Teaching Young People to Worship, Pray, and Serve w/ Circuit Riders

CHLOE: So I would encourage worship leaders to view themselves more than a worship leader to go. That’s on the list. That’s somewhere. It’s on the list. It’s there. But number one, I’m a child of God. Number two, I make disciples because that’s part of the Great Commission. And so then going, okay, who are the people when I die, they’re still running. I think that is the coolest privilege. If I lose my vocal course, I’ve got so many little buddies that are raised up in worship leading, and I got to so into that. So I say find a joy and raising others up and forgetting about your own name.

ALEX: This episode is so fire. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Worship Ministry Training podcast. My name is Alex and Fagin, your host. If you are new to the podcast, how it Works is like this. I release one new episode a month and we stick to one, one topic per month, and we go as in depth and practical into that topic as possible. And the reason I’ve been doing it like that for the last seven years is it allows you to know exactly what kind of content you’re going to be getting. You don’t have to guess when you click on an episode like what’s the conversation going to be. Are they going to ramble about 50 different topics? Now we’re going to stick to one topic. We’re going to go in depth and we’re going to hopefully give you something that you can take and apply to your ministries immediately, starting today. So that’s why we do it like that. Go ahead and dig through the topics list the areas of interest to you and be helped and encouraged. Also, if you’re new, you might not know we have a website as well. Worship Ministry training. Com. And we’ve got tons of free articles, free training resources, free courses as well as paid courses in areas like set building, team building, worship leader foundations and increasing Congregational engagement and participation. So go to Worship Ministry training. Com, check it out and be helped and encouraged. Well, in this month’s episode, I’m talking with Chloe and Alvin from Circuit Riders, a movement that reaches young people with the gospel and equips them and sends them out for Ministry. And I know in many churches across the world we need more and more young people involved. In fact, some of my favorite people are the young people on my team. And there’s such a passion and a delight and so much talent there, but they need so much guidance as well. And so I hope that in this episode, as we talk about reaching and teaching young people to be worshipers and to be prayer warriors that you would be helped and that you would start to look for those people within your own Ministry. So let’s raise up the next generation of worship leaders together because the Kingdom work on the Earth is too great for just us. So let’s listen to this episode and be encouraged and then let’s go out there and get them for Jesus. Hey, everybody, I am here with my new friends from the Circuit Riders, Chloe and Alvin. Hello, guys. Welcome.

What’s up?

This is going to be so fun. They’re also here in Southern California with me in a different city, but we’re neighbors. So why don’t one of you tell us a little bit more about the circuit riders? Because I’m guessing that many of our listeners haven’t heard of the circuit riders. But what is this movement? What is it all about? Who are you? What do you do? One of you can just kind of give us the deep to get away way close. Take it away.

CHLOE: Okay. Circuit Riders is burst out of YWAM, which is use of the mission. It’s one of the biggest missions organizations in the world. And YWAM DNA is to know God and make him known. And they go all over unreach groups. You name it. They are hard for gritty missionaries. Circuit riders is kind of the University expression of YWAM. And so we live here in Huntington Beach. Maybe I don’t even go 100, 200 and 5300 staff. And our whole goal is to reach young people, University students for Jesus. And so we spend a lot of time touring and preaching the gospel is doing events I didn’t think we can to reach anybody. So that’s a short thing of what Circuit riders is. Yeah. I was surprised to hear 200 staff. That’s quite a lot. 300 stuff. So these are missionaries, pretty much supported by local churches, friends, cities. Yeah. Wow. All in faith, 100% of my face, which is so insane. It’s definitely a challenge, but it’s possible. It’s really exciting. Yeah. That’s so cool. And how long have you been on staff, Chloe? So I actually kind of have a funny story. My parents started circuit Riders. Wow. So I’ve kind of just been around since the inception. I was in high school and the message the circuit writers are actually, I don’t know if you heard the Methodist movement back into 1800, where they’re seeing camperee Bibles. These lay preachers would go from county town and they had barely any training, and they preached the gospel. So I was about 1617 when I heard this message for the first time. And I remember practice preaching the gospel for the first time, and I just never saw myself is someone who could do to evangelize or anything like that. And I was totally awakened. So yeah, I’ve been doing it since out of high school.

