"Farm Team Strategy (Connections 4-7)" Video Transcript

Video Transcript: Farm Team Strategy (Connections 4-7)

All right, we're talking about vision and strategy. We've been looking at the connections, connections. We looked at one through three, your personal life and your marriage and family, how do you get music going in your family and so on. But now we're going to be looking at your small group, your church, the kingdom and the world. How do we get music in those areas to Psalm 78, we will tell the next generation, the Praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power and the wonders he has done, he decreed statues for Jacob and establish the law of Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children so that's kind of the goal in the whole farm teams to you know, get people seeing and playing at all these different levels. What's the purpose and the strategy of the farm team? Foster's the developing of homegrown talents, this is just sort of a review of gives everyone a place to exercise their talent at their own level. It gives everyone a chance to develop their talent and improve at whatever level they can achieve. 

So why is the farm team system so important? Without it talent is taken from other churches, people develop a good person and then another church takes them. Without it, they're more people sitting on the sidelines watching rather than playing. And without. Without it, the worship services become a sort of a surrogate praise time instead of the culmination of all the praise that's been going on all week by all the people in the congregation. So we want to look at connection four in the music farm team, and that's friends or small groups, music individually or in your marriage or in your family is often just the place to begin. And you don't have to be that talented to play the guitar in your family. Your family loves you they'll accept it. But let's say you develop When you get better and better, where does one go to get to the next level as people improve? They want, you know, the next level place, as the music leader, help your people get to that next level, how do you do that? make music a part of every small group or educational class. If music is a part of everything that you do, then you need someone leading at every one of these little venues. And so someone's learning they're growing to take the guitar plus class, they're playing in their family. And now they're they're improved to the point where you say, Hey, could you help out with our children's worship? 

Could you play once a month to help out with that singing and now they have the next venue to play it or help develop bands or song leaders in these groups. So you have the young people's band, you have the children's band, you have the teen group, you have the the drumline group, we have all these different groups and and within them, leaders start developing and growing and have a place to play. Start as many bands is for as many occasions as possible have an annual talent night we do that out of church and and, you know, challenge we challenge every small group that do something together, come up with something, use your talents, sponsor a songwriting contest, it gets people off the dime. And people try things and and just because they wrote a song doesn't mean you have to use it in the worship service. Hold it by a monthly praise night where people come and they sing and, and they've been practicing something, they can do it and if it's not that good, it's not that, you know, it's not that crucial. This is just our sort of informal praise time as it's like it's a family reunion the family reunion gets together and each member of the family does a little something and we all love each other. We all accept each other and the quality, you know doesn't have to be the best in the world. 

For my drumline I get to The teenagers you know the seventh graders or something, you know, they all get a little drum and you know, this group does this part and this you know, you make up this little thing and have some song playing and, and they work on it for three weeks in their. Their little kids program time and and they come up in front of church and they play this thing and they're all excited about it and you only let the seventh graders do it is sixth graders, fifth graders, they don't get to be in the drumline. This is something that you get when you finally get to the seventh grade. And so all the little kids are looking and dreaming of one day they'll be in seventh grade and they can join the drumline. I do a musical, churches, we've done a couple of them or you have this musical and all these parts and people take apart and it's just creating venues creating places, small areas where people can sort of use their gifts, and they have a reason to get a little bit better to practice and they have somewhere to you know an outlet.

For all the practice and improvement, have music classes, teach harmony, teach, guitar, teach piano, teach drums, teach bass. Teach like electric guitar, teach all these things and then give them a place where they can put it together. We had a class for, we had 25 guitar players and they all learned like three chords. And then we learned like five songs. And then, you know, three months later, 25 of us with our guitars, loved this church service. Connection five in the music farm team, the the church service, so we had small groups going up, but now we have the church service. This is a church service where we have our worship thing, who gets to lead the music at the church service. You get volunteers. Some churches do that. Hey, anyone that wants to anyone that likes to can come forward. Or you could have everyone who really loves music and likes being a front or those that have the talent and the worth ethic. The walk with God and the humility to be used by God to help the congregation worship God better. 

