Building Strong, Passionate Worship Cultures w/ Andi Rozier

Alex | 

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Worship Ministry Training Podcast, the monthly podcast for worship leaders and worship team members. This is our second live interview. It’s going to be an awesome interview. I have Andy Rosier, the one and only Lee, the beautiful, awesome with the amazing accent on the call today. And we’ll bring him on screen in just a minute. If you are a new listener, my name is Alex and I’m so thrilled that you are here with us. I would encourage you to subscribe whether you’re listening on podcast or watching on YouTube, because you’ll get monthly free training content especially for you. And if you are someone who is serious about developing and growing as a worship leader, I’m going to point you to the Worship Ministry Training Academy, which is a brand new platform for worship leaders. You’re going to get ten indepth courses teaching you how to do things like build an engaging worship sets, lead healthier teams, have a more organized and efficient ministry, and see greater engagement and participation from your congregation. Plus you’ll get live monthly training webinars or workshops. And then you’ll get exclusive podcast interviews where you can ask your own questions to our guests.

Alex | 

Like today, we have people from the academy already dropping questions in the chat. So great to see you. Matt, I see you there. Stephen. I see you there. Robert. I see you there. So great to have you guys with us academy members. But for those of you who might want to join the academy, it’s free to try for ten days. You can go to worship ministrytraining.com and start your ten day free trial. I would love to meet you inside the academy. And today I have my good friend Andy Rosier back on the podcast and we’re going to be discussing a couple of things. We’re going to talk about how to build a strong worship culture at your church, one of great participation and passion and that prioritizes Christ centered art and music. And then we’ll also be talking a bit about Andy’s transition from Harvest Bible Chapel to his new role at New Life Church in I think it’s in Colorado or it’s somewhere. Yeah, it is in Colorado. And so we’re going to be talking a bit about that as well. And if you are watching live because you’re part of the academy, you can click the link that I posted.

Alex | 

It says Private YouTube link and that will open up the YouTube live stream and you can type your comments and your questions in there. And at the end of my interview with Andy will go ahead and will answer your questions in there. So if you want your questions answered, go ahead, click the Private YouTube link and start typing your questions in the chat. So let me bring Andy on screen. Everybody say hello to Andy.

Andi | 

Hey, everyone.

Alex | 

Hi Andy. How are you, bro?

Andi | 

Good.

Alex | 

It’s so good to have you back. We have a lot to catch up on, bro, because a lot has changed in your life. You were at Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago for how many years?

Andi | 

20 years.

Alex | 

20 years. And before that, you were overseas in the UK.

Andi | 

Yeah, in the UK.

Alex | 

Now you are in a totally different state. Tell us where you’re at. Tell us about this change. Your role has changed. Are you still part of vertical worship?

Andi | 

I have just recently kind of passed the baton as I think all healthy ministry should happen that way. It’s not a marathon or a sprint, it’s a relay race and you get to run your part of the race for however long that lasts. And then hopefully before you get forced to do so, you kind of see the riding on the wall and pass it off. So, yeah, I left Harvest back in October of last year. Again, we can kind of talk about that transition, but I left well, I left with relationships intact and transitioned out here to New Life in Colorado Springs. Probably the quickest way to say it is through a myriad of different things that happened. I think the Lord kind of gave me this picture of kind of finishing the front nine of a golf course and just walking across the fairway and playing the back nine somewhere else. So I’ve been friends with the people at New Life for a long time and they warmly welcomed us here, my wife and my four boys. We started December 1 of last year. We are very happy to be in a different environment, different culture, different pace, and exploring all of the things that the Lord has for us here because of that.

Alex | 

Yeah. Now, that’s a huge decision to leave a church that you’ve been serving out for 20 years, people you love, lives that you’ve invested into a ministry that you build. And obviously, we won’t spend the whole time talking about this, but I think it’s worth digging into because a lot of worship leaders right now coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people in general are, like, reassessing their station in life. Like, is this where God’s calling me? Is he calling me into something new? So how did you process that huge decision of uprooting your family and starting a new ministry at a new church with new people in a new city? How did that go for you? And what advice do you have to the worship leaders who are maybe pondering something similar?