ALEX: Yeah, that’s amazing. Now one of the things that I noticed. And obviously you said this is the University expression of yam, but just how many young people you guys have leading and then also how many young people you’re reaching. And so a lot of the conversation today, I really want to Hone around. How do we involve young people in our ministries. And how do we equip and empower and release young people to be the Church? Because a lot of people say the young people are the future of the Church. But that’s not true. They’re actually the now of the Church. Right? But before we get into talking a little bit about engaging young people in our ministries, because I know many worship leaders want more young people in their ministries. But before we talk about that, I’d love to just hear about the logistics of running the worship side of the circuit riders, because when I go to your YouTube channel, I see that worship in prayer. You guys have daily worship in prayer or, like, four or five days a week. There’s some sort of worship set happening. And I would just love I love systems and administration. I would love to learn a little bit how you guys manage the madness of four or five worship sets a week. You got different worship. You have planning center, you have sets, you got to track down people who cancel. You got people who want to approach a song differently. You have rehearsals and sound checks, like, practically what does it look like to how do you manage that?

ALVIN: That’s awesome, Alvin. I’ll say a few things and I’ll pass it to you. But basically Cigar Writers has two expressions of worship in our Ministry, the first one being touring. So when we tour across the universities, we just check up anybody that can sing. We make little bands. I think our record is we made 13 bands at one time, a stretched across America, people leading worship going crazy. And then the second expression we have is greenhouse, which is what we call our prayer room, which what you’re referring to that you see on YouTube. And that is actually a new thing that started in this pandemic. We had a word about the word greenhouse and about cultivating prayer and burning on the inside, not just being like missionaries and Ministry robots, but really being in love and ministering to Jesus and the prayer house. So anyway, Alvin, share the logistics, share all the goodies. Yes. So I think practically kind of with what Chloe was saying during the week. We have things like Monday night, we do Friday night worship sets. And then during the week, we have greenhouse and stuff. So some of that stuff will be live streamed. And then some of it is us just going after the Lord together. So kind of how we plan it out practically is we have one point in person who kind of does all the admins. So they’ll try and set a schedule about a month in advance and just be like, hey, these are the people that we have as the band. It’s just who we have leading for this month. So we’ll get a text about a week before or something like that and just kind of be like, hey, your plan deleted this time and so forth. So this is what you’re going to do. Please send the band the song. So we use a lot of group text. We did use Planning Center at one point in time. We hate it, but, yeah, it kind of fizzled out. Yeah. A lot of how we communicate with each other. It’s just through group messages. I’ll probably get a few here soon. I just like, Monday night worship. And then just like all the band and the worship leaders and stuff like that. So we throw all of our songs in there. So, yeah, that’s kind of how we logistically plan all of those things.

ALEX: That’s amazing to me. I mean, hey, whatever works for you. So you’re planning multiple teams, multiple sets a week, and you’re not using planning center, you’re just texting. How does your team know the arrangements of the songs and what key and the cord charts? Like, how are you guys doing all that?

CHLOE: We have a band that’s really well practiced. They have a passion to be musicians outside the prayer house. So they jam together all the time. We have this space. They’re creating new music all the time. And then we play at a lot of places. And so the greenhouse is actually such a sigh of relief to have an environment where our musicians didn’t have to be, like, super polished and put together and have the arrangements perfect. It’s kind of more atmosphere of just flowing with the spirits. And honestly, more than anybody else being impacted. I feel like our musicians have really come alive in this because on our Monday nights or the Sunday kind of service situation, they’re so focused on giving it right going through the set. And so it’s pretty cool that they can just enter into worship. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really cool. And that’s special. So it sounds like you have that main house band, almost that house band. Are they also on staff with circle writers. Okay. So they’re, like, fully supported musician Aries, in a sense, totally. Okay. They’re so pretty. These guys will do anything. They’ll DoorDash in their free time. They just want to be musician are so bad. It’s amazing. Yeah. That’s cool. And I definitely want to get back to later in the conversation. What you said about prayer and worship and going after the Lord and just really ministering to the heart of the Lord. I want to talk about how you guys have cultivated that, especially since it’s a more new and recent expression for you. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But I guess one aspect of that is as you’re coming to leave worship three, four, five times a week. Or I guess since you’re not leading people in worship, and it’s more like expressing your heart to the board, maybe it’s not as hard to keep your spirit fresh because I feel like if I was having to lead worship five times a week. It could become mundane. I personally at my Church, I do lead worship three to four times a week, and sometimes, yeah, sometimes I’m just showing up and I’m like, here we go again. And I know even for my team, it can feel like here we go again, another site. And so how do you guys keep your spirits fresh when you’re coming at it five days a week, doing the same thing, you know? Yeah. I would say probably two things. One, the number of different worship leaders we have kind of what we’re talking about with the band. What we’ll do is if we have, like, a younger worship leader or a younger musician, we’ll check them out there with maybe the more experienced ones. So we do have a good turnover of new people doing it. But I’d say there’s such a massive difference leading a room of people and being in a prayer room where maybe they’re people joining you. But when you just think all I have to do is move the heart of the Lord, you’re really not concerned or people singing, are they joining in? Are they getting touched? I don’t give them rip. If anybody to be touched, I just really want to move him. So I say it’s actually very refueling, even though it might seem mundane. And it’s special, because what a lot of us worship leaders do at home or in our closet, we get the privilege of doing that same feeling of intimacy and rawness with our clothes, those buddies. So it kind of drives you closer to as a team of just being in raw before the Lord together. That’s so good to hear, too, that there is a difference between leading a room full of people and just going after God together because sometimes leading a room just feels like I’m serving them. It’s kind of a task, but not in a bad way, but it’s like I’m services. One question I have would be, how has your worship expression changed as you guys have started these Minister to the heart of the Lord worship times, how has that translated into your corporate leading time? Has it? I think for me personally, it’s taken a lot of pressure off of me as a worship leader to kind of make something happen, because I think sometimes the way we gauge success and the way society has taught us to gauge success as worship leaders, as artists or whatever is with engagement. So people are engaged and you see people raising their hands, you see them crying out like you see them doing those things like it’s almost tempting to feel like I’m doing something right, which you might be, but it’s like, even if they’re not like, it’s not up to you, like, the pressure is not on you because there’s nothing I can say. There’s nothing I could do to necessarily force the presence of God to come down in a room, like, the Lord is going to do what he wants to do. So I think something for me personally that has really changed the way that I lead corporately that I’ve learned in a greenhouse is just just go after the Lord, just go after the Lord in any and every set and let him do the rest. It’s not on us to create something. It’s not on me to set anybody free, because I can’t even if I tried. You know what I’m saying? And I think we definitely do listen to the Holy Spirit. Then they’re gonna be moments where the Lord might speak to you in the middle of a set and be like, hey, I want to release freedom in the room, like, declare free. You know what I’m saying? They’re gonna be times and stuff for that. But I think the striving of trying to make something happen. And is this for me personally, it’s just been something that I’ve just learned. Okay, God, you got it. I’m just here to worship you. You got the rest. And he is so faithful to do the rest. Yeah, that’s so encouraging. I was thinking about that this morning about a different context. And just like, if I can’t trust God to take care of it without me getting involved and he’s not a very big God, he’s not a very worthy God. Like, who is this God that I worship if I can’t even trust him to handle stuff, you know what I mean? It’s kind of crazy. How would you add to that, Chloe, in terms of what Alvin said? Okay, well, my hero, one of my heroes is core Asbury and before he was reckless love, Cory Asbury he was International House of Prayer or Asbury for, like, I don’t know how long I was like, 14 years old. Totally. Like, that was the first time I ever met Jesus was watching this guy just poured his heart out every night. 10:00 p.m. That love and Jesus. And I think what’s so cool about him and what I’m seeing even now in art music and the Lord will drop these insane lyrics in greenhouse that you’re like, how do I? And that was such a cool moment. And then he’s like, and this is for the masses. Like, Take it out there. It was birth and such purity and glory, but definitely go rip it. And so seeing what we cultivate in the greenhouse and bringing it to a service and watching the Lord Minister to people is very cool. And then I would say, same thing. It’s just a pressure. A lot of pressure has come off of just being able to risk and just know each other even more deeply. And so, yeah, I just Echo everything out. Is this. Yeah, that’s really good. I’d be curious to hear how this greenhouse movement or portion of your movement, like, how did it evolve over time? I’m sure when you first started something like, okay, we’re gonna go after the Lord together. We’re gonna pursue prayer and worship. Maybe it was awkward at first. Maybe it didn’t go sometimes. And I’m sure the more you’ve done it, the more you’ve cultivated just the right spirit, the right heart, and even the right practice of it. What has helped cultivate that spirit of worship in prayer? What are some of the things that you’ve seen this really made a difference within our community? Is it just getting in the habit of doing it over and over? Or is there something else there? Because I think a lot of worship leaders listening are like, I don’t want to just execute songs. I want us to get to the place as a team where we can really pray and worship and connect with God and commune with him. So