"Am I in over my head?"  

I know what it feels like to question whether you have what it takes to pastor and lead your team.

I remember moving to Charlotte in 2007 to help build Elevation Worship and not knowing anyone in the city, so I had to ask friends from my hometown of Columbia to drive in just so we would have a full roster. But as the church grew rapidly, and we added more and more people to the team, I had a new challenge – how do I actually lead these people to not just be great musicians, but to actually love Jesus and love serving in church. I quickly realized that while I knew how to lead a 4 song worship set, I felt very unqualified to actually lead and pastor people. Before my time at Elevation, no one had taught me that being a Worship Pastor was much more about serving off the platform than performing on it.

I realized I was looking at ministry all wrong.

I remember several years ago looking around my office at awards and gold albums hanging on the wall, dreams that I used to pray for, and realizing that none of them made me feel any happier after the initial excitement faded away. They were fun and I was thankful for what they represented, but what actually brought more joy to my life was watching people on the team start to walk in their giftings and in their calling. 

I saw the truth of what I learned from Pastor Steven at Elevation – that mature ministry is being more excited about what God does through others than what He does through yourself.

I was learning to find real joy and fulfillment in being a Worship Pastor.

When the going gets tricky, you need a guide.

Here’s the challenge. There is great training available for you to grow in your understanding of God’s word and to help you gain a theology for worship. There is a lot of very helpful practical training for how to lead a song on a Sunday, or teaching you how to implement effective systems for rostering your team, and there are videos and courses on how to write worship songs. But . . . 

• Who's teaching you how to have hard conversations when you have to tell one of your vocalists that they aren’t ready to lead out on a song yet and do it in a way that doesn’t paralyze you or demoralize them in the process?
• Who is teaching you how to stop leading from a place of insecurity because you believe the lie that you are too young to lead people or too old to be relevant anymore?
• Who is teaching you how to have a candid and strong relationship with your senior pastor?

• Who is teaching you how to build a legacy of character and a posture of intimacy with God?

While there are some great seminaries and programs that allow you to spend years focused on holistic development as a Pastor, that takes time and money that you may not currently have. You may already be on the job and unable to stop everything and enter into a college program, or you don’t have $15K to spend per semester to enter into a worship program there.

Let me help you. 

I served as Worship Pastor at Elevation Church, home of Elevation Worship, for nearly 15 years and I have been in every stage you are currently navigating. I was the Worship Pastor when we had 2 campuses meeting in high schools and when we had a global ministry with 20 campuses and released songs and albums. I’ve been on the stage leading worship, and I had to make the transition of stepping off the platform to let other people take the team to places I wasn’t gifted to take them in worship. I had to watch other people live my dream. It was often a messy process for me, but God used it to shape my heart in ways I am extremely grateful for.