"Educating a Worship Team" Video Transcript

Video Transcript: Educating a Worship Team

Steve Elzinga  

All right, welcome to the this worship leader section, we're talking about educating the worship team. So this is the job of the music director. Philippians 1:3-6. I love these a couple of verses. I thank my God every time I remember you, in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership. First of all, it's a partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. So all the members of your team are people that God has begun a good work doesn't mean they're finished. So they're musicians, but they're not finished developing all they could be worship leaders and others there's things to learn. And so the ongoing tasks Not just how do we get this Sunday? stuff in the service ready and signs it's so unlike but what? What in general does the music director need to sort of teach? So qualities to look for and foster or teach your worship team members? The first one is worship, Ephesians 5:19-20 sing and make music from your heart to the Lord always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, I don't know how you know, that attitude of worship. How do you teach that or if you find that that's a thing, you have to keep talking,

Marie Elzinga  

um, we do. Just that, you know, it's so outside of yourself, but the focus is always God. So that's our motivation. That's the reason we sing or play or make music and that comes from your whole self. So yeah, it's something that we mentioned.

Steve Elzinga  

Why it's so easy to, I guess, you know, because music is, is kind of a talent driven thing. I mean, it's you get good at it. And if you're a worship team player, you know, you can either sing reasonably well or you can play something and it's, and then people can see what you did or hear what you did. And so there might be some accolades or non accolades, and if people don't ever say anything, then you're like, feeling like well, maybe I'm not any good. And so there's all this stuff, which is all about me. And it's hard to not get wrapped up in all of that and, and, you know,

Marie Elzinga  

such just emphasize the words of some of the praise songs especially. This is going to God not to us.

Steve Elzinga  

But it's so easy to I mean, the rest of the singing world you know, American Idol. The word is is I am the center of attention. And so everything is, you know, if you go to a concert, it's really about that person and we idolize in our culture, least in our culture, singers and so on. And so then it's easy to take that with you to church so I think this is something you have to keep coming back to or hear it. It's about worship and you need to be a worshiper, I don't care if you're playing the bass, or you're playing the drums, or you're playing the triangle, whatever, it doesn't matter. It's about giving all of this to God. The second thing to teach and to look for is servanthood. For Romans 12:3-6, by the grace given me I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you are but rather think of yourself and sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body and many members and these members Do not all have the same function. So in Christ, we though many form one body and each member belongs to all the others, we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us.

Marie Elzinga  

Right? So you see that whole body sort of thing just in the band situation, because I do need you, you need me we're part of a group. But then our group is part of the larger body of our congregation, which is the larger body of the church universal, so yeah, you're needed but you're not the whole thing. You're just part of it. And yes, you're given a lot. They do. They spend a lot of time a lot of their own money buying, buying their equipments or whatever needs to be done. They're in there, wholeheartedly but you put it in the hope perspective of you are just one part of this body, and it is for God not for you glory.

Steve Elzinga  

And you're a servant to the people, so you're serving God, but you're serving the people. And so part of that is not just performing or singing or playing for the people and getting them to sing. But inspiring. I mean, the drummer is drumming and all the little one day want to be drummers that are watching and and to, you know, afterwards, spend a little time with one and show him a couple little things. It's like it's not just you, it's about the whole team, the whole culture, of worship, teachable attitude. Proverbs 18:15, and intelligent heart acquires knowledge and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. Some people you just can't tell them what to do. 

Steve Elzinga  

You can't You can't offer them any advice because they're just not teachable this like, you know, they know it all and, and so I noticed like in your role because you do know a lot about music and you know whos you know someone's playing a wrong note or the rhythms and so on that that people respect you and you can kind of say these things but let's say you weren't quite as talented as you would be and then there's a few people that are kind of equal with you. And then you're you're trying to say this is how the song should be and then someone else thinks otherwise and your like these competing leaders and so I think at some some if you have that situation, you have to sit down with everyone look, I'm the leader right now. I might not be the best. That could be I'm still working on it. But we can't have all this chaos and we have to be open to be teacher I have to be too but let's You know, we can't argue about every single point, everything that we're doing.