what has helped both of those things? Kind of one of the things that I’ve noticed and big shout out to Lindy and chase some of our leaders is the way that they have cultivated worship in their own lives because they lead a lot of what we do. It is honestly not only inspired, but it’s challenged all of us to live our lives outside of cigaritos, outside of missions, just in prayer and worship. And so I think having just key catalytic leaders for people listening, whether you’re the leader or not, like, starting at home and just really cultivating that because they really does lead into everything else. Like, it’s going to get on everybody else. And I don’t think we would be where we are today if we didn’t have leadership that took prayer and worship as seriously as they do. And so I would say that that has probably been one of the biggest reasons that we even have a greenhouse because greenhouse was one of, like, Lindy had a crazy encounter. I felt like this is what we need to do. And it really started from her. Just if, you know, in that woman just worships, she’ll just be in her living room just on her piano, just going after the Lord with her husband and with her two little kids or not even none of them are older than three years old. Even then, they’re going after the Lord like, crazy, too. It really started for I think, for us that one of the key factors which is having leadership in our life that really went after it as hard as I do. And so it really pushed us to do the same as well. And co you can add to that. Yeah. I was talking about basically at the start of the pandemic, Lindy and shape and have this word in their spirit for a long time. But then there was quarantine and nothing. And so they just started worshipping in their house together, and we live in community. So their roommates would come down and worship, and it started that way. And then we got an iphone. I remember our first ones were like, these little iphone videos that were crazy ghetto. And then we one camera. And there was such an awkwardness for sure because you’re like, I’m just hearing the camera is so awkward. But then again, we all grew into it. I think the need on the Earth kind of pushed itself to go. Okay, God, we don’t want to be Ministry robots accomplishing this huge task list, like, we really want to be genuine in our love for you. So, yeah, definitely. Leadership was hot. Ministry robots accomplishing this huge task list. That sounds like a lot of Christian Ministry, which is not a good thing, right? We’re supposed to be before we do. So let me ask you what has been some of the fruit of diving deep into prayer and worship. What has come out of all this? I know you said some songs and some lyrics, but anything else that you’ve seen God do just unbelievable. Blowing doors open, moving mountains, miracles. What are some of the amazing testimonies that have come from from pursuing Jesus first and foremost? I think even within our community, just like the crazy amount of hunger, just what we even see on, like, stores and stuff like that we see in 21 projects, like, right now we have a team that was just in Nairobi, Kenya, shoutout to my Kenyans, I’m Kenya, and they’re in Cairo right now. And one of the testimonies that happened in Kenya was this little kid came, and I believe he was either blind or death. He had a type of blindness. Yeah, like a type of blindness. And the kid literally gets healed, like, completely gets healed. And that’s just one of many, many testimonies that we get the privilege of getting to hear or witness at a lot of these things. And I think at the core of it, it does start with worship and prayer. And just like that heart of wanting to pursue the heart of God. And it’s just like, I think the scripture that talks about in his presence, the fullness of joint, the fullness of all those things. And it’s kind of crazy to talk about. But we were made to walk in the fullness of that. We were made to see that it shouldn’t be a weird thing or like a one off thing to see somebody get healed. I don’t believe. I believe that if we’re made to experience the fullness of the presence of God, the fullness of healing. Isn’t that the fullness of breakthrough is in those things. And so whenever us as a community, we come around and just go after the Lord together, I do believe that it just opens the door to just see crazy miracle signs and wonders. And so that’s just a part of it. But Chloe, to Alvin, I was thinking you should share a little bit. Basically, when in the midst of pandemic, there was, for sure the racial tension rising and the injustice and our community has been really in tune with that. And how do we respond as Christians and missionaries? And I think one of the things that struck us is the need for representation in the mission field. There’s a lot of white missionaries. And that’s cool. But we need black voices out there. And so I remember we were getting struck by these injustices. And we have leaders like Alvin who’s just, like, blowing up the way. But we went into the greenhouse and we sung and we interceded for this injustice across the board. And I just remember those sets were so powerful people crying out for missionaries. And then there’s a whole movement that really arose out of those prayer times. You’ll be better at sharing in Alvin. No. Yeah. It’s great. It’s really real. So kind of like what Chloe was sharing, basically how it kind of started was Chloe’s dad Brown. I had this dream, this crazy God encounter, which was basically talking about injustice and how we’re supposed to rise up as the body and then come behind minorities and minority voices because the enemies wanted to suppress those. Right. And so it was this crazy God encounter. And like she was saying in our prayer room set, we would just begin to pray and just, like, worship and declare thing. And literally, we started a movement called Black Voices Movement, which