The Invisible Worship Leader w/ Travis Doucette

Alex |

Welcome to the worship ministry training podcast, a monthly podcast for worship leaders who are serious about growing in their craft and calling. My name is Alex, fellow worship leader. Super stoked you’re here. And if you’re a new listener, I’m going to encourage you to hit that subscribe button because every single month I’m going to give you helpful, practical guidance that you can immediately implement into your ministry. Hit that subscribe button and then go back through the past nine years of episodes and binge listen your way to a healthier ministry. If you’re someone who is really serious about growing as a worship leader, I’m going to point you to the worship Ministry training academy. What is the academy? It’s an online training platform.

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That will give you everything you need.

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To build a thriving worship Ministry. You’ll get 10 in-depth courses on topics like set building, team.

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Building, musical.

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Excellence.

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And more. You’ll get live monthly training workshops on topics that are relevant to you. You’ll get exclusive expert interviews with some of the best worship leaders in the world. You’ll get done for you ministry admin systems and audition process, onboarding documents, team training materials, and even team discipleship materials.

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We will take care of you so.

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You can focus on leading your team. If that sounds like something that would be of help to you, you can try the worship Ministry training academy for just one dollar by going to worshipministry training. Com. Sign up today for your one dollar trial and I hope to see you inside of the academy. Let’s get into today’s episode.

Travis Doucette |

As.

Alex |

Worship leaders, we are at our best when we are invisible, when people see us through us to Jesus, when he is the subject of the focus. In other words, transparency is the goal for us. But that can be hard to accomplish both on a practical level and then even on a spiritual level when we stand on a stage and there’s bright lights shining on us and our voices going through the PA, how can we lead in a way that’s invisible? And then equally as tricky, when we’re off stage, how can we fight our pride and our ego to live a quiet life of anonymity when social media and society actually rewards us for showing up and showing off? And so these are just some of the themes that we’re going to be tackling in today’s conversation with Travis Ducet, who I just met officially for the first time. I’m going to bring him on the screen. Hey, Travis, how are you doing?

Travis Doucette |

Alex, great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Alex |

I’m excited, man. You are on the East Coast and most people haven’t probably heard of you yet, but I’m glad that they will because you’re an extremely bright thinker. And the reason they haven’t heard of you is because you try to practice what you preach, which is quiet faithfulness and understated anonymity, which is very sorely missed in today’s society of self promotion. So just so that our people can know who they’re hearing from, can you just tell us who you are, what you do, anything else you want to share?

Travis Doucette |

Sure. Well, my name is Travis. I was born and raised in Canada, but I’ve lived most of my adult life in the United States and serving in the local church. My heartbeat is for people and for the local church. And I love to serve that heartbeat through music and worship. I’ve served at a number of churches in my career, but I’m currently so glad to be at Liberty Live Church in Hampton, Virginia. I serve as the central music pastor for a church of about six or seven thousand that meets across six different campuses. I have the great privilege of leading an incredible team of about eight worship leaders and music directors. I view myself as a head coach. They are just so capable and so gifted, and I just have the privilege of cheering them on.

Alex |

I love that you said head coach because that is, and this is not what we’re planning to talk about today, but that is how we should all view ourselves. We are called to equip the Saints for the work of the ministry. I love that you get to do that and pour into other younger, maybe younger worship leaders. Today I’d love to talk with you about your article. I came across this article called the invisible worship leader, and I was challenged by it. I was encouraged by it. I was like, I got to bring this to the academy and then to the wider public. So you wrote this article, The Invisible Worship Leader. I’ll link it in the show notes below this video or the podcast, whatever. I don’t even know what to call it anymore, but I’ll link it. What are the key themes for those people who aren’t going to actually go read it, which they should? What are the key themes or maybe a synopsis of the article? Then we’re going to start to talk about a bunch of that stuff.

