10 life-changing lessons: Celebrating 10 years of Worship Ministry Training

  Today is the 10-year anniversary of the Worship Ministry Training podcast.

Holy smokes, I am getting old.

But here are 10 synthesised lessons that I’ve learned from running the Worship

Ministry Training podcast for the last 10 years that I think will apply to your

life, to your ministry, to your future.

And I hope these are helpful to you.

Number one, slow and steady is better than fast but futile.

I want you to aim for sustainability.

So many people get so excited and passionate and zealous

about starting a new project, and they go pedal to the metal,

and then they fizzle out in five days.

I don’t want to see that for you.

If you’re going to do something, aim for sustainability.

Go slow but steady.

The Worship Industry Training podcast was a monthly podcast

for years, one episode per month. Why?

Because that was something I knew I could do sustainably.

I could make that promise and I could keep it.

You can always dial things up as you get faster with your workflows.

But when starting something, just be slow, steady, and consistent.

Consistency is key.

We want you here for the long haul.

We want you to bring your calling into the world, and you can’t

do that if you fizzle out. So build sustainability.

Number two, excellence is the elimination of everything unnecessary.

Excellence comes when you’ve reduced something to its essence, when

everything extra has been carved away.

Then you have your work in its purest form.

When Michelangelo, the great artist, was asked how he crafted

his masterpiece, the Statue of David, he said, Oh, it was easy.

I just chiselled away everything that wasn’t David.

So whether you’re writing an email or producing a song, ask if you’ve

eliminated everything unnecessary and are left with only the essence.

That’s excellence. Eliminate the unnecessary.

Speaking of eliminating the unnecessary, lesson number three

is to be ruthlessly obsessive.

So outside of my family and my church job, worship ministry training

is really the only thing that I do.

I don’t have a TV, I don’t have social media, I don’t have a favourite sports

team, I don’t really spend much time with friends once or twice a year.

I basically have blocked every single website on my computer.

I get a summary of the news sent to me every single Friday in an email format.

It’s called New Paper, by the way, if you’re interested.

And my smartphone is completely locked down and on grayscale

and always on do not disturb.

If you want to get something done with your life, you have

to eliminate everything that’s not going to move you towards it.

And that is a huge lesson, and a lot of people don’t want to do that.

But you have to be extreme.

If you want to accomplish something, cut away anything that will

keep you from that thing.

Be ruthlessly obsessive.

Lesson four, your kids grow faster than you realise.

And this is something that I struggle with because I am so obsessive.

My kids are now 13 and 10.

So my daughter is basically seven years away from maybe

moving out and leaving us forever.

I only have seven years to influence my sweet precious Sophia.

She hates when I call her that.

But she was only three years old when I started the podcast.

She’s 13 now.

I’ve got seven years to influence her life.

And if I miss this window, I am screwed and I messed up on my biggest

priority, and I fear for that. And so pray for me.

Pray for me that I would do better at being an intentional father.

Look into your children’s eyes.

Look into your spouse’s eyes.

Don’t miss what’s right in front of you because you’re

so obsessed with your goals.

Lesson number five, it’s possible to serve selfishly.

If you’re serving others so that they’re impressed by you,

or so that they know how godly you are, or how kind you are, or how wise you are,

or how patient you are, then guess what?

You’re not really serving them You’re serving yourself.

You’re serving people to feed your ego.

And that is called hypocrisy.

That is exactly what Jesus got angry at the pharisees for.

They did all the right and religious things, but they

did it to be applauded by people.

And we can do the same thing.

Instead, get your applause and your validation from God

and his infinite love for you, and then you don’t need the applause of people.

Then you’re free to actually serve people without needing something from them.

Lesson 6 is the worst things in life can lead to the best things in life.

In 2021, my last church got a new senior pastor, and he bumped me out of

my seat as a worship pastor, and it was a disaster for me.

Personally, I was totally upside down.

My whole identity was wrapped up in it, and it was an awful experience for me.

But it was the catalyst that did two things.

One, it made me go to counselling, so I really grew as a human.

But number two, it is the thing that caused me to build

Worship Ministry Training Academy.