So remember, the worship service is not primarily the place? Well, we really want a lot of participation. So the worship services the way to get a lot of people participating. That's not the goal of the worship service, the worship service is to worship God. And the people up front are only there to help the congregation sing. And if you just put anyone up there that wants to be up there, they may or may not be helping anyone sing, we're helping them feel like they're a part of it. So now we're picking people to help them feel like they're a part of the worship service. That's the lead us as the worship director help people get to this level. So this level isn't for just anyone and just volunteers. And so it's for the people that have worked hard that wanted to get there. So how do you as a worship director, help people get there, create worship teams with talented gifted people. allow those that are Not as talented to come to practice or give them some special role in a small group. 

In other words, let people play at their level. And as they practice and improve, they move up in these levels allow allow those that are not as talented to once in a while play with the band on Sunday with a song or two so so you gradually let people get used to things that you see their commitment, they see your commitment. Remember wife had a guy who wanted to play the guitar, he said, Hey, I'd like to play the guitar. I play the guitar, Okay, come to practice. He came to practice for about three times and he realized that he didn't want to practice as hard as everyone else is practicing. So just coming to practice lets people know what they need to do and can either let them know that they should find another level to play because they really don't want to do this, or it'll inspire them to work at it all their heart. Why only letting the best play and sing on Sunday is a good thing. I mean, it sounds sort of elitist. So we're only gonna let these people play and someone else can't play and he loves the Lord as much as anyone else. The guy who can't play the guitar as well loves the Lord just as much and his, his heart wants to worship and so on. 

So why don't we just let the good guy go? Well, number one, it honors the farm team. If you have a farm team, the farm team says there's a place for everyone to play. But let's put people together that are at similar levels so that they can challenge one another so they don't get bored with one another. Or they don't, you know, humiliate each other. You know, if I'm not that good, and I'm with someone who's good. Right now, I have a guy that's coming to our church from Germany. He's incredible ping pong player. I mean, he just, you know, when I first started playing, I hurt my shoulder, so I had to play left handed. He just annihilated me and how much fun was it for him? And how much fun is it for me, and I can play with my right hand and we can have a bit of a game. You know, I'm a little bit closer. 

But that's fun, and you're improved. And and so it honors the farm the number two it actually motivates more than letting anyone who wants to leave you just let anyone out sure you want to do it just come on up. It demotivates the person who's really good says you know, why am I practicing so much? I'm just going to show up on Sunday and just let it go. And and the person that isn't as good it's like well why should I work any harder I'm already leading the singing anyway. And so it really hurts hurts the people that are good hurts the people that are that should be working on. 

A connection six so connection four small groups connection five is the church connection six in the music farm team is the kingdom. Often as a small to medium sized church develop its music program that leaders to run it the best players and singers want to venture out beyond their local church. They develop the they're getting good at They want to get to the next level. This is when small to medium sized churches often lose their best talented musicians to the bigger churches. And that can be very discouraging. So how do you get what he as a music director, what do you do to sort of stop that to keep people that are advancing to that next level? To keep them sort of occupied and and keep challenging them? So keeping your talented musicians? What do you do? Number one, do special numbers. So you have the congregational singing, but then challenge a few of your talent to people look, I want you to come up with a special number or give them something to work on. That you're going to do. It's not a congregational thing. So a lot of times, the special number is a lot harder. So it's sort of like keeps their interest because it's now a harder thing to learn to do. Number two, do special concerts. 

We do a big Christmas concert every year. We get everyone involved and we do a really good job and it requires a lot of effort and time. And and it is so good that that people really and they know it. People have been coming and so on and everyone knows that see, there's a certain level that you have to try to achieve and it it really challenges the talented people in our church. Number three, loan your people out to small churches that that lack musical talent instead of the bigger churches who really don't need more music, talents stealing your people. Why don't you reach out to churches that are hurting, that don't have the music talent and say, hey, we've got some people that can maybe come in and help you out. In other words, your talents, people just need to be challenged. That's all. Number four. Encourage your church plant. Encourage your church to plant a daughter. So if you have a church and you're working on a daughter church, you need a whole worship team that's going to go with that. And then you need the people that are left and so there's all this work we we can't afford to lose any of our talented people every one of you is needed. 