Marie Elzinga  

And there might come a situation where you go, you know what I might be wrong, this might not be the right way to do it. But for now, this is how we're going to do it. And maybe next week, I'll change it because maybe there is a better way, but you come at it from a very humble position of I might be wrong, right?

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah, that goes a long way. Yeah. team player, teach your people to be team players. Look for people that are team players, just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function. So it is with Christ body, we are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other so that you know, you hear these people on television after they win a sporting event. And they always say, you know, it's really not about the each individual. It's about the team and the it's like did they go to the same school to say this or what but I think they really think that and I don't think these Teams can win the big event. Unless they are a team. You can have the talented people, but if they're all doing their own thing, it just doesn't go. And so, you know, listening, you know, how do you become a team player, you know, you show up at practice. I mean, if you're going to, you know, if you're a sporting thing, and you're going to have a game on Friday, and everyone goes to the practice on Tuesday and three guys, just don't do it. It hurts the whole team. So, you know, showing up at practice, practicing before you practice getting there the hour before church being ready to play on time, if you're coming in five minutes late, the whole team has to wait for you. And, you know, five minutes times, eight people, we've just wasted 40 minutes of everyone's time.

Marie Elzinga  

And the other thing would be just building each other up. And that doesn't just mean at practice. It means no little nitpicky Behind the scenes to your best friend about that person's really irritating me. You're, you know, the gossip thing. Yeah, no,

Marie Elzinga  

yeah. Can't go there,

Steve Elzinga  

right, because it'll get back to them. And then everybody gets upset and you have this whole drama thing. Commitment Philippians 3, not that I've already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do forgetting what is behind. So sometimes the band has to do that you will go through some hard times, there'll be some hard feelings about something someone got offended because someone got a solo and someone didn't or, or you told someone that they couldn't play for these two verses, and they could only come in on the third verse and they took it personally. You're going to have these things. You talk them out. You You You try to move forward and let it go, I guess you know if you hang on there every

Marie Elzinga  

alright. And like I said before we have volunteers, most of them are working a full Yeah. They might come to practice dead tired, dead tired, they're just exhausted, they had a horrible day. And they might say something that later they regret. You know,

Steve Elzinga  

it might be a little snippy or a little bit impatient or, and, but we have to be able to let that go. Yep. And then straining toward what is it had I press on towards the goal? So I think always reminding you know, what's our goal? What are we doing here? You know, when the band is down and discouraged and things aren't working out, or there's some relationship thing Hey, hold it. What was the goal here? The goal is worship. The goal is ourselves worshiping God even in our practice. Our goal isn't to just first get this right. Our goal is to worship God and this and he will accept our efforts. The best efforts that we give a love of music. I think that's something that can be taught. It can be encouraged, be filled with the Holy Spirit singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves making music to the Lord in your hearts. 

Steve Elzinga  

Give thanks to everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, hopefully you you've attracted people that love music. That's generally the case if they want to be in the band, but, but but I suppose it means exposing people to more than where they're right. So it's the love of a broader range of music. I mean, I I grew up with the hymns basically. And then the 60s happen and I heard things and but then I went to school and I learned some met Latin motets. And then it was just it was was with a big choir of 40 - 50 people. You know, that's when we were dating and I remember we were singing in the Madison's Madison, Wisconsin, their Capitol building and we sang this Latin motet in this building that was with the big dome and it was just awesome. So are going to a conference and you know, someone gave us a little drum and roll of drumming and we, we spent like an hour all together just drumming and having a really good time I was exposed to that. I didn't know what that was before I was exposed to harmony. You know, I learned harmony in school. 

