Your Music Ministry’s Blank Page

It can take years. But it can even take months. The slow realisation that you’re bored with your music ministry. The songs: boring. The team: boring. The flow, (if there is a flow!), boring. Bored in the rehearsals, bored by what you wear, bored by the attitudes and the egos. Boredom becomes frustration. Frustration becomes either “I feel called somewhere else” or “I’m a soldier and I’m gonna stay right here til I die and so should you, brother…”

Someone once told me: If you’re that bored it’s probably because you’re that boring! Time t0 get the passion back!

Maybe the reason you’re frustrated is found somewhere between Proverbs 13:12 “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” and Proverbs 29:18 “Where there is no vision the people perish”. What brought you into music ministry in the first place? It was more than just wanting to sing or play. At some point there was a hope, a vision, a dream, of what singing or playing for the Lord would be like. But when dreams don’t come true, when hope gets deferred, then people perish and every service becomes a business-as-usual survival exercise. Singing or playing for the Lord was never meant to be like that.

Maybe your team needs a blank page. Over time, the page gets filled with:

“We can’t afford this” or

“They won’t do that” or

“He doesn’t like me” or

“I’ll never be as good as her” or

“They never let us go long enough” or

“They don’t understand us musicians”

or a bunch of other things.

The page gets filled with all the reasons why things can’t get better, or how things would get better if only this could be done or that could be done. You look at another music ministry somewhere and get depressed about your own because your page is filled with a long list of reasons why this has all become so boring and frustrating.

Maybe your team needs a blank page. Maybe you all need to sit down and re-connect to the hope, refresh the vision, remember the dream.

Try This…

If you were given the chance to design a worship service with no constraints, what would it look like? If you had all the money you needed, the venue, the people, the time…

1. What kind of songs would you use? What would the singers be singing? What would the band be playing? How many singers? What instruments…?

2. What would the room look like? What would the platform look like? How would everyone be positioned? What kind of clothes would you wear…?

3. How would the lighting be? How would the words be projected? What kind of mics and speakers would you use? What other arts would be involved…?

4. What would the atmosphere be like? What would be happening in the congregation? What would God be doing?

Oh, I know it’s easy to dream. But if there’s any hard work to be done, isn’t it better to start with a dream than with a frustration? Fill the blank page with the team’s dream. Pray as you write: “God, what do you want to do? God, what’s in your heart? God, give us a glimpse…”

… Then look at each other in the eye and discuss: What steps can we take to move on from where we are to where we want to be?

We can stop letting every weekend be more of the same. We can make every weekend one step closer to the dream.We can because God can. Elevate God, and not the problems. Elevate God, and not the constraints. If He is elevated, He’ll draw all people to where He is. Elevate God above the dream, and you’ll see how God can make the dream come the true.

And one last thing for now: Don’t despise small beginnings. It’s a blank page, a team with a dream and a God who can do it. Better than being bored, that’s for sure.

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