So that's what you're communicating, you got to communicate it to the talented musicians that you are needed and you cannot keep throwing things at them that challenged them. So they can go to to the next level. Everyone likes to grow. That's the way God made us. We want to grow in our marriages want to grow in our families and our business if for whatever it is that we do, we always want to get better at it. It's just, you know, in sports, it's just more fun as you as you go on and you get more committed and you develop more talents and and you can take on more competition. How denominations can help maybe you're a part of a denomination and denomination sponsor of songwriting contests. I mean, if there's a denomination wide contest, then all these churches get involved and they start making it happen. They can sponsor a battle of the band events, especially if a bunch of churches are in the same area. They can sponsor music training events led by not denominational leaders, but various talented musicians from various churches within the denomination. 

Now the denomination I'm in, they tend to put on music things, but it's the denominational leader that comes in and leads it. So every music thing we go to just honors the denominational leader See, and we need to honor the talented people in the churches. There's great musicians in all these churches and if we have this training, and we just use the talent of the churches, we honor all those people in those churches instead of just honoring the denomination is the denomination using its power and its ability to honor the town. It's going on in the churches, and that's really what we want to do. We want to honor and lift up the hard working people that are in churches, because it's churches that grow in churches that reach out, not denomination, and denominational leaders. 

So Finally connection seven. So we've looked at 4 5 6 and 7 is connection seven and the music farm team is the world the people that are unconnected to Christ. The most downloaded file on the internet is music. Music is universal. It's a global language is something everyone understands. So the church cannot afford to not use this powerful language to communicate the gospel. Well, how do you do it? how you communicate it to the world? Well, let's start with inside the church. Help the non singers in your church so you have some new seekers coming in. They don't have a walk with God they don't have a music is not a language they use to worship God. 

Help the non singers in your church, have classes on how to sing some people just stopped singing long ago. They just don't know how to do it anymore. Help the new people to your church, they don't know your songs. So find ways to help them. Learn the songs that you don't like just, you know, most of what we do is like, well, you're on your own, figure it out, we're not really going to help you. Number three, help the seekers in your church. They're looking for the answers. They're looking into Christianity. help them find it, help them discover this, this language of music. Help them those who have never learned to worship in your church. They've never learned what a worship song is. They don't really know what it is. I had someone who had been coming to our church for six months, and he didn't know that he was supposed to sing. During our worship service. He sat way in the back. I guess he didn't pay attention to the people around them, but he thought he was supposed to just sit Listen, he didn't know that he's supposed to sing. So let people know that hey, you know we're trying to sing this. 

You don't know this song very much. Maybe just hum along at first and that will help you participate. Finally, outside the church, how do you reach outside the church? Get some of your music You know, put some of your music in a form that your members can give it away. I mean music is a language is a powerful language, it speaks to people and if you had some of your music at least maybe some of the music that you've written for for certain occasions and so on that people could actually hand a CD to someone Hey, I think this CD you know, instead of giving a get well card, you'd give them a Hey, this is really cool song that might speak to you card with a CD in it or something. But try to find a you know, on a memory stick or, or a downloads thing, something fine. Try to get some of the music that you have in a form that people can take it and give it to be teaching people how to use music in their own home in their own backyard so they have a picnic and have a backyard barbecue and music is a part of it. CD, mp3 download, streaming all these different ways outside the service. Do a service outside on the lawn so people can hear it. Number three Christmas count. So that's what we do. That's why I put it down there. I would give some examples of that but Christmas is a time when people are open and they're willing. So do something with the Christmas thing. People want to sing Christmas carols and so I do a carol thing do outside Carol thing. find some way to bring music to your community.