Day 142: Holy Spirit or Planning?

This Sunday really proved a point in my thinking and the reason why staff meetings are important. What happens allot of times in church is the pastor functions separate from the worship leader. We throw our unorganized ways under the title of "being led by the Spirit". I remember serving at a church where the worship leader would come in one hour before service...pick the songs and run a quick practice. Why? Probably because the pastor only planned a week out with the messages or maybe a day.

Each Thursday we have our staff meeting as many churches do. One of the important elements to our staff meeting is talking about the upcoming weekend service. We talk about the music line-up and the way the service will unfold. Now those reading this might be thinking "be sure to let the Holy Spirit have room." There is no need to worry, the Holy Spirit is all over our services. The other important thing we talk about are the messages I will be talking on a minimum of 3 weeks out. The reason for this is so the worship leader is able to pick songs that coincide with the message. This gives the whole service a nice flow with the same theme. What can happen in church is that the pastor will be talking about victory and the songs/hymns being picked has to do with death and our mansion in glory. There is no flow to that.

This past weekend quite a few people came up to me and mentioned, "that last song was perfect for the message...isn't it great how God works like that?" I am not discounting God in ANY way. What these people didn't know however is that I knew where the message was going about two weeks in advance. I communicated that to the worship leader and we came up with that closing song. The guest speaker talked about pressing forward and the great new work the church will be doing. We closed with "New Hallelujah". It really is the icing on the cake when you know where you are going and can match the music to it.

Communication is the key with staff at a church. Not just from the pastor to the staff but the staff to the pastor. Is it the Holy Spirit that guides our services? YES...but it is planning as well which is inspired by the Holy Spirit.