Travis Doucette |

The article just draws attention to the tension that we as worship leaders all find ourselves in between the call to be a leader that’s seen and recognized and often lauded, and then the call to personal kingdom destruction and humility. The whole idea of anonym is something I don’t think is often taught on, but it’s a lifestyle discipline that has really been helpful in wounding my pride and helping me realign my affections towards the Lord. So to sum up the article, I make the point that the worship industry of today looks very different than the grassroots movement from which it formed from. I just believe that there are some principles and some behaviors that the Lord blessed in the infancy of the worship movement that we as worship leaders today should take notice of and facilitate in our discipleship.

Alex |

I love that. I love the idea of how it started is not how it’s ending. Honestly, it started out of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, that Jesus movement, hippie movement, very organic people on stage with guitarists, getting a lot of flak from the conservative Christians, and then just pouring out their love song. That was one of the main bands was love song. They were pouring out these simple songs of praise to the Lord. Now it’s turned into this massive industry that hopefully I don’t necessarily perpetuate. I do know people who are part of the industry or the machine, but I think there are some things that are troublesome. Your article really brings up some of those things. In your article, you mentioned that the early cassette tapes of the worship industry didn’t even have the worship leader’s name on it. It was just like the church name worship. But now, I mean, now we have have these extremely talented, often good looking, and I’m not like throwing shade. I actually have had many of these people on the podcast. Obviously, they’re extremely hard working as well. They’re just really great people. They’re working hard, but now they’re almost that superstar status.

Alex |

And again, I don’t know them personally, but I’ve had many of them on the podcast. They’re good people. They love the Lord. Their heart’s in the right place. But the industry, the machine has built them up to these superstars, and they can sell out arenas. They have a million Instagram followers, all this stuff. So in your humble opinion, how do you think we got here from where we started to where we are now? How did we get here?

Travis Doucette |

Well, I want to say the term superstar is just so incongruent with the calling of a worship leader. I know it’s a title that many people who are in the industry would never apply to themselves, but it’s projected onto them by the public. I think that grieves the heart of God. There’s only one superstar and it certainly is not us. It’s Jesus Christ. But simply put, it’s consumerism. We built an industry that drifts towards promoting image and talent. I’m not sure if any worship leader necessarily asks for that. I’m sure that those that felt to pride would desire that and enjoy the platform. But I do believe that, as you mentioned, there are good people out there that that’s not their heart at all. But historically, back in the day, me and you growing in the 80s, worship leading was not cool at all because it wasn’t profitable, so it wasn’t popular. As worship music developed into a consumable genre, it took on the characteristics of any other genre in popular music, and a profitable industry was really built around it. And so you have all these talented worship leaders today, like you said, they find themselves in the machine.

Travis Doucette |

The reality of it is if you plan to sell music, you need to promote it. People need to know that it’s out there. But whereas initially in the worship industry, if you study the history of the worship movement, originally it was songs that were promoted, but there was a shift in the late 80s and early 90s to promoting worship leaders as artists in addition to the songs. Probably the greatest illustration of this is if you remember the old chorus, Give Thanks, that Don Moen made popular.

Alex |

With the grateful heart, Give Thanks to the.

Travis Doucette |

Holy One. Yeah, I might be aging myself. But Don Moen has shared the story with me that for many years, Integrity Music, when they were starting off, that became one of their biggest songs. And for many years, the copyright on the sheet music was author unknown because they didn’t know who wrote it. It seems absurd that any song of any notoriety that would be written today would have author unknown. There’s too much money at stake. If you wrote a How Great Is Our God, I worked with a man that helped start the Center for Worship at Liberty University. His name was Dr. Vernon Whaley. He was really great at asking heart revealing questions. He would say things like, If you know you could write the next, I don’t know, insert popular worship song right now. If you know you could write the next In Christ alone, how great is our God? Shout to the Lord. Those are old songs now. But if you could write a popular song today, and the Lord asked you to not put your name on it, would you? I love that question because it gets to the heart of the matter.

Travis Doucette |

But all that to say, they didn’t know who wrote Give Thanks for many, many years. They put aside in a bank account the monies that were being generated from the sales of that Don Mon album on which it was recorded. They eventually tracked down Henry Smith, who wrote the song, a one hit wonder type guy. I just think that those stories give example to where the industry started and the anonymity that even some of these songwriters had.