Steve Elzinga  

My brother did I know harmony, he doesn't. Someone taught me exposed and because I got exposed to that my love of music goes broader and bigger because I just know more about it and I can do more women. So helping people get past where they're at. learn an instrument, you know, I remember you said that. One of our guys we did our bass player. went to some other church. We didn't have one and you suggested to someone Hey, why don't you take up the bass? And he did. And he's one of our bass players. The basics of music. You sing this, this interesting verse I found here in the book of Amos never saw it before. It's kind of interesting. You sing trivial songs to the sound of the harp and fancy yourselves to be great musicians like David. So some people obviously they were, you know, thinking they were it that they had it all together, fancying themselves in other words, they probably weren't musicians like David, but they acted and thought they were, well why don't we become great musicians like David if David was this great musician, musicians to need to learn so a person comes in they're a singer. But they don't know harmony teach him harmony. 

Steve Elzinga  

They don't know how to read notes teach them how to read notes. guitar player knows only eight chords. They need to learn 25 chords. So there's always something to learn always something to grow. If you know the music directors transposing everyone's music, teach them how to transpose or go to the site that transpose and let them do it. Patience, Romans 8:24-26, for in this hope we were saved but hope that it sees no hope at all, who hopes for what they already have. But if we hope, we hope for what we do not have and wait for patiently, I said, and I think one of my earlier videos that I thought that's one of the skills you have is do, you know, when you got to practice and it's a new song. And like, especially with the choir, I was like, This is never gonna we only have three practices. And this is just, it's just horrible. People like getting this they're not going to get it and I'm discouraged and down and but you keep plotting along and keep going and then the next week, it's a lot better. And finally, it works. So you have to have I mean, the band or worship thing and music thing has to have patience,

Marie Elzinga  

right? And you have to realize people are different skill levels. They learn in different ways. So, you know, you can't make the assumptions that I just throw this at you and you immediately have it, or we have one. Right? The female vocalist, she's amazing. She has songs memorized, and she has every nuance of the whole melody done. Like within two run throughs I can't do that. She's extraordinary. Well, she kind of has to have patience with us, probably while she's waiting for us to get it all together.

Steve Elzinga  

It's some, you know, can only learn, you know, on the spot, they have a hard time figuring it out at home. So then you have to spend 10 minutes with them, and everyone's kind of waiting and so that Yeah, it's a waiting thing. You have to deal with this and then others have to be kind enough to have Allow that and it's just, it's something that, you know has to be taught, like, you know, we spent time with you last time now if to spend time with someone else, I think the love of the church, the players can come and they really love performing and they love playing, they love singing. And then when they're not on, they're just coming to church and they're just in the crowd and they just listen to a sermon. And sometimes they you know, they love the worship team, but they don't necessarily love church. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds and not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing so. 

Steve Elzinga  

I have to do this funeral tomorrow for someone I don't know as someone in our church, and apparently this person who died didn't go to church. I don't know anything about it. You know, when the Christians apparently they knew about God and the Bible, but part of me wants to say in this funeral that You know, I know a lot of people. A lot of people say they know Christ, you know that they're not against Jesus. They're offered Jesus. But But on the other hand, they just don't. I guess they just don't believe what Jesus said. Because Jesus said, The church is my body. And so to totally ignore the body of Christ all your life, but then say, well, but I love Jesus and I accept Jesus and I have my own personal faith is like, you know, now God is gracious enough, he may save you anyway. But I kind of want to say, at the funeral look why take chances. You know, if you love Jesus, why don't you love his body as well. And so, it's the same thing with the band that the body of Christ, it can be a hassle because it's people and people do things and hurt, you know, and there's political things and so on. 

Steve Elzinga  

But that's the nature of any relationship that makes your marriage nature Family and, and the good stuff of family and marriage and church comes when you accept that challenge and you work through it and you work through it, the you know, the and you don't, you don't have it. It's like, like, optional. It's not, you know, it's like our marriage is not optional. We we have to do this. And, and our family's not optional. These are kids, there's nothing we can change about that. So let's make it as good as it can be. And we have to have the same attitude about the church. The church is our family. It's our body it is the body of Christ is where we belong and, and sometimes it's gone through wonky things and hard things, but this is our body and we that is the bride of Christ and we need to love the church. So you need to teach your band members not just music, but the love of the church.