It’s the thing that put fire under my butt that finally made me

take this thing seriously.

And if that didn’t happen to me, I never would have started the academy.

Yes, I lost my position as worship pastor at a church of 10,000,

but now I get to serve 10,000, 20,000 worship leaders at churches

that probably impact 100,000 people.

And so as God God always does, he turns the bad into good.

There is a purpose for the pain that you’re walking through, and God

will turn it for your good and his glory.

Number seven, excellence is a way to serve others.

Aim to give the end user a world-class experience.

Ensuring that you, listener, watcher, have a great experience

for every piece of content I put out is my number one priority.

When I would write the podcast questions, I would think about you.

What would you want to know?

When I edited the episode, I cut out every single um, or stutter

or a mistake to make sure it was the punchiest and shortest and cleanest

episode that I could give to you. Why?

Because I didn’t want to waste any of your time.

I wanted you to get the highest amount of value in the shortest amount of time.

Always think about the end user’s experience

and seek to deliver excellence for them.

Lesson number eight, a carefully crafted question is invaluable.

If you want to extract value from somebody else’s mind,

consider your questions carefully.

How you craft your question is everything.

You know that in conversations in general, how you phrase things

can dramatically impact the direction that the conversation goes.

So think carefully and craft every single word.

Is that the right word?

Think about if there’s a better word that will bring about a better answer

or uncover a valuable insight.

Always fight for the right words.

Words created the cosmos, so make sure you make the right cosmos when

you’re speaking and asking questions.

Number nine, invest into yourself earlier.

I always gave 150% of myself to whichever church I was serving at, and I would pick

up work that they didn’t ask me to do.

I would do more than they asked me to do.

And yes, it’s good to serve the bride of Christ.

Yes, it’s good to lay our life down for the bride of Christ.

We should.

But save some of your energy, some of yourself, some of your ideas,

some of your steam for yourself and investing in your family,

in your future, in your finances. Why?

Because sometimes things at church change.

And then everything you gave to that church is now

lost and you’re off on your own.

And I don’t want that for you.

And so have some side project.

Have some side business.

Build something that no one can ever take away from you.

Yes, give your church leaders their due.

Yes, do what’s expected of you, but save some of your energy, your ideas,

and your time to build something that belongs to you and to your family.

Lesson number 10, anything great takes 10 years to build.

Now, I’m not saying worship ministry training is great.

In fact, I feel like we’re just now getting started.

But in general, if you see something amazing, just realise it took way longer

to get there than you think.

We see the result, but we don’t know all the work and the toil and the time

and the energy and the money that it took that person to get there.

Phil Wittem is just now winning Grammys, but he’s been toiling for 20 years,

touring, playing, songwriting for 20 years, and now he’s winning Grammys.

A skyscraper goes up to the sky, but it’s built one brick at a time.

So don’t compare yourself to others.

Just keep laying down the bricks.

Just keep doing the right things at the right time in the right ways.

And with time, if you don’t give up, you will reap the right results.

If you don’t give up, you win.

Those are 10 lessons.

I actually wrote 25 because I wrote this lesson two times.

If you want the other 15 lessons, put your email in below and I’ll send you

everything that I wrote down.

Also, it’s our 10 year anniversary.

Can I ask you for a favour?

If you’ve been helped by worship ministry training in any way over the last 10

years, can you send the podcast to two worship leader friends?

This is my one big ask for you.

In fact, I will write a little script for you.

You can just copy and paste it and send it, and it’ll have the links

in there for you to to your friends.

But we can’t grow without your word of mouth sharing what God is doing

in your life through the podcast.

So please take a second, share it with two Worship Leader friends.

Ten years into this journey, we are just getting started.

God is blessing and multiplying the impact of worship and training,

and you are a huge part of that.

So I want to say thank you for being a part of this family.

Thank you for letting me speak into your life.

I’m so grateful to be a tiny part of your ministry to God’s church.

God bless you. I’ll see you in the next video.

And yeah, peace, love.

Thank you for from Alex and the Worship Ministry Training team.

God bless.