How Can I Improve My Relationship With My Pastor?
By Rory Noland
Question: My pastor and I don’t have a good relationship. We’ve only been working together for six months, but already I’m sensing stress and strain between us. What I can do to improve our working relationship?
Answer: This question comes up frequently, especially during worship conferences. Here are a few points to consider.
Try to Understand Your Pastor’s World.
Most pastors carry a very demanding schedule; they’re virtually on call 24 hours a day. In addition to all the meetings, appointments, hospital visits, weddings, and funerals, pastors are expected to prepare an electrifying, life-changing sermon every week. Grappling with church finances, as well as every other urgent problem and controversial issue in the church, puts the average pastor under constant pressure. It can be a very difficult and draining job. So if your pastor is not attentive to your personal needs or requests for service information, realize that he or she is extremely busy. Extend grace and patience.
2. Welcome Your Pastor’s Feedback and Input.
I once heard a worship leader insist that his pastor had no right to offer musical critique or suggestions. “My pastor’s not a musician,” he stated. “So why should I listen to him? He has no idea what he’s talking about.” It doesn’t matter whether pastors have artistic sensibilities or not. Their suggestions should be heeded and their comments taken seriously. Besides, the majority of people in our congregations are not musicians, so the viewpoint of a non-artistic pastor will help us stay in touch with the average person in the pew. Wise worship leaders are not only open to feedback from their pastors, they encourage it and seek it out.
3. Submit To Your Pastor.
If your pastor requests a change to the worship set, comply with a cheerful attitude. If you disagree with the change, present your case respectfully and politely. But if you don’t win your pastor over, it’s up to you to submit with a genuine “can do” attitude.
The role of today’s worship leader is similar to that of the Levites in the Old Testament. God specified that the Levites were to assist the priests in conducting sacrifices (Numbers 3:6). The Levites, therefore, played a vital, but subservient role. In the same way, your job as worship leader is to serve, which entails humility and sometimes submission to your pastor. Similarly, Hebrews 13:17 urges that we obey our leaders and submit to them, “for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” Remember your pastor is also your boss.
4. Co-Operate With Your Pastor.
Avoid negativity, cynicism, and an adversarial attitude; always work with your pastor, never against him or her. Referring again to the Old Testament relationship between priest and Levite, God’s original plan was for the priests to regard the Levites as a welcome gift (Numbers 18:6). Would your pastor say that you’ve been a gift to him or her? Are you a delight to work with? Are you and your pastor pulling on the same end of the rope? If not, abandon your own personal agenda and get behind your pastor.
5. Publicly Support Your Pastor.
It’s disrespectful to speak ill of your pastor, especially among congregation members. Doing so will only undermine your pastor’s authority and make you a party to gossip and slander. In 1 Thessalonians 5:12, Paul exhorts us to “respect those who labor among you and over you in the Lord.” So be sure to represent your pastor in a positive light, especially to your volunteers. For example, if your pastor asks you to shorten or omit a worship song, don’t whine about it to the worship team. Explain the reason behind the change in an upbeat and conciliatory manner.
An effective pastor/worship leader relationship is built on trust, which develops over time. However, these five general suggestions will set you on a straight course toward building a solid relational foundation with your pastor.
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This is a question and concern that comes up a lot, especially during conference time, which is why we have an entire track (the Pastoral Leadership track) dedicated for pastors at the NWLC East (Oct. 5-7, Lancaster, PA). The more that you and your pastor can understand each other and work together, the better experience both of you will have and benefit from (not to mention your entire congregation and staff as well).
The Pastoral Leadership track will offer three different classes:
“Learning to Preach With Image” taught by Jason Moore & Len Wilson
“Creating a Culture of Worship” taught by Buddy Owens (pastor of spiritual growth at Saddleback Church and author)
“A leadership class (title TBA)” taught by Dr. Leonard Sweet (author, preacher, scholar)
There is a track for you and your entire worship team at the NWLC East. Click here for more information and registration.
Hey everyone! Wanted to take a minute here to highlight our workshops for NWLC East (Lancaster, PA, Oct. 5-7) coming up in less than two months! Whatever your role is in your church, the NWLC East is coming to help you be better at what you do.
With over 15 tracks full of workshops that will encourage you and your area of ministry, there is something for you, your pastor, your drummer, your techie, and well, the rest of your team. Our tracks and workshops are designed to help inspire and encourage you in your own ministry role, and/or get you more familiar and up to speed in other areas as well. You can choose from six workshops at NWLC East to attend. Plus, have all of the class recordings available to you after the event.
To give you a taste of NWLC workshops, here’s the “Songwriting” class (from the Worship Songwriting & Technology track), taught by the lovely Laura Story, songwriter who wrote “Indescribable.” Click on the link to listen, or just right click to “Save Link As” to download. “Songwriting” by Laura Story.
