A Serving Leader

Yet again, the idea of leadership seems to have occurred in my life again! It is as if God is nudging me to try and become a better leader because everything that I do at church seems to revolve around the idea of leadership, especially within worship!

Our student group talk was led by my friend Andrew; it was on the topic of leadership, of how we could all learn from the church leadership advice in 1 Timothy 3, regardless of what we do after we graduate.

We had a discussion of the best qualities of a good leader: someone who knows everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, someone who is fully aware of each responsibility, knowing how each role works, can delegate well and who leads a lifestyle that others should follow.

Of course, these were all great qualities that all great leaders possess, but for those of us who don’t currently have those sorts of characteristics, aspiring to become any sort of leader can be quite challenging, and cause you to feel like you mustn’t have been called by God to lead at all.

Whilst I was processing this idea of clearly not having what it takes to be any sort of adequate leader, it was time for our worship pastor, Matt Courtney, to share what he thought was the most important aspect of a good leader!

He told us that the best leader is a serving leader; one who is always willing to serve others in their position of responsibility. His wisdom is beyond words, especially when I realised that this analogy was connected to the life of Jesus: the perfect leader who came down to earth, not to be served, but to serve.

This has really taught me how to work on becoming the best leader that God wants me to be; to serve others as Jesus did!

Lois

Being An Inspiration And A Leader To Others

I have never really considered myself to be any sort of inspiration to others; what is so special about my life that I would have the ability to inspire others?

Furthermore, to hold the title of any sort of leader seemed even more of a ridiculous idea to me! Who am I to confidently lead others when I feel that I have no influence or inspiration towards other people?

You’re probably wondering where this is all going. It all started the day after I was on the worship team for the first time. I was yet again approached by our worship pastor Matt, who asked me to consider attending the termly worship leader meetings with other people at church. My initial thoughts were that of course I am not ready to even consider leading worship in church, he was really getting ahead of himself. He did, however, back himself up by saying that it was also aimed at future worship leaders to have an insight into this role, and to connect with the other worship leaders within the church. Of course, food being provided was also a selling factor!

When I was still unsure of whether to accept, Matt then told me that I was a true inspiration to others. I didn’t really know what he meant, so he elaborated by telling me that when I faced my fears by standing up at the front of church in the worship team, people were really inspired by such an experience.

The following Sunday, I explained to him that my flatmates have now had to hear me play the guitar, which is not good! However, he told me that “Your guitar playing is great Lois, you did everything right last week”. I then told him that after our CU meeting last week, the one that was full of disaster after disaster, our UCCF staff worker told me that my guitar playing had really improved over the last week, but of course, it was from playing alongside Matt, whilst I was “Learning from the real professional”. He seemed to find this amusing and told me that although this is his job, people didn’t see him as being remarkable; he was just like every other typical male worship leader, and people would never be surprised by this. However, apparently when people saw me at the front of church, they were inspired, because “To see someone like you build up the confidence to step outside of their comfort zone and worship reassures them that maybe they could do the same”.

Again, Ed’s message really must have spoken to me if I was able to step out of my comfort zone during the afternoon service at church whilst I was on the worship team. My next step is to now carry on inspiring others by stepping out of my comfort zone, and in time maybe even lead others, because as Matt always likes to remind me, “The best is yet to come, Lois”.

Thank you for reading this post. I now feel like I am fully submerged into a worship leader lifestyle somehow, and I have really enjoyed writing these posts recently!

Emily Toole and myself, after we decided to start using Matt's signature phrase "The best is yet to come" in our daily lives!

Lois

Beneath The Surface – More To A Person Than They Let On

This post was inspired by the fact that I had to leave during the middle of a church event for two hours because I had a flute lesson on Wednesday 17^th October 2018.

I was approached by Matt, our worship pastor, who asked me where I disappeared to during this period. I told him that I went off to my flute lesson and he seemed surprised, claiming “I didn’t know that you played the flute Lois”. He then asked me for some more information, so I told him my small history of how I taught myself to play the flute when I was 14, but I could never read music, so I never progressed. However, when I started university last year, I decided to start having flute lessons and to take exams, and I absolutely love it so far.

He seemed inspired and said to me “That’s amazing Lois! It must take real musical talent, and to sing and play the guitar too. I’m really impressed Lois”. My friend Tog then said that I was basically “A musical prodigy” and then they seemed even more impressed when I told them that I play in an orchestra too, even if I am behind for someone of my age, but it is still so much fun. They were then claiming that there seems to be “Nothing that I can’t do because I seem to be good at everything”, which I know is certainly not true, especially since at a younger age, I always felt that I could never find anything that I excelled in, and it was sometimes quite disheartening. As a result, to have people really believe in me was so encouraging.

