HOW-TO

How to find the right kind of worship pastor

A FEW YEARS AGO, I WAS CONTACTED BY A CHURCH FOR ITS OPEN WORSHIP PASTOR

POSITION. After a short phone conversation, we moved to the next step. Rather than auditioning my musical skills, they asked me to answer 10 questions. This questionnaire provided clear proof that churches desire worship leaders to be able to do more than lead music. 1. Please explain your theology of worship, giving biblical support. 2. How does worship connect with pastoral care? Give examples from your ministry experience. 3. From what the Bible both describes and prescribes in terms of worship, which elements are most important in the church’s gathered worship? Please provide us with an example of an order of worship that you recently planned and led. 4. If someone asked you to describe your strengths as a minister of music/worship pastor, what would you tell them? What are your areas of limitation in which you desire to grow? 5. Knowing the particular context of a church is vital for a member of the pastoral staff. Practically speaking, what would you do to get to know the context of our church? 6. Other than the Bible, list three or four books and/or authors who have been formative in your theology of worship and describe how/why they have been influential. 7. In what ways do you involve the congregation in gathered worship? 8. How have you taught a congregation the importance of family worship and personal devotional worship? 9. How do stylistic considerations flow out of your theology of worship? 10. Based on our church’s stated purpose of “_________,” please share how worship plays a role in fulfilling that purpose.

A worship leader/pastor who only focuses on music may struggle to answer questions like these. Worship leaders and pastors must receive pastoral training in addition to musical skills. Musical skills and leadership qualities are important, but a worship leader’s biblical and theological understanding of congregational worship is equally if not more important. The way we think about worship is extremely important because the way we worship shapes our faith.

MARC W. BROWN

serves as assistant professor of church music and worship at Southwestern Seminary..

How to use cowboy wisdom for roping and retaining readers’ attention

cate ideas, but important universal ideas are typically abstract—ideas people can’t see, touch, taste, hear, or smell. So, gain traction with your readers by using specifics to ground your ideas. Try using examples, a particular instance, numbers, quotes, testimonies, comparisons, or even a metaphor. For example, if you were writing about dangers on the Chisholm Trail, you could use a specific danger, perhaps stampedes. Stampedes started when cattle were startled by thunder, lightning, or even a cowboy’s sneeze. Or use a specific moment—once in 1876 a thunderstorm outside Waco caused 15,000 longhorns to plunge into a deep ravine, killing thousands of cattle and injuring many riders.

2. Use spurs. Writers and speakers can spur on sentences using vivid verbs and dense nouns. When you’re revising your writing, replace weak verbs with ones with punch. Also avoid being verbs like is, are, was, were. Likewise, replace general nouns like rider with nouns packing more punch. Replace rider with cowboy, trail boss, or wrangler.

3. Longhorns have massive horns. Those horns lead to a point and so too should our messages. Ask yourself in one sentence, “What exactly am I trying to say?” Write it in one sentence. Then rewrite it until it’s a clear, lean, meaning-packed point.

4. Use a harmonica. Cowboys played the harmonica to the cattle to minimize the risk of a stampede. Likewise, we can employ musicality in our messages to keep readers’ attention from diverting. How can you lyricize your writing? Read your writing aloud. Wherever you stumble over your words, your readers (or listeners) will too. Vary your sentence lengths. Delete unnecessary words. Sentences crafted to engage the ear as well as the mind will keep readers on the trail of your writing.

The Chisholm Trail bears Jesse Chisholm’s name. Chisholm wasn’t a cattleman but a trader, trailblazer, friend of Native American chiefs, scout, interpreter at treaty councils, and linguist with a gift for diplomacy. His biographer called him the “ambassador of the Plains.” As Christian communicators we also want to be ambassadors. The chuck wagon wheel, spurs, longhorn cattle, and harmonica give us four images as tools to become clear and compelling communicators for the kingdom.

COWBOYS DROVE 14 MILLION HEAD OF LONGHORN CATTLE FROM

TEXAS TO RAILROAD TOWNS between 1867-1887. The first major trail was the 1,000-mile Chisholm Trail through Fort Worth. Like cowboys herding cattle to market, Christian writers and speakers can move their ideas up the trail to people who need them.

Four images from the Chisholm Trail can help you make people remember your point: 1. Use the chuck wagon wheel. Writers and speakers communi-

AMY L. CRIDER serves as director of the Southwestern Center for Writing Excellence and associate professor of foundations of education at Southwestern Seminary.