Andi | 

Well, it’s a great question. I’ve done 20 years of ministry. There probably 15 solid years of having my hand on other worship leaders’shoulders and trying to be a shepherd to them. And it’s so funny, I’ve seen people come and go through the ministry and they would say things like, we just feel like God is leading us to this thing, sometimes for reasons you agree with, sometimes for reasons you don’t. And that’s fine, but I always thought to myself, I wonder what that feels like? What is that like? Is it like a bolt of lightning that comes out of the sky? But it allowed me a time to again through, just like talking to worship leaders as well, to realize what are the things that actually keep us in ministry. And I think I’m always going to talk in metaphors, just for those of you online, here a true songwriter. Yeah, but ministry is kind of like a bus where you get invited onto it. Every church is kind of in a bubble, has their own things, and it’s almost like your bus has the name of it written on the side of it. And this is the way that we do things and this is where we go.

Andi | 

And what you’ve got to be committed to is the fact that you don’t own that seat, that first seat that you get invited into. And for young people kind of coming on board, it might be kind of like, hey, your seat is kind of pretty far back on the bus. But faithfulness, which is the economy of what God is looking for in the people who love him. Not fruitfulness. It’s not well done, good and fruitful. Servant. Well done, good and talented servant. It’s not that the doctor has already prescribed what the remedy is. Well, they’re good and faithful. And I think when you commit to be faithful, you do move around on the bus a little bit. New people come in or other people move out and you have to fill a position. And so at the end of the day, I kind of landed in this place where 1015 years ago, where I was like, do I love the people more than the music? Because there’s clearly thousands of people who could do the job that I do. But God called me here because of the relationship that I can have with these people.

Andi | 

And he called me to the people and he called you to the people. He called you to the community. That’s the very unique, the fingerprint that you bring, which is completely unique. That’s the uniqueness that you bring into ministry is my personality connected with these personalities. And so I certainly didn’t leave because I fell out of love with the people. In fact, it became a priority for me to leave well, if I could leave well, so that the people felt loved and I felt supported on the way out, I wanted to give a compelling case so that they would be like, yes, you should go and do that. And so that took a lot of hard work, because usually the narrative, I think, in the modern church is that if you leave, it’s easy for some people to feel betrayed. And also just allowing people to go through human emotion is a grace to them. Let me say just very quickly, as well as a pastor and a shepherd, I hope to people who are listening to this. A lot of people don’t get to leave well, and that’s a really hard thing. Some people get let go, some people resign under pressure.

Andi | 

That kind of wasn’t my experience, but I walk very closely with people who have been in those experiences, and it is extremely painful. Your legacy is about the way that you leave and not necessarily what you’ve done in the ministry. I mean, we are at most, interim worship leaders. It’s not about us. It’s not our kingdom we’re building. And whether you’re there two years or 20 years, it’s not your kingdom. And so at most, you are the interim worship leader because you’re building the thing for the next person. Then I felt very honored to build some things like vertical and some of the engagement, intentionality and philosophy around what we were doing at Harvest with people as well. It wasn’t just done by me. There’s a lot of people doing it. But sadly, I think your legacy is in the way that you leave for a lot of people, whether they leave well or badly. And so because of that, I think you have to pray hard and seat the Lord and kind of come in very open handed towards situations so that you can try not to hurt the church, the body, the people that you loved by leaving in a way that could possibly hurt them.

Andi | 

Like I said, it’s kind of like trying to thread camel through the eye of a needle a little bit.

Alex | 

Yeah, I know many worship leaders who have moved on in this season, and I think a lot of those tips are going to be really healthy and helpful for people. And so if you are a worship leader listening or watching, who has moved on, go back and listen to that again and really process your own situation through those lenses that Andy gave you. Now, obviously, not everybody has moved on. A lot of worship leaders are staying and they want to rebuild. And one thing that I think you did really well at Harvest and something that I think that New Life has also done well is built really, like, alive and vibrant and passionate worship cultures. And so I would love to hear on both sides, one from the Harvest side and one from New Life, what are the things that have contributed to just a live, vibrant worship? Because I know a lot of our listeners. I actually got a text from a guy recently. He’s like, I can’t tell if my church is engaging, and I don’t know how to even gauge that. But we all want to see more passion. God is worthy of all of our passion, all of our praise.