I feel that, especially at university, people often hide parts of themselves that they don’t feel confident in sharing. For example, I had a conversation with my flatmate a few weeks after moving in about my orchestra. She seemed really interested in the fact that I played the flute and the guitar, and then told me that back home in Northern Ireland, she used to play the piano and the cello in an orchestra but has given them up now. A friend on my Maths course also told me that she learned to play the piano when she was 12 and would really like to start playing again, and possibly even start learning the guitar. However, none of these people would have shared this information with me had I not started the conversation with instruments that I play.

To be perfectly honest, I can completely empathise with them when it comes to sharing information that you are slightly self-conscious about, in this case because it involves playing an instrument, something that requires a lot of skill and confidence when it comes to having to volunteer your services with this skill. Back when Debs was worship pastor at church, I mentioned that I played the flute so that I could join the Christmas orchestra at church, but never once did I mention that I played the guitar and that I had become a worship leader at my Christian Union. Looking back, it seems completely ridiculous; she was the one person who could guide me the most, but I was too shy to offer my services in worship at the time, and it was only because my friend Simon deciding to spill the beans about me before I was able to openly chat to her about worship and receive support from her.

Back onto the topic of getting to know people, our current worship pastor Matt seemed to realise that there was more to me than I let on. Now I can see that after my first appearance in church when he told be that “This was just the beginning” and that “The best is yet to come”, he knows that as much as there is still so much for me to learn and improve on, he somehow sees potential. When he first asked me if I would attend their worship leader and potential worship leader meetings, I deemed the idea as crazy, because of course I would never have it in me to lead worship at church, but now I know that even just attending these meetings would enable me to get to know the stories of the entire team, which will help us to function as one body of Christ!

“For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ” 1 Corinthians 12:12

Lois

Learning To Move On From Our Mistakes

I always feel like the major downside of leading worship is that you are held accountable for your mistakes, particularly when the whole band is relying on you. I have always found them awkward to come back from, especially with all eyes on you.

Most people who know me well know that I always lack in confidence when I do things upfront. When I first told my mum that I would be in the worship team at church, she asked me if I was going to play my guitar unplugged, so that no one would hear my mistakes that I made. Truthfully, I would have loved to have done that, but I knew that the rest of the band would not have allowed this to happen because they have the same liability of making mistakes as myself.

On my very first day of being in the church worship team, our worship pastor Matt made a mistake with lyrics during two consecutive songs. As a band, we just kept going, and he did too, after trying to find the humour in it. He was easily able to carry on with the song and move on from the mistake.

At the end of worship, we all had a gathering of prayer, where Matt thanked Jesus that he “Loves our worship, mistakes and all”. He then admitted to it being embarrassing when everyone sees your mistake at the front and that “It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last time” that something like this happens. Somehow, it was really encouraging to hear that even the professionals have their flaws; they just know how to recover easily.

Two days later during our worship at the Christian Union, we had a completely disastrous situation. Twice during our worship, my friend Simon’s keyboard decided to cut the power unexpectedly. We had no idea how or why this happened, but it was very difficult as a band to recover from. Simon, not knowing what to do, got to work on trying to turn the keyboard back on, whilst myself, on guitar, and my friend Carolyn, on the ukulele, tried to carry on, completely embarrassed that all eyes were on us as we tried to recover from this situation. During the second incident, Simon’s head was covering the only set of chords that we had between us. This happened to occur as we approached the bridge, the most difficult chords of the song, which meant that freestyling was impossible and we both had to stop completely and attempt to sing unaccompanied until the keyboard power returned. Fortunately, we were covered by Andrew Bailey on the cajon, who kept going for us, and we were truly thankful for this.

The next day, I explained to Matt of our disastrous situation at CU. He reminded me that mistakes are such a common thing to make and his advice was to learn how to carry on as normal by singing until the situation is solved because the audience still need to be led, and they will always look to you, the worship leader, to do this.

I feel like the possibility of making a mistake upfront is always the main thing that holds me from wanting to lead worship in church at all. I have been given lots of support from Matt recently about making mistakes as he seems to know exactly what to do in such situations. His main advice to me this week was to always play “Wrong and strong” and that if you just move on with the mistake, people rarely ever notice. He confessed to me some of recent mistakes that he has made recently, to reassure me that it is a common thing, that it happens to every worship leader, and that if making a mistake during worship is the worst thing that can happen, I really have nothing to worry about when leading worship.

There are still so many things that I need to learn and experience now, before being left on my own to lead worship at church. Although the idea still does completely terrify me, I am almost certain that it will happen one day; I now need to learn how to come to terms with this reality and let Matt guide me in every way!

Lois