Worship, Lead, Grow
This blog is about a journey we are all on. It’s my experiences, ideas, passions, victories and failures as a Worship Pastor, Husband, Christian and artist. My hope is to encourage and motivate those on the same journey and hopefully have some fun along the way.
Growing
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ne of my main goals in life is to never stop growing. In every aspect of my life I want to be continually growing and developing in order to make me an all around better man. The problem is that growing takes time and sometimes hurts. Stretching my knowledge on subjects gives me a headache. Practicing my guitar make me frustrated, especially when I can’t play as good as John Mayer! It’s not fun. I am lucky enough to be able to see both sides of the coin at this point in my life. I can see where some of the pain and stretching I have gone through to grow, has paid off in big ways. Here are a few examples of how I have grown over the past few years.
1. Leadership- after reading books, and going through leadership challenges I can see a noticeable growth in my leadership capabilities even from a year ago. This is due to having good mentors as much as it is to reading good books.
2. Electric guitar- a little over a year ago I decided to take up electric guitar and learn more about playing lead lines and more solo type things. I have played acoustic for 12 years at least and really wanted to widen my range of skills. Today I am able to play electric guitar and lead worship at the same time! I usually will have a 2nd guitarist who does the heavy lifting when it comes to guitar parts, but I can see growth!
3. Blogging- this is the 2nd blog I have tried to start, the first one started with great zeal but quickly faded and died. The biggest problem is I was horrified to write a post. I know that sounds silly but I was afraid to write a post that someone might disagree with or think was dumb. I have now forced myself to write a bunch of blog posts and have received mostly positive feedback from them. I continue to push myself in this area, but I see growth!
4. Being a better husband- I will be working on this one for the rest of my life! But there has been a change from the first year we have been married til now. We are both growing and learning together.
Some of the things I am proactively stretching and pushing myself to grow in now are:
1. Making connections with other worship leaders- this job is really hard to do on your own. I have found that the friendships with people who do the same thing as you week in and week out become a great source of support and refreshing. Through starting the blog and a few other things I hope to make connections with more worship leaders like myself that will turn into lasting friendships.
2. Writing- I am convinced that God wants to use me to write worship songs for him. I have written songs before and have just never really proactively perused it. I am currently pushing myself to get a song written that I can incorporate into our weekly worship times.
3. Banjo & Mandolin- I am currently teaching myself to play the banjo and mandolin. I love the way both of these instruments sound and they incorporate very well into worship music.
4. Spiritual- this is really a given but I wanted to put it on here so its not missed. I never want to be in a place where I feel like I love God enough, or that I can’t get to know him any better. I always want to be perusing a deeper more passionate relationship to him!