Alex | 

So what did you guys do at Vertical at Harvest? And then what are they doing at New Life to see that passionate culture?

Andi | 

Yeah, I don’t know if the differences between New Life and harvest are very big or very different. I think there’s some basic fundamentals that kind of work. Firstly, let me say to the worship leaders listening who are like yes, I want to know let me just say this first. People have already engaged with their feet before they engage with their mouths or their hands or whatever physical or audible engagement you’re looking for. They got up in the morning, they had 1000 things they could have done and they decided that they want to go to church and they showed up. Extend a little grace to the people that they might want before you get them to raise their hands and sing or whatever. That kind of like high engagement culture you’re looking for. They came to church and then a very close second to that as well is that like as a young guy I will thoroughly confess to you that my anger inside of my mind watching people who were just shooting daggers at me with their eyes when I was in my twenty s and even my thirty s was at an all time high to one point where I confess that in a service I let it get the best of me.

Andi | 

And I stopped for the first song and I kind of I don’t think I was harsh about it but I was like what are you coming to church? Like none of you are singing. I’m looking into all of your faces and none of you are singing. I was probably a little pointed and it’s not worth me saying any of this unless I confess those things to you who are listening to me. At the end of the service an old fella, probably in his 70s came up to me and gently rebuked me for the way that I sent it and I received it. And what that did was it kind of gave me this kind of set of glasses just to be kind of like look at it a different way. And the way that I looked at it before you can build any engagement culture is looking at the fact that some people are not singing. Remember they voted with their feet first. They came but sometimes they’re not singing because they’re too hurt to sing. And what they actually need are the people around them to sing because they need to be in that environment where they are reminded and they remember the faithfulness of God as they go back out into the terrible family financial health situations that they are in.

Andi | 

And they came to church not because your church is a show but because your church is a hospital and they came to be healed and they can’t even sing yet because they just need to receive. And I think once we understand those things as principle foundations then we start kind of like in our minds scorning the people who aren’t singing or aren’t engaging with. That said, shifting over to the other side, I think whether people like this or not, and I can absolutely guarantee that 75% of the people who hear what I’m about to say are like, well, that’s not going to happen. Is that your lead pastor or the lead pastors are the people who ultimately need to enforce engagement biblically within your congregation? Because us as the worship folk, well, we have an agenda, of course we do, because we get up on stage with instruments in our hands and I lead as I want to be left. That’s my philosophy. So I put myself in the room and I say things that I think that would be really helpful to me if I was sitting at the front or I was sitting in the back.

Andi | 

If I feel great, if I feel hurt, this would be the thing that would be helpful to me in this moment with this particular set. And it doesn’t matter what I say, the people are going to think, well, he’s the worship guy, so of course he wants us to see. And so I need the lead pastor to either once or twice a year preach in a way that encourages engagement or have an open invitation at any worship set to have a speaking part or even, I hope, hijack, the worship set to say, hey, I had this thought about what we were just singing and this comes from the word of God that says this thing. And believe me, when those things happen, whether I saw it in Chicago or whether I’ve seen it here at New Life or whether I’ve seen it at any church, engagement starts to happen when the lead pastor says those things because he doesn’t have an agenda for song musical worship. He has an agenda for worship as a whole. This is why you should lean in, this is why you should participate. So sadly, that’s the hardest part. Now, let me just say very quickly because I got so much to say, but I want to reach out in the screen right now and put my hand on the shoulder of the person who’s like, I don’t know how to get my lead pastor to do that.