Alex |

I think the line that you said that really struck me was it wasn’t profitable, so it wasn’t popular. Being a worship leader wasn’t profitable, so it wasn’t popular. But now it’s extremely profitable. And again, I don’t think any of these guys, there might be one or two, but from what I can see, they all have pure hearts, genuine motives. They’re not trying to do this to be seen. Although I think many of us want to be seen, we want to be validated, we want to be noticed, we want people to say good job. There’s a natural tendency for that. Some of it’s sinful, some of it’s just being a human, right? But it’s not necessarily bad to be seen because even Jesus said, when the Son of Man is lifted up, he will draw all people to himself. Obviously, he’s Jesus, so he’s not going to use it sinfully. But still, there’s this idea of God elevates people. And so being seen is not the problem. But how do you understand God elevating people and maybe any wise words about seeking to be elevated versus letting God elevate and what is the purpose of being elevated?

Alex |

Those types of thoughts.

Travis Doucette |

Yeah, I think in the scriptures, God does the elevating and our participation in the actual elevating is minimal, if anything at all. I think if anything, it could be boiled down to our available ability. When people are elevated in scripture, the objective is always to accomplish God’s plan and his purposes, which ultimately tie back to his glory. There’s this consistent theme that the messenger is nothing and the message is everything three thing. John the Baptist is one of the best worship leaders in the New Testament. Here’s an eccentric guy living in a homely state in the wilderness. The dude’s eating bugs. He’s like the prototype of the creative hippie. And what’s the message of his platform? He must increase, I must decrease. John 3.30. So the spiritual calling of any worship leader is the practice of decreasing or self demotion. Some one thing we rarely talk about in worship leading circles, humility is the internal and the external practice of thinking rightly about oneself. And contentment is the first born child of humility. It’s the greatest gift any Christian can experience. To be completely at peace is to be void of striving. I just see a lot of worship leaders striving.

Travis Doucette |

I see myself striving. I put myself in that category. But striving only ceases where contentment has been birthed from humility. More often than not, I see worship leaders that have been given the gift of a platform, and they feed the self promotion monster. I don’t see a whole lot of self demotion. Behavior is a window into the heart. Our motives are revealed through our responses. So you can see someone’s heart. I think very carefully when I observe worship leaders who dress, speak, and behave in a way that communicates entitlement or draws attention to them in their gift, as if God needs our gifts to accomplish his purposes. It’s a wonder why God would ever use any of us. It’s a wonder why God would use me or you. My heart really resonates when Paul writes in Ephesians 1, and he talks about how that love God predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance to his pleasure and his will. Then it says, To the praise of his glory and grace. Our gifts have been given to us to result in the praise of his glory and grace. I think a great question for any worship leader with any platform to consider is, does my behavior on and off the platform inspire others to make much of Jesus, to think more of Jesus, and to behave like Jesus?

Alex |

I feel like so much of what we’re talking about is where is our value derived from? Is it derived from what other people say about us, or is it derived from just who I am in Christ? Like you said, contentment. It really boils down to that piece of I am who I am. I do what I do. God provides for me. I’m not going to worry. I’m not going to strive. I’m just going to be his child, and that’s enough. I think that’s a struggle for me for the worship leaders listening. It’s like we feel like we have to perform, not necessarily musically, but we feel like we have to perform to earn acceptance, approval, accolades, applause, all the A words. But if we could just be okay being God’s child and being like, that’s enough, we sing songs about it. But there’s just a struggle of the heart to be like, No, I need to be seen, be noticed. I need the approval of man versus the approval of God, which is just a pure heart that loves the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Travis Doucette |

Yeah, I think it’s very much wrapped up an identity. A friend of mine many years ago recommended a book that I continue to recommend to any worship leader. It’s a book written by a guy named Edward T. Welch. It’s called When People Are Big and God is Small. The whole book deals with identity. What happens when we think more of what people think of us and less of what God thinks of us? I think the journey of becoming Christlike is to elevate what God thinks and to respond in obedience to what he thinks more than what others think.