is just the empowering of black voices, empowering of minorities in the mission field. Because I can say personally growing up that I did not even fully know what it was to be a missionary until I was around, like, 20 years old. So that was six years ago for me, like, nobody in the community that I was a part of, nobody was black was really a missionary by any means, by any term of the word. And so it was out of those moments, out of those prayer times, out of those worship sets where it wasn’t just black people burning for heart to see and justice would be eradicated. It was my wife, brothers and sisters, my Latino brothers and sisters, my Asian brothers and sisters. And it’s like I just saw this linking of arms and just being like, no, like, this type of injustice is ungodly, like, we can’t stand for it at all. And so from that birth, black voices. And so we did one gathering, like, we literally had three weeks to plan for this gathering, and people found out about it the day before it happened and still flew out 67 people and were there. And then we just recently, like, earlier in the month had another Black Voices gathering where we had, like, 300 people show up and it was crazy. And it was all just about going after the reward and empowering black voices and being like, hey, like, yes, you’re black. Yes. Or this yes or that. But there’s a seat at the table for you here that we need you to fully walk out and accomplish the great Commission. It’s not going to happen without everybody. And so it’s been so crazy. Just what the Lord has really brought up just in moments of intercession and moments of leadership that were beyond songs that were things like, hey, these are heart postures we need to carry. These are cultures that we need to live out, like within our community. You know what I’m saying? And so it’s just like, it’s pretty crazy how whenever you go after the presence of God, it can be also the most sweet, amazing thing. But if you can also leave feeling like, really convicted by Dang, I got some things I need to change, but it’s all good, though. It’s because it’s the Lord wanting to deal with things because he wants to do something. Yeah, man, that’s amazing. I mean, you wouldn’t think, like, how many of us would think, like, God wants to send people of color to the mission field like that idea would never really. I wouldn’t be thinking about those two connection points. Right? But when you go get alone with God and spend time worshipping him and listening and interceding, then he has the permission and you have the clarity of heart to hear what he wants to say. And it’s like these prayer times. What I’m realizing and listening to you guys is that these prayer times are really like where you get to hear the voice and heart of God, and that completely may reorient you or redirect you or put you on a new tab or birth a whole new Ministry to. So when I ask you what’s the fruit of these Prair times, it’s like a whole new Ministry, and it might end up being hundreds or thousands of colored missionaries all over the world representing Jesus. That’s amazing. That’s an incredible answer. Yeah. Pretty cool. It’s been stunning. It’s beautiful. Yeah. Now, Alvin, you kind of dropped a hint. You’re 26 years old, Chloe, about how old are you, if you don’t mind saying I’m 27. Okay. So you guys are young. So I’m 36. I’m, like, ten years older than you believe it or not. But you guys are young. And then you’re leading a whole bunch of people who are young. And yet one of the things we constantly hear in the Church is that young people are leaving the Church and droves. But here in your movement, at least from the outside, it doesn’t seem to be the case. You have many, many young people who are both in leadership and then training up other young people to be in leadership and be involved in lifechanging Ministry. So what would you say in your experience at Circuit Riders? What are young people looking for today? Like, what are you guys doing that is really turning the key for them and reaching them and, you know, empowering them so well, what’s the magic sauce? Okay. I would say the only magic stops there is is going and getting them. That’s why I say, I think God sent us to the hardest and darkest, right? You hear the University of the campuses of America are the hardest and darkest. You know, you can just imagine just all the evil stuff there, which when we get on the campus and we’re out there preachers of gospel looking like total idiots, we are met by people going, I’ve never heard this. I literally have somebody ask me, how can I be saved? And you just hear about those things you’re like, man, they’re really hungry. So what I’ve found is that anywhere anybody in the Church says that place is hard and dark. I’m like, I doubt it. I doubt it is. My husband and I, we do most of our carriers. I love Ministry in Europe. So we go to the UK and we go to Czech Republic and all these Eastern Europe countries. We go the most atheistic country in Europe. And that’s where we find the most hunger and the most radical believers. It’s like the darker these areas are. When these kids get saved, they radically commit to Jesus. So I would say it all is summed up and just going and getting them and being risky, brave for getting a reputation truly looking like an idiot, especially as a young person going to another young person. I’ve had people grabbed my face and say, You’re so cute and laugh at me and do all the things, oh, God, it’s been rough, but it’s always worth it because there’s always fresh fruit that’s ready for picking, you know. Wow. That’s an amazing answer. So, Allen, I don’t know if you heard the question, but she said, going and getting them going and getting young people is the difference between an old dying Church and what is happening with you guys. How would you answer that? Yeah. I mean, I think I completely Echo what Chloe is saying. And