All 15 tracks at NWLC East include: Worship Leadership
Pastoral Leadership
Worship Songwriting & Technology
Worship Tech
Visual Arts & Technology
Vocal Teams
Vocal Musicians
Worship Planning
Tomorrow’s Leaders
Spiritual Growth & Development
Worship Choir
Early Christian Worship
Stewarding Technology
Storytelling
Sponsors/Product View the full list of workshop classes within each track here.
Don’t forget about the general sessions and Nights of Worship! The workshops offer you practical ways to improve your ministry, but the general sessions and Nights of Worship bring everyone together as the body of Christ to worship, sing praises, and rejoice. General sessions and Nights of Worship are lead by notable artists and speakers such as Jeremy Camp, Dr. Leonard Sweet, Christy Nockels, David Nasser, Paul Baloche, Evan Wickham, Buddy Owens, and many more. See the full list of artists and speakers here.
Christian contemporary musician and songwriter, Jeremy Camp, has been added to the NWLC East lineup! Camp will join other artists such as Christy Nockels, Paul Baloche, Evan Wickham, Travis Cottrell, Ashmont Hill, and many more in Lancaster, PA (October 5-7). Speakers like David Nasser, Dr. Leonard Sweet, Steve Berger, and Scotty Smith will also join this gathering of worship leaders and teachers for our final NWLC stop of the year.
Many of you are probably familiar withgotworship.net, administered by Jason Whitehorn. gotworship.netis a great blog for updating worship leaders weekly with insights, tips, and resources. gotworship.net will be helping us get the word out about our last NWLC stop of the year: NWLC East (Lancaster, PA, Oct. 5-7).
So what does this mean for you? It means you get the opportunity to win a FREE registration to NWLC East from gotworship.net! You can visit the site to see for yourself, but the setup is pretty neat. You can rack up points by tweeting, posting on Facebook, and more (all the things we do anyways, right?).
So, if you’re hoping to attend NWLC East, get over to gotworship.net and begin the competition! It even tells you who is in the lead, so if you’re even a little bit competitive, you can see how that can be very inspirational. What are you waiting for? Go!
The Worship Leader staff had three Flip Videos floating around the conference in Kansas. We uploaded all of them and took some of the clips and put them into a two minute video. Kinda shaky in some parts and not HD quality by any means, but still a good reminder about some of the special moments of NWLC10. Take a look!
You’ve asked and here they are! The setlists from each Night of Worship at the NWLC10, as well as the videos! Click the link to download the PDF with all of the songs and links to videos. Enjoy! Final setlist for Kansas with video
We had yet another amazing experience at this years 2010 National Worship Leader Conference in Leawood, KS. Thank you to everyone who came, participated, and helped out. Church of the Resurrection – you were such a friendly and welcoming host as usual, and thank you to all of the volunteers! We couldn’t have done it without all of your helping hands and willing hearts.
Here are the pictures from NWLC10. It was an amazing week full of wondferful and inspiring speakers, artists, teachers, and of course attendees! Take a look for yourself! And make sure to check back soon for some video clips, updates, and more!
If you’re having trouble viewing the link above or want to download the pictures, click here.
P.S. Recordings from the class workshops will be available to download through an emailed link to you attendees. Just give us a couple weeks to sort through them and get them all ready . Thanks!
We’ve been in Kansas for two whole days now. We’ve gone from humid and sunny to raining and lightening. After a full day of workshop classes, everyone was eagerly waiting the night of worship. One Sonic Society started off, Tenth Avenue North is playing right now, and Matt Redman will follow. Worshipers are raising their voices in praise and surrender while engaging with God. And I must admit, I’ve never heard a room full of worshippers so on key =)
Before the artists come on stage, we begin by showing a video that reflects the theme of the conference. In the case of 2010, it is”Sing a New Song.” Scotty Smith, our pastor of flow, reads a responsive reading with the worshippers that reflect the theme as well. To download it just go to the digital edition of our magazine here, and next to Dr. Reggie Kidd’s picture in the top right-hand corner, there is a button you can click to download this reading. Take a look at the video below. (And check back for the link to download it as well!)
Today in the office we had a party. A tear-the-perforated-name-tags party. You know the name tag you get at the start of the conferenc? Well, first it is printed on perforated paper with a bunch of other names. But in order to get them all individual, someone has to tear each one by hand. Usually that someone is me, and maybe one other person. But to make things go faster this time around, we had a party and the majority of the office helped. Okay, it wasn’t really a party, but we did go out to lunch after to make it worthwhile.
One of us could be tearing your name out right here:
Phil and Nicole working hard
We’re not the only ones getting ready. Volunteers are working hard at the Church of the Resurrection as well, stuffing your conference bags with good stuff. Take a look!
How is everyone else preparing for next week? Hope you’re getting excited like we are See you next week!
See you next week!