Alex |

I do think God does elevate people. Sometimes those people are seeking elevation, and other times, like you said, they’re just available. I was thinking about John Piper before… I don’t know why. Before we hit record, I guarantee you John Piper did not try to become nationally known or anything. He’s just like, Here I am, Lord, use me. God decided this guy is trustworthy, therefore I will elevate him because he will point people to me. The strange thing is, though, that God sometimes elevates people who capitalize on that elevation or abuse that elevation or honestly abuse others, whereas we know that elevation is given to serve people. I’ve been reading a lot of David and Paul and just that whole story of David waiting for God’s timing to elevate David. Then when David is king, he is always trying to honor God, yes, and serve the people. His elevation was utilized as a platform to help and serve more people. The first thing he did was bring the ark back. Then the second thing he did was bless all the people with raisin cakes. Here you go. Eat some raisins and go home with some hot fresh bread.

Alex |

His elevation was used for the people. Even in his prayers, he’s thinking about how God elevated him to shepherd God’s people, Israel. He doesn’t even say my people. He says to shepherd God’s people, Israel. So I think the true use of a platform is to serve as many people as possible.

Travis Doucette |

Yeah. Amen.

Alex |

So we live in this tension, though, is that want to serve more people, and therefore I need to be more visible. So should we seek for our work to impact more people? Is it bad that Alex has a podcast and an Instagram and a TikTok, even though I never use it, and a YouTube and all this stuff? Is it bad that I’m like, I want to be out there. I want to be seen so that I can equip more worship leaders to lead biblically, to lead organized, to lead healthy ministries. I don’t know. How do you get should I wrestle through that? And how should our viewers wrestle through that? Is it bad if they want their song to be sang in more churches? What are your thoughts?

Travis Doucette |

Can I suggest a different question? I would suggest that instead of focusing on our work and how it can impact people, what if worship leaders became consumed with asking, Is the Lord honored by my behavior, by my social media, by my availability, by how I treat people in my care, by how I love my wife, by my conversations, by my heart’s desires? I think it’s so much simpler than what we make it out to be. I think when we strive after those things and the things that the Lord has asked of us, we become consumed with what God wants us to be consumed with. He says in Matthew 6, Seek first the Kingdom. I think we can leave the impact and the breadth of our ministry in the Lord’s hands. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with desiring to be used in an impactful way, but I’ve often found myself tempted as a worship leader to want to dictate what that looks like. In nature, my dreams often need to be realigned with those of Christ in his kingdom. A ll of us, especially worship leaders with a platform, we’re always going to be fighting the natural bend to be king in our kingdom.

Travis Doucette |

And so we need to be on guard, aware, and have just an intentional plan on how to decrease ourselves and learn to be comfortable with anonymity. But again, this all comes back to striving and contentment.

Alex |

Help us to seek anonymity. What does it look like to not try to accomplish anything, but just try to honor God? And what are some of the antid, then, for the natural inclination to self promote?

Travis Doucette |

The antidote to self promotion is self demotion.

Alex |

What does that look like on a practical level?

Travis Doucette |

Cleaning toilets? I think you need to be the chief foreman of the wrecking ball in your heart. Some of us really need to let that wrecking ball loose in our hearts. The Kingdom of God is God is built from the ashes of self denial. James 4 10, humble thy self in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up. Your greatest promoter is the one who paints the sky every night. Your greatest promoter is the one who sets up kings and kingdoms. Learning the discipline of contentment through humility is a journey. But the word of God gives a very clear prescription for any type of promotion in Proverbs 272. It says, Let someone else praise you and not your own mouth, an outsider and not your own lips. I love how it’s rendered in the message. Eugene Peterson says it this way, Don’t call attention to yourself. Let others do that for you. Instagram culture is really fascinating to me. Something I noticed that humans love to do is amplify their accolades. This is normalized now everywhere. For instance, when someone posts a compliment for you, many users, not all, but many users repost and amplify the compliment to their followers.