I think also right now, specifically in the age and time that we live in. A lot of young people feel like they’re not allowed to be who they are or they’re not allowed to be themselves. And so they look for spaces in where they can do that and where they can be that and sometimes what actually ends up happening is and looking for really just love and acceptance. It’s found in different places. It might be found in alternate sexual identity. It might be found in a bunch of different things where it’s like, oh, no. The actual way in which you were designed is actually counter to that. And so I think something that Secret Riders does a really good job of that. I’ve personally been very impressed with because I remember growing up in the Church and stuff like that. It’s like, hey, unless you were really anointed for something, it’s almost like sometimes you weren’t necessarily even noticed. And so I think something that Circuit Riders does a really good job of is whenever we get young people really trying to understand, like, okay, who are you? We do these things on the original design, where we just we basically pay. We just asked the Lord Lord, how did you design Chloe? What did you design her to do? What is her purpose am kind of thing. And it’s like, Chloe, your breaker of boxes you carry breakthrough them the way that you lead worship, just speaking identity and truth over these students. And so we see a lot of them coming into a realization of who they are. And from that place, it’s like, oh, this is where they get to services, where they get to move and sell, kind of echoing to what Chloe was saying. You go to some of these campuses, and it’s like nobody’s ever told them who they were. Nobody’s ever been able to say, hey, this is who you are. You’re a man of compassion. You or this year that nobody’s ever really been able to say that. Now it it reminds me of the scripture that he has forgiven much, loves much. And I think we really get to see the embodiment of that. And young people where they realize, like, oh, my goodness, the way that I’ve been living, the way that I’ve been doing things, I’m completely forgiven. And you see young people literally being like, I have to give my whole life to this. I have to do that again to kind of bring it back to the question. I think something that Surge Riders does a really good job of is really trying to understand who these young people are and how we can empower them for what they’re good at, what they’re made to do. And I think that’s a big part of how we’re able to just get a lot of young people, which means we need to make the time to spend with them, to get to know them in order to see who they are and speak truth into them. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a whole investment. That’s right. And they might not necessarily be a part of your Ministry as well. In the end, like, I know so many students that I’ve met that we’ve sat down and hurt their dreams and go do it, run for it, and they go off and they start something incredible has nothing to do with circuit writers, and they are not gonna join our Ministry. So also being open handed, we don’t need people or numbers. It’s like we just are here to empower everybody. That is the best mindset. And I wish every Minister of the gospel said those things, believe those things and live that truth. So thank you for saying that. Now I’m thinking about the local Church worship pastor who wants to see more young people involved in his Ministry or her Ministry. And what would you tell them? How would you inspire them to see the young people at their Church or to, even, like, go out of their way to find the young people at their Church or in their community. And then how should they view those young people and give them a seat at the table? Anything you guys feel like sharing their I would say this, Jesus is a Ministry. I think my view could be summed up in discipleship. Like, he really made a loud point. He should be exempt from that job of all people. But he never was exempt. He poured his life into twelve people, and that was kind of his main goal. So I would encourage worship leaders to view themselves more than a worship leader to go that’s on the list. Like that’s somewhere or a pastor. It’s on the list. It’s there. But number one, like, I’m a child of God. Number two, I make this tile. That’s part of the great Commission. And so then going, okay, who are the people when I die, they’re still running. I think that is the coolest privilege. If I lose my vocal cords. I’ve got so many little buddies that are raised up in worship leading, and I got to go into that. So I say find a joy and raising others up and forgetting about your own name. And no doubt there’s at least one young person in your Church that has a gift to pray publicly or seeing or something that you can pull out of them. Yeah, Chloe, she hit the nail on the head. Honestly. And I think something that I see cigarettes doing that has blown my mind, especially with where I’ve come from. Ministry is like, we have, like, 18 year olds making the entire media campaigns. You know what I’m saying? Like, they’re actively being engaged or then people going on tour and having to just lead and being like, hey, we see you guys as leaders. So here you go. Go leave. You know what I’m saying? We’ve trained you, you’ve equipped to you go do it. And so I think my encouragement to any local pastors, the people is not only what Chloe said because she explained that very, very, very well. But then also just being able to see them and engage and put them to work before the term, just, like, really engage them in that way because I think what that actually shows the younger generation is you actually trust me enough to do this. You actually believe that I can get this done, that I can actually do something because we do. We really do that is the goal. Like Chloe was saying, like, forgetting about our own name, forgetting about our own thing. It’s like, yeah, I could be the guy that makes the media campaign and does all this. I know I have the skills to do that, but I want to empower our young people because I know that whenever I’m gone that they’re going to be the ones to carry the torch. So you know what? You guys do it. I’m going to stick with you every step of the way. So I think at the core, it’s really it’s just family. It’s really just becoming a family. And if I have kids and I know my child is a great artist. They paint really well, I’m not gonna tell them to go right in this song. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, oh, no. You’re an artist, like, son. Let’s make some art. I want to help grow and cultivate this gift. Like, any good dad would do that. Being a shepherd of your body, being a shepherd of your Church, of the young people there. It’s kind of the same way. Yeah. And putting them in and kind of not expecting that they’re gonna hit a home run the first time, right? It’s like, okay, you have a gift for public prayer. I’m putting you in and you’re gonna fumble and stumble and maybe say something theologically and accurate. But I’m okay with that, because there’s no other way to get better except for reps reps. Exactly. Yes. One thing that we do in Circuit Riders as well is we live in houses with tons of young people. So I personally live in a three story old hostel with 22 other young people. My husband and I lead. So we really go out of our way to make our lives so uncomfortable. It’s costly. It really is to pour into people. And it’s exactly what you’re saying. I’ve set so many people up and they bomb it’s so bad, but it’s such a privilege because five times later, they’re hitting home runs, and it’s beautiful. But, yeah, it can’t get to the gold without digging through the dirt. It’s true. That’s how we were even, you know. Yeah. Totally. I’d love to. As we begin wrapping up the conversation, just shift gears a little bit to talk about your most recent album. I was gonna say your newest album, but it’s already, like, a year and a half old, because the pandemic kind of, you know, but the most recent album, Jesus, People. I’d like to hear what it was like preparing for a live album and what you learned from that process that you’ll carry on into future projects. Yeah. So I think my situation was a little unique just because I’ve been one of the musicians and surgeries, and I’ve kind of transitioned more so into, like, a worship leader. And so I think with this past record that we just did, it was definitely it felt a bit more interesting to not have an instrument attached to me. So that was something I had to kind of be like, okay, I’m cool with this. But practice, practice, practice, man. Especially vocally. I think sometimes as a musician, I just think, like, okay, I just have to practice my guitar practice base, whatever. Maybe. And that’s it. But practicing vocally was a big one, but also just really getting into a place of prayer and intercession for the project. This project was one that as a collective, we would just get together at random times. We’d just be like, gosh, we just need to pray. There are things happening. We know that the enemy hates that we’re creating this project. There’d be attacks or whatever it may be, but just really praying and just going after the heart of God because it’s at the end of the day. If the Lord are not on this, these are just songs. It’s no different than what’s already out there. What’s the point if the Lord doesn’t breathing on this? And so I think one of the biggest things that I took away, beyond the practicals of practicing and doing your due diligence on that was just interceding, just really getting on your hands, getting on your knees, going after the Lord. And not that the project would be like a number one Billboard top seller or anything like that. But beyond that, people, they would get encountered. We carry a very missional sound. That’s part of what we do is raising up people, raising a disciples. Like Chloe was saying earlier, like, Lord, would you grip people’s hearts for the gospel, that they wouldn’t be able to go to school without sharing the gospel, that they wouldn’t be able to be in Church and do Church the normal way, like praying for those things that are kind of outside of just yourself? And so I think that was one of the biggest things that I took away from this project that I’m going to carry into other ones. I just it just striking the ground. An absolute prayer and intercession for what the heart of God is over the project. And before Chloe, you answer, let me ask you, Alvin, practice practice, practice in order not to sound good, but in order to feel so confident and comfortable that you’re able to be in the moment and free and go where the Lord would lead you. Is that why? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We talk about being an instrumentalist, like, prophesied through your instrument. That’s something that we preach because you don’t scripture. We see that the Levites would go before battle and they would prepare the atmosphere. And so who’s to say that the God of all the universe isn’t going to speak to you with a melodic line that you’re supposed to play? You know what I’m saying? Like, I think sometimes we can even just bind the Lord to just try and confine them to words. Like, if I’m hearing from the Lord, it’s strictly words. But like, as an instrumentalist, it’s like I’ve been in settings and moments where it’s like, wait, this guitar part. I never would have thought about this on my own. Like, Lord, what are you doing? You know, it’s just so I think even beyond that and beyond just like being able to engage, I think that there is something to be said about being in a spot of such excellence with your instrument, with your craft, that if the Lord is to drop something on you to drop a line or a part like