Andi | 

And I’m going to say to you, firstly, you got to pray. Pray it in because God wants it to happen. Believe me, he does want that to happen. He’s an advocate for that because he wants worship. He wants the glory. He is jealous for it. So of course he wants it. But secondly, after praying, schedule a meeting and make the meeting about engagement. But walk into the meeting and say, what I don’t want to talk to you about today is music. I want to talk to you about worship. And you got to ask yourself the question first, can I do that? Can I walk into a room and talk about worship without talking about music? Because your pastor, he’s always going to be like, well, you’re the musical it’s because he doesn’t know those things. Or he does, but to varying degrees. But what he does know about is the people that he wants them to be engaged, just like you want them to be engaged. Because the engagement fires up within people the capacity to hear the word of God preached and to serve the community. To serve the local community and give financially and physically and spiritually to the church.

Andi | 

So he wants it. And I could give a list of 15 things to do on that, but just like, those would be the top two things to schedule a meeting, like make it off site, do it at Starbucks, say, I just want half an hour of your time, or I just want three quarters of an hour of your time. And I’ll come with a pen and paper and just write down the things that you say. I heard Louis Giglio once say, god puts people in positions of authority to accomplish his will and purposes. So know that that person being in authority over you, god is going to give you words about engagement through that personality, even if they’re not your best friend. Let’s just say that way. Or you’re not like movie buddies. This is the worship of God. This is not about happiness. This is about healthiness and holiness. Yes.

Alex | 

So, Andy, like you said, the senior pastor is the primary worship leader, and his engagement and his encouragement of engagement will be the primary factor of the church’s engagement. And you see that obviously you saw that at Harvest and you see that same principle played out in New Life.

Andi | 

Absolutely.

Alex | 

Now, that isn’t outside of the worship leaders control because, as you said, they can have a meeting. But what are some things that are inside of the worship leaders control that add to that culture of passion?

Andi | 

Great question. And here we go. I got this from my previously pastor. It’s brilliant. You consider the depth, God will consider the breadth. Okay? You got to start making it into a show where bigger is better because you’re going to burn yourself out. And worshipping people is not wowing people. As Bob Kaufman says in the book Worship Matters, like, the more that we pour creativity on what we’re doing to create engagement, the more that we’re actually diluting the gospel and trying to sell people towards the way that we present it instead of what it actually is. And so consider going deep. Consider giving people. So here’s a practical thing. Consider grabbing a Bible and saying before a song is sung, this song is right out of Scripture. And so the reason that we’re going to sing it right now is because the Word of God says this. And so as we sing it, I want you to know that we are responding to what God says in His Word. Now, I’m a new guy on the scene here at New Life. I’ve been here since december 1, and I’m helping build an engaging, worship culture in our small campus over at New Life East.

Andi | 

And two weeks ago, I did a little thing on Zephaniah 317 where it says, the Lord your guard is in your midst, the mighty one who will save, he will quiet you with his love and he will rejoice over you with singing. I said to the congregation, Why is he rejoicing over us with singing? Because he’s delighted to be our father, that’s why. But what kind of relationship would it be that he’s the one who’s rejoicing over us with singing and we’re kind of half heartedly singing back to him? And I was like, I want you to do what you want with that. I kind of just gave it to them. I’m going to rejoice to the Lord because he’s rejoicing over me with singing. I want to encourage you to do that. So little practical things like that, they’re rooted in depth, rooted in the word of God. But the other thing is the long play, it’s not going to happen in 30 minutes. You have to abandon the 30 minutes thing and look at the 30 week thing and say, okay, on week one, this is less than a year, but within two thirds of the year, I’m going to set a 30 week goal to get people clapping.

Andi | 

I don’t know, let’s just pick on something engagement like clapping, which is a biblical thing. And on week one and week five and week ten and week 15 and week 20 and week 25, and then on week 30, so it’s four weekends saying nothing in between those pit stops. But on those specific weeks, I’m going to open the word of God and I’m going to say something about clapping in the Bible. Believe me, please believe me. If you’re willing to do the long play and you set that kind of rhythm, which is so helpful for the people, they don’t even know it’s happening, but believe me, it’s happening for the people who come every single weekend when they week 15, week 20, you’ll see it. You will absolutely see it. You’ll see that just come and they won’t feel like, man, this guy is really on us all the time about clapping because of those weeks of grace that you’re giving in between. But setting those kind of rhythms will be really healthy. And instead of just going into the weekend being kind of like, well, the congregation, in my head, they are so responsive to this amazing word that I’m going to bring to them right now about engagement.