Travis Doucette |

It’s not enough that they receive the compliment or that that person told their followers how great you are. They then repost it. We’re essentially using our platforms to shout to the world, Look at how great so and so thinks I am. I have to put that on the background of God’s Word that says, Don’t call attention to yourself. You know, the worship leader who’s content doesn’t own a megaphone for his accolades. They only use that megaphone to amplify one name, that’s Jesus Christ. And they leave the promotion up to the other voices. I really believe that the worship leader’s greatest promot is the Holy Spirit. And the greatest and most satisfying accolade comes from Christ, not from men.

Alex |

I think it’s encouraging for the listeners because most of us won’t be someone who’s known. Most of us will lead in an average sized church, which currently in America is I think, down to 60 people as the average sized church. It used to be 80. Some of them might be in 200 person church or 300 person church. But I think we get this Instagram envy of these humongous churches. Both you and I lead at humongous churches, but both Travis and I can tell you it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be okay. That quiet, steady faithfulness of being okay with only being… I mean, only being able to lead 200 people. What a privilege, right? What a blessing, what an honor. And you said, let the wrecking ball loose in our hearts. The Lord has been absolutely obliterating the pride in my heart. And I wouldn’t have thought that I was a prideful person. But over the last year, he’s been exposing just how much, and this is just public confession, everybody, I’m sorry for making it sound like therapy, but just how much I have always tried to impress people. Even today, I was thinking about this.

Alex |

One time I went up to the mountains and we went to visit the small church up in the mountains and the worship leader led worship. I wanted to go up to him and be like, Yeah, I’m a worship leader, too. I think I might have even done it. I’m a worship leader, too, and I lead at a big church and I have a podcast for worship leaders. It’s like, shut up. What a loser. Why would I say that? And so it’s like, the first thing out of my mouth is self promotion or trying to impress others. I didn’t realize that. What does it matter if you are the smartest person in the room or you have the whatever blank, fill in the blank, who cares? Just love the person, just love people, just serve people. Why do you have to try to impress people? I’m speaking to myself, and maybe that’s resonating with others out there. But the Lord has really been showing me just how much I do strive to impress, even though I didn’t think so if you asked me a.

Travis Doucette |

Year ago. Sure.

Alex |

Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about the heart side of being invisible or seeking for less promotion. Let’s talk about the stage because the stage is interesting because you get on a big platform, you’re usually above people’s heads. There’s a light on you. You have a microphone. How do we practically, and you train the worship leaders at your church, so how do you coach them to lead in such a way that they’re transparent? What does that look like practically?

Travis Doucette |

Tools are all designed with a specific purpose in mind. Well, a stage in the local church is designed with a specific function as well. For the worship leader, the stage is a tool for the glorification of God. For a worship leader, that stage is a single function tool. Using your stage for anything else will be like trying to hammer that nail with a screwdriver. It’s not going to work as it’s intended to. You might get some results, but it’s not how it was designed. An analogy that’s been very helpful to me through the years, which has been out there for many, many years is that worship leaders are essentially tour guides. The interesting thing is that if you’ve ever taken a trip and you’ve taken lots of pictures, chances are the tour guide probably isn’t in your pictures. Yet the tour guide, they’re the most knowledgeable person about the thing that they’re speaking about. For worship leaders, as tour guides, we know the word inside and out. We’re the theologians preaching in song and teaching people how and what to think about God. But also as tour guides, we’re promters and we’re pointing to the thing.

Travis Doucette |

We’re pointing to the thing and saying, behold, you need to sing to this thing and you need to check out how awesome this is. We’re literally standing in front of the thing that is so much bigger and so much awesome. If you go to India and you visit the Taj Mahal, you don’t walk away talking about what the tour guide was wearing or how clever they were in their speech or even how much they knew about it. You walk away away, and what did you take a picture of? The building. You walk away marveling at how great the building is. T hat’s what a great worship leader does. They point to the thing that is so much greater than who they are. That’s why John the Baptist is such a great worship leader in the New Testament because he knew his role was simply to prepare the way and to point to the thing that was greater than him. So worship leaders know that they’ve done their job when people leave from being in proximity to them, not saying how great their voice is or how great of a player they are, how great their drift.

