voice of the Spirit as we remember, celebrate, and reevaluate.

‘You are good and do good; teach me Your statutes.’ Ps 119:68

Know Your People

If you would have asked me ten years ago if relationships were important within the role of leading worship I would have said, ‘yes.’ But what I did not understand was the fundamental connection between leading worship and being in relationship with the people you serve. If we see the role of leading worship as primarily musical, relationships will be secondary. If we see the role of leading worship as primarily pastoral, shepherding the people of God, then relationships become inextricably linked to the responsibility of leading worship. If you, like me, struggle to understand the value of relationships to your role as a worship leader, here are some of the things I have learned over the years:

We need relationships to be reminded that we are sheep before shepherds. We must remember before we have a role, exercise any gifts, walk in a God-given calling, we are sheep. When we intentionally create distance by things like staying backstage, being disengaged during the sermon, or staying out of the room our presence communicates what we think is valuable in significant and subtle ways. We too are sheep needing the voice of our shepherd.

Relationship informs the way that we serve because discipleship is rooted in relationship. We are not people-directed, but Holy Spirit led, but knowing the stories, struggles, and experiences of those we lead in song should shape the way we pray, prepare and point them to Jesus. As leaders of sung corporate worship, I believe that we are making disciples through our liturgy, song choice, and leadership on a Sunday morning. But true disciple-makers are those that make disciples as they go, not just when they are wearing the vocation/volunteer hat as a worship leader.

Relationships help us see the individual, not just a crowd. Standing in front of 20 people or 2,000 there is a temptation to see a crowd rather than the individual. But as we begin to enter into personal relationships with people in our church, it adds perspective to the crowd. We can begin to see the individual - made in the image of God, completely loved, completely known, as we stand before the crowd.

What are you learning about relationships and leading worship?

Four Things Every Worship Leader Needs From Their Pastor

The relationship between pastor and worship leader can sometimes feel like a tug of war. When these roles are pit against one another, no one gives up the ground and everyone loses. As a worship leader for many years, I have had my fair share of heel-digging standoffs. But I have also experienced the disarming power of pastors and leaders who invite me to stand on the same side of the rope as we pull together.

There are four elements I have found consistently among those pastors and leaders working to stand on the same side of the rope:

Input…

Set vision for your worship leader not just for a service or sermon series, but for the next five, ten, twenty years of the church. Cultivate and value the formative power of the gathered Church singing, reading, praying, serving, and being sent. And equip and empower your worship leader to serve you, and lead God’s people in this way.

Trust…

As you shepherd your worship leader, trust them to translate your leadership and input into the corporate gathering. And trust the Spirit of God to do what only He can do – lead us into all truth.

Presence…

Both in preparation, and during the service your presence – or lack thereof – speaks. To the worship leader, your presence communicates trust, humility, and partnership. When pastors and worship leaders are only present in the service during ‘their’ portion of the morning, it subtly undermines the value and importance of all aspects of the gathering. As pastors, you set the tone and posture of every service.

Feedback…

Whether life-giving encouragement or loving rebuke you can shepherd the heart, skill, and vision of your worship leader through feedback. When you create an environment where input is welcome, trust is given, and presence is steady those are investments not only in your worship leader but the congregation as well.