Andi | 

Believe me, in my head, I have that congregation. I have a band. The band sounds amazing. I have this congregation. They’re so responsive. But we can’t kind of like leverage the fact that they voted with their feet and then crucify them for not engaging. We have to shepherd them and pastor them into that place and returning to my final point here. It has to be God’s agenda and not our agenda. It can’t be like, I feel like this went better because people sang so loud. If your why is rooted in the word of God, then the people of God will have the best chance to get behind that. But if it’s rooted in your preference or your desire to see engagement, then as our interim term finishes and the next person moves in, if they’re not really deep down in the Bible, it’s not going to last.

Alex | 

Yeah, man, such gold there. And I’m just thinking about the main takeaway is like intentionality of leadership. And I feel like that is the primary driver of engagement. If you want to see your church engaged, you must be a biblical, faithful, caring shepherd of people and play the long game. And I think having that leadership mindset is the difference between just getting frustrated at people versus having a compassionate heart towards people of like, no, we’re going on a journey together and we’re going to get there eventually. I’d really be curious about your take on this because one of the courses in the academy is increasing congregational Participation and engagement. It’s like the longest title ever for a course, but it has like 14 points of like, these are the factors that go into creating a culture of engagement and here’s how to improve each factor. And one of the factors is and I struggle with this at our church because our church is a large church and like, we have all the fancy tech and everything, but one of the factors is not too loud, not too dark, because it can become a light show or it can become look at the stage, not the room, not the people around you.

Alex | 

It’s not a corporate environment. It’s not a corporate meaning corporate, like, together or the body. It’s not a body environment. It’s more like a look at the stage, look at the imac, look at the giant face on the screen. And I get why we use all that tech, but I feel like personally, I think it probably lowers engagement. But I would love to hear your hot take on that.

Andi | 

Well, I think that you just kind of answer by using the words, at our church, we do this and then coming all the way around to personally, here’s my I think it’s the evidence of the fact that kind of every church is going to do this, whether they have the money to do it or not and the resources. So I don’t have an opinion on whether one is right or wrong. Here’s what I do think. I think if you sit in your car this is towards audio first. If you sit in your car and you put your favorite worship song on and you’re driving and you want to sing along to that, you’re going to reach down and you’re going to turn the volume to a place where it allows the music to draw out of you something. Now, if you turn it too high, you’ll actually stop singing because it’s overpowering you. It’s not drawing it out of you anymore. And if it’s too quiet, then it certainly won’t draw it out of you. And I think in every room, every room has a personality. There’s no one way to mix sound. And it’s important that as worship leaders, we’re jumping off the stage every once in a while or using people that we trust in the congregation to say, do you feel like it was drawing?

Andi | 

Give that example. Imagine you were sitting in your car and you’re playing, do you feel like it was and I don’t like using the word feel, but did you have the experience that it was drawing a song out of you? Or is it too quiet for that? Or was it too loud for that? And kind of get that feedback? I think that’s helpful. And then second thing with visuals, there’s a case for the fact that everybody is walking in, they’re dropping off their kids, they haven’t been thinking about the set. And sometimes in the way that we do production and it draws people’s focus and attention towards the stage, that’s kind of helpful for them because distraction has become like a massive thing. Our brains are constantly now shorter concentration spans than ever before. That’s a real thing. But I still have a phone and I still check instagram real time. And I’m not like bashing it, I’m just saying it’s a real thing. And so sometimes drawing people’s attention to that is helpful. But just like I said before, if you want to create engagement, you’ve got to give a why. And so one of the whys in creative engagement is, do you know that in twice in Scripture it says to sing to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms, making melody in your heart to God.