Travis Doucette |

They walk away saying how great God is. I want anybody who comes into proximity with my ministry to not walk away talking about Travis, but to walk away talking about Jesus Christ. I’ve always believed that the greatest compliment that any worship leader could ever receive is this, I never noticed you at all.

Alex |

Yeah. So do you have some practical ways? For me, when I think about what you’re saying, one of the phrases I like to say is invite, don’t impress. And one of the ways that we can invite, not impress is to not be too fancy with our vocals or to do crazy runs that nobody can follow and just show people how awesome your vocal cords are. So what are some practical ways to get out of the way? Yeah.

Travis Doucette |

I’d say every worship leader is a walking arrow and their demeanor and their attention and their clothing and their words. All of these things are just simply arrows pointing to something. And they typically pouring in three directions, either to self, to others or to Jesus Christ. I think the journey of every worship leader is the discipline of turning the arrows to self and redirecting them to Jesus Christ. And this doesn’t happen without self denial. Here’s three really unpopular ways to draw people to Christ. Here’s the first one. Deny yourself the fullest expression of your creativity and dress modestly. I was so discouraged when I watched a Christian awards show. There was a very popular worship leader who takes care of his body and was wearing a vest that accentuated his muscles and was unbuttoned down. His chest hair is coming out. He’s got jewelry all around his neck, and he was using his flesh to draw attention to himself. He’s singing about worshiping Jesus Christ. It just feels so incongruent. That’s the first thing. Deny yourself the fullest of your musical opinions to serve another’s vision or their direction.

Alex |

Translate that.

Travis Doucette |

I think as worship leaders, sometimes we come to the table with pretty limited ideas on how something should go or how it should be arranged or how it should be expressed. I think that there’s options to invite other people, other voices to the table. I think that sometimes our ideas that we may be upset with and we’ve figured out and that we’ve come prepared for may not be the best thing that serves the people. We’re there first of all, honor God and to serve the people, which by serving the people, we are honoring God. Something I talk a lot about with my team is the power of the pivot and just becoming flexible and like, That setting is not going to work. Let’s change the key for that. I thought that that groove was going to work, but I think we should just pull this back and really living our lives as worship leaders truly with open hands and that our clever musical ideas never become paramount to what best serves the people.

Alex |

Even to the point of like, you might like that song creatively, but it’s not congregational, or it’s not clear enough to resonate and point people to Christ, so cut it. It’s a good song. It’s not a good generational song. That’s sacrificing your creative musical side as well.

Travis Doucette |

Well, the way that I say it, hugely unpopular opinion, but I believe every worship leader, if they’re doing their job really well, probably should be leading songs that they don’t prefer. There’s no way that your musical… You can’t tell me if you were born in the 90s or 2000s that your musical preferences, if you’re serving at a multi generational church, which many people do, are going to align with those that were born in 1940. There’s no way that your musical preferences are going to align. I think a great litmus test is if you’re doing your job. I’m not talking about self deprecation and having to play songs that you hate all the time. I’m just saying that somewhere in your roster of your worship diet, it’s probably a healthy indicator if there’s a handful of things that you don’t prefer.

Alex |

Because.

Travis Doucette |

Worship isn’t about you.

Alex |

Yeah. Okay, that was number two. What was your third one?

Travis Doucette |

Deny yourself the fullest expression of your clever thoughts to allow the Word of God to be the authoritative source from which you lead.

Alex |

So you’re saying don’t try to impress people with your rhetoric, but just read the Word and shut your mouth. That’s the dumb version’s way of saying what you just said.