you’re not now fumbling trying to figure out, like, how do I play this? It’s like, no, you can just go straight into it and fully receive whatever the Lord might be trying to say to you in that moment with that. So. Yeah, I think both. And though, because definitely you do want to be able to engage and just and just be honest, just do it. Just do it. So. So you what about you? What did you learn from this project that you’ll carry on into future albums? Yeah, I think for me, I don’t know if there’s an eight worship leaders out there that feel this way. I’m definitely not the most confident worship leaders songwriter all the time. I struggle with the feeling that what do I have to say that the world would need to hear or have even got it out? We already got store stuff like, am I needed even and just overcoming any areas of fear and going. Okay, God, I’m gonna do this. I use my voice, make me a vessel and riding with others and just really pressing it. So I’d say for me, just overcoming fear of man, fear of even how something’s supposed to sound. I think in our generation, especially the next one GenZ. There’s so much more creativity and melodies and things like that. Like what’s? Okay. Even and just being free to not be like a different music group, to not be maybe the most popular sound and to just be authentic and go. Okay. I’m going to add it to the pot other artists and songs and just let Minister whoever miss this to. So for me, I’d say personally overcoming here and letting the Lord use me how I want so good. Okay. Rapid Fire, the top two songs you think worship leaders should listen to and introduce to their Church. Chloe, from that album, Love You All Eternity and One Desire by Alvin, I’m gonna say across, and I’ll go anywhere. Okay. I know the one. I really love you. Okay? Yeah. That’s with you, Chloe, right? Yeah. That’s really beautiful. So anyway, I’ll put links in the show notes for the listeners to check out the album. It’s very, very good, very well produced, very well performed. You know what I mean by that? But a very excellent and yet very authentic. And I think you guys did a great job. I’d love to just give you guys the final word, any final words for our listener, and then you can tell us, obviously, where to keep up with circuit writers. But final encouragements for worship leaders all over the world, leading in different contexts. Big churches, small churches, rural churches. What would you like to say? My final encouragement after the years of doing this, I think the biggest thing that I would probably say it really is just about Jesus. It has to be in our every day and everything that we do. It can’t just be about Jesus on Sundays. And then on Monday morning, it’s about myself. It has to be about Jesus the whole way through and not unto yourself. Being exalted and glorified like it being about Jesus doesn’t mean that you’re going to write a song that millions of churches saying it being about Jesus doesn’t mean that you’re going to have a career in music. It doesn’t mean any of those things. It just means that regardless of where your life goes with the gifts and the talents that you’ve been given, God is always number one in getting the glory and getting the full glory for what you’re doing. And so I think I would encourage any worship leader, any musician that in everything and all that you do really put God first with no additional agendas of your own self glorification or with no expectation to really get anything other than his glory. And so I think that would be my last exhortation if you will. That’s really good. Really good. I would say this that when we think about the heroes and the fathers and the Christian world, or even moths a car. Michael, whoever we think about Billy Graham, all these big guys, I’d say the same need that covered the Earth, then covers the Earth now, and Jesus looks to and fro across the Earth looking for those that are looking at him righteous, and he’s ready to use this mightily has nothing to do with our reputations. Are, you know, resumes anything. He’s looking for those who just are righteous and looking at him. And so I would say, just be ready for God to use you in incredible ways. It’s way bigger than your thinking. There’s a massive need out there and he’s gonna send you so that’s what I say. Keep going. Jesus loves you. And I love it. I love your passion and your fire. Chloe, you’re so infectious. It’s amazing. So awesome. Thank you, man. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people keep up with you guys online? I’m sure they would want to follow you on social media and other ways. We’re on TikTok and we’re on Instagram, as are we circulator movement or Cr movement. I think we’re Sor movement. Yes. And second of music as Instagram and stuff as well. Yes. Okay. I’ll put links in the show as first, all of that fabulous. The listeners, you don’t even have to try to find them. I’ll just put links in. The show is just open that little thing and click on the book, click on the on all social platforms, even LinkedIn. Oh, my gosh. Awesome. Hey, guys, you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for your time. And I’ve been inspired and encourage and I know all the listeners have as well. So thank you, guys. Thank you so much for having us, Alex. Yeah, seriously, they it’s been so fun. All right. Well, that’s all we have time for today. I hope this episode was a help and encouragement to you. If it was, please send, send it on to another worship leader in your life, that would help us and encourage us as well. And if you’d like to, please leave us a rating and review on itunes, we always are encouraged to see how God is using this podcast in your life and be sure to check out Worship Ministry training. Com for tons of other free resources to help you be a great and God. Honoring Worship Leader and I will see you next month for another helpful episode. God bless.