Andi | 

And sometimes it might be in the worship leaders interest to say, we’re going to do that right now. We’re going to sing I Love you, Lord and I left my voice. We’re going to sing? How great is our God? We’re going to sing something that somehow when you became a Christian, you just learnt the words to. And what we’re going to do is going to bring the lights up in the house so that we can see one another right now, so that we can sing to one another. That’s a great why. That’s when you don’t need what I was trying to the worship leader encouraged me to sync one another, but I couldn’t even see them across the room. I think you’ve got to be adaptive to the room audibly and visually to does this serve the people more than does this serve? I love production guys and girls, I regularly walk up to the booth and say, guys, I want you to remember, worship starts. In the sound booth. The worship leadership of this church starts in the sound booth. You guys are first in, last out, and if you’re not rocking it, then it doesn’t matter what we’re doing on stage.

Andi | 

But also at the same time, they would fully admit that sometimes some of that high production serves some of their agenda a little bit more than the Washington gender. And instead of fighting each other, why don’t we just get in a room and agree? What are the whys? What are the philosophical things that we’re actually going after? So that when those moments come up, everybody’s like, that was such a great moment, even though I hated the lights being turned up, but it was such a great moment.

Alex | 

Yeah, I think you’re nailing it again. It goes back to depth, it goes back to reason, it goes back to intentionality. Why are we doing this? And I think I know yesterday I was having a conversation with our production director about IMG because he knows I hate it and I know he loves it. And I just said, we just need to understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. And if what we’re doing is helping the why and I think more worship leaders, any worship leader out there listening live or after the fact, you should be having those conversations. What are we trying to do? Why are we trying to do it? Is it biblical? Is it helping the people? And is it serving the people?

Yeah.

Alex | 

So, Andy, we have a few questions. We’re going to move into our Q and A time in just a minute for our academy members. Matthew and Tiago have some great questions here that I want to put up on the screens in a minute, but that is for our academy members. I would love for you just to speak a final word of encouragement to the general listener who’s not part of the academy, and then we’ll dive into our Q and A time. So just the final word to the worship leaders listening on the podcast or on YouTube after the fact.

Andi | 

Yeah, final word. Really? Like, the thing at the top of my mind in my heart right now is we are still coming out of whatever kind of covert put us into, which was kind of like a great leveling of the church. Everybody went into the same thing at the same time. And although we’re rebuilding our way out of that, my encouragement to you, especially as someone who’s invested in listening to podcasts and training, is that it is critically important right now that you prioritize your own emotional and spiritual and mental health. That is the mark of what is on this current season. There have been different seasons in the church. Alex and I both know where, like, there was different things that were at the top of what the Lord had on his heart right now. But I really believe that the Lord wants you to be in a healthy place. So that as we are kind of regathering our churches together, which isn’t we’re not fully there. There’s still a lot of people today we are talking. It is Monday, July 18, and some of California has now gone back into a mask mandate.

Alex | 

You just taught me as a Californian, something about California. Thank you. I didn’t know that.

Andi | 

Right. Here we are again. And it takes an emotional and mental and it takes, I think, a spiritual strain upon who we are. And God doesn’t want us to be lost in that. I know that your gracefield, humble leaders who are like, well, let me put everybody first before me. But I think in this particular season, the Lord is really saying no, I want you to go and get some help. I want you to take care of yourself. So that as we rebuild what I’m doing within this world, that I need healthy people on the front of the stages.

Alex | 

Yeah, we need to be filled up so that we can pour out to others, can’t pour out on empty. So thank you, Andy. So for everybody watching and listening after the fact, thanks for listening to this episode. If you want to be part of these live conversations and submit your own questions, which we’re about to go into that time now, you can join the academy free for ten days, go to worshipministrytraining.com, get ten days free access to all the courses, all the live monthly trainings, these exclusive interviews and an amazing supportive community of worship leaders. So we would love to meet you. Worship ministrytraining.com. The links are in the show notes. God bless you guys. And Andy, thank you for your time today.

Andi | 

You’re welcome. Thanks having me.