Travis Doucette |

I’m thankful that the Lord uses my personality and my temperament. I’m thankful that he uses yours. I’m thankful that he uses all of us as a lens in which that we can reach people. I would never discourage people from truly being who they are. But as I prepare and as I seek to plug into the source that’s going to give me the most voltage, that source is never going to be my brain and my clever ideas. If I’m leading from the authority of, How’s everyone doing here this morning? As if we’re there’s something in that question or ourselves, that’s not why people came to church. Then go to a concert and get that. Give people where the power lies in the word of God. I was glad when they said unto me, Let’s go to the house of the Lord. Church, are you excited to be in the house of the Lord? Are we expecting God to move? And just turning the kaleidoscope so that your calls to worship are based not on the cleverness of your thoughts or ideas, but rooted deeply in the word of God, because that’s where the power is. And that’s what we’re instructed to do.

Travis Doucette |

Paul writes in Colossians, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. So I’m thinking, what is it that I can say on Sunday morning that’s going to promote? What am I going to sing? What songs am I going to choose that are going to promote a rich dwelling of God’s word? I grew up with an aunt and uncle who were really into contemporary Christian music and exposed me to a whole world that my parents knew a little bit about, but they were just saturated in this world. And there was a Christian rock band back in the day called Petra. I can remember the lyrics to so many Petra songs, and I learned the word of God through their lyrics. One of the cool things that they did long before it was popular is that when you would buy a Petra record or cassette back in the day and you read the lyric notes, in brackets, literally line after line was the scriptural reference for each line. Wow. I’m so thankful that I had that exposure to that music because it planted the word of God inside of me. The greatest gift that we can give as theologians on Sunday morning is that we would not plant people with our clever thoughts, or here’s my three gimmicky points to remember this, but that we would sing songs that promote a rich dwelling of God’s word.

Alex |

Yeah, I love that. Even just practically fleshing that out, for the worship leaders listening, put scripture in everything. Obviously, you don’t want to read a Scripture before every single song, but start with a call to worship that scripture. Make sure your prayers are Scripture saturated, which means you need to be in the Word and know the Word. Put it up on the instrumentals, like the long instrumentals. Put up a scripture on the screens, all those types of things. I love that. Diego Galldino just said Petra.

Travis Doucette |

Let’s.

Alex |

Go. That’s right. One thing I want to also mention and feel free to comment on this, this is something we’re really wrestling through at our church is production can become very visible. Now I’m over the whole creative team at our church, all the creative staff, which includes production, but I still have to answer to my senior pastor and other leadership for the direction they want to go. I’m wrestling through just the visibility of the production, the lights, the smoke, the IMAG. I feel like my bent is like production in and of itself is supposed to enhance and support and undergird and underpin the singing of God’s Word, the visibility of God’s Word, the scriptures. But if we’re not careful, and this is just someone out there listening needs to evaluate this, if you’re not careful, production can be a runaway train. And now it’s like it is its own thing. And now it’s visible. Maybe your worship leading isn’t so visible. Maybe you’re doing a good job being invisible as a worship leader, but your production, your lights, your haze, your this, your that, it’s not enhancing the moment. It’s just its own thing happening.

Alex |

So do you have any thoughts about that before we begin wrapping things up?

Travis Doucette |

I’ve thought a lot about that through the years. I think worship leaders have one of the greatest challenges because we invite people into a room that in all other scenarios, culturally, they’re taught to sit and observe. Think about it. Seats, elevated stage, performance, performance. The job of worship leader is to work against that and to move people from observation to participation. I think that movement from observation to participation ought to inform what the production looks like. I would never want to say something generic that works at every church because every church culture is different. But I would, as a worship leader or a creative arts director, be thinking about some real strategic questions to propose to my team, like, how does what we do point people to Jesus Christ? There are some specific things within our culture that we’ve learned. For instance, in our worship philosophy, we gather the people and we pick them to a place we call the top of the mountain where the view is the best. We sing songs, we start with gathering songs, but at the end of the set, we end with vertical songs, songs of pure description. As we make that journey, we have made the decision that what’s best for our culture is that when we get to that vertical spot, we don’t want lights, haze production elements to be fast moving.

