On Mondays I have been posting about the 7 levels of musical worship leading. If you missed it last week, click here for LEVEL 6 – The Developer. If you want to start at the beginning, click here for LEVEL 1 – The Worshipper. Here’s the seventh, and final installment:
The Minister (LEVEL 7 Musical Worship Leader)
The level 7 musical worship leader empowers other people to lead instead of always leading themselves. The Minister has found the phenomenal exponentiality of giving the mic away. They have found that by coaching, guiding, correcting and unleashing the leadership of others that they are not only leading a congregation in worship, they are leaving a long-term legacy in many congregations.
This kind of musical worship leader not only draws musicians to themselves, as The Developer does, this kind actually draws other leaders to him. He ends up finding some leaders that could even be better than he is, with just a little opportunity and help. The Minister finds amazing electric guitar players that have a gifted baritone voice, and for the first time puts them on the backup mic, then a few months later has them lead a song, and then a few months later has them lead a whole set. Before long The Minister has made another Developer, at least. And the whole cycle continues. The Minister is so good at what they do that sometimes she just sits back and accompanies the band and she doesn’t even use a microphone. Some weeks he will even stay off the stage or perform some other non-musical task in the worship. At the Minister level a musical worship leader is a one-man-factory for creating church plant worship leaders, new venue leaders, next gen worship leaders, and other full-time worship pastors.
The minister has mastered the art of making excellent music together with a team she has developed herself, and has even empowered some to take the reigns of worship from the creative planning team meeting with the preacher to putting the guitars in the cases and heading off to the potluck. He is what I like to call, somewhat traditionally, the “Music Minister.” She empowers worship in pews and in theatres, in beach-side church plant meeting under palm trees, or with cathedral choirs with robes and liturgies. In whatever setting, the Music Minister is so very good other Music Ministers spring from his work.
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Links to all 7 Levels of Musical Worship Leadership:
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7
Thanks for joining me on this journey to level 7 worship leadership. If you have read this series but haven’t commented along the way I’d invite you to just say hello below and let me know you read the whole series of 7. I hope you’ll read my other writings and click here for ways to stay in touch with DavidDrury.com
Tangentially related – Do you think this applies to preaching/teaching pastors as well?
On a philosophical level I think “yes” is the answer. However, many of the specific suggestions/concepts would need revision. You could write a “7 Levels of Worship Leadership through Preaching” that would be adjusted but similar, I bet.
Good thought, Paul
Your mind went broader than mine. I was specifically referring to Level 7. Do excellent preachers (or leaders in general) attract other excellent or potentially excellent preachers? Anecdotally, I’d think yes.
It just made me reflect. If a leader finds that good people don’t want to work with him/her, or feel they can’t learn from him/her, then perhaps that leader has deficiencies they need to fix. It’s a measurement tool for my leadership that I had not really thought of before.