Travis Doucette |

That often goes with the nature of songs that are used in that moment. They’re often slower songs. But that’s just an example of a production decision that we’ve made because we want people in that moment to be completely focused on the adoration and description of worth to Jesus Christ.

Alex |

Yeah, that’s huge. Fast moving is often very attention grabbing. That even goes with the fast drum fill. When you have a big, epic moment and you have a drummer who’s like or whatever, that very much pulls your attention. But if it’s just a simple Right, then you can ignore it. It just supports the moment. And so we want to support the moment in all things. It’s great. And Tiago’s already got a great question that we’re going to answer in the Academy Q&A, but I’ll tease it up for you. We’ll move into that section in just a minute. He says, do you think there is a gray spot in between being invisible enough not to distract, but being visible enough to lead effectively? So we’ll answer that, Diego, in the Q&A. That is a great question. And for any listeners who are listening after the fact, part of being in the worship Ministry Training Academy means you get to join these interviews live and you get to ask your own questions in our Q&A section. A little pitch there, if you’re interested, you can try it for $1 for 15 days. You can join us and get the courses and everything else as well.

Alex |

I’d love to wrap it up with just some final words for our listeners. I know we were maybe going to touch a little bit about how Jesus ran from the crowds, but I think that sentence in and of itself says a lot. So everybody, just let that resonate in your heart. What are some final thoughts, final words that you’d love to leave for our listeners about just being invisible and seeking anonymity?

Travis Doucette |

Be aware of the metrics that you use to define the success of your worship leading. Being an anonymous or successful worship leader is not measured by Instagram followers, double awards, Spotify plays, or even hit singles. There will be a lot of effective worship leaders in heaven who are mediocre singer, who always needed a capo when they played guitar, and could only play the piano and the keys of C and G. It’s going to be a lot of them. I’d say this, the Kingdom of God is not built upon talent and songs, but the Kingdom of God is built upon relationships. The greatest worship leading that you will ever do will not be on stage with a hand on an instrument, but off stage with a hand on a shoulder.

Alex |

Dang. Dropping bombs here. Yeah, I love that. I want to comment on it, but I’m going to leave it right there. Ironically, where can people find you online?

Travis Doucette |

Yeah, that is a little ironic, isn’t it? Yeah, I have a blog and my heart is really just to share the things that I’ve learned from trial, mostly suffering and wanting to… I I tell my team, I feel like I’m successful when you’re successful. Travis DeSette, Travis, VIS, DOU, CETTE. Com. I blog there frequently. I’ve taken a break from the last couple of months, but I’m hoping to be writing there again. I’m just trying to figure things out alongside my worship leading friends. I’m not saying that I’ve arrived, but I do feel as though I have learned some lessons and I feel privileged and grateful that I can share some of those lessons with other worship leaders.

Alex |

Awesome. I will link your blog for you so you don’t have to do it because it’s better for another to praise you than for you to praise yourself. Preach. All right, guys, we’re going to jump into our Academy Q&A now. For those of you who are listening after the fact, God bless you. We’ll see you in the next episode and or the next video and or the next email or however you get encouraged by worship ministry training. But we’re thankful to be able to encourage you and we’ll see you around for the Academy members, sit tight. Just one second.

Alex |

Thanks for tuning in today. I hope this episode encouraged you, helped you and pushed you forward in your ministry. If it helped you, can you take a second and help us by sending it to just one person that you think needs to hear this? And if you’re feeling extra nice, leave us a nice, shiny five star review on Apple podcast or like this video if you’re watching it on YouTube. If you want to discuss this episode or ask questions, we do have a free section in our academy where you can post comments and questions and chat with other worship leaders just like you and also sample some of our courses. You can go to worshipministry training. Com free to join join us inside the free portion of the academy. If you’re looking for more, check out the Full Access Academy. You can get 15 days for just one dollar to start and try things out. Again, you can try all of it for 15 days for just one dollar by going to the worship ministry training com. Hope to see you inside the Academy, or else I’ll see you next month for another helpful episode.