Well, welcome back to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I am Kristen. I'm one of the consultants with Vanderblumen. And today we are having a conversation with Alex, who is actually the founder of Worship Ministry Training. And I would love, Alex, for you to just give some color around what that means, who you are. You're sitting in California as we have this conversation. So, you know, the conception is that it's um, or the perception I should say is that it's very sunny where you're at right now. So, number one, is that true? And then number two, just give us a uh just some bullet points of who you even are.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Thank you. Yes, the perception is correct. It is sunny today, although we've gone through a couple weeks of stormy weather. And for California, stormy weather is like nothing compared to most of the country, but whatever. So uh yes, it is sunny now. I am the founder of Worship Ministry Training. I have been a worship pastor for nearly 20 years and just began training worship leaders through a podcast and then through a blog and then email us, and then it grew into this full-on academy where we have thousands of students going through um our in-depth training material, our courses, really trying to equip worship leaders to be biblical, godly leaders in the church. Leader first and musician second. And I think a lot of uh worship leaders get that backwards. They they take the music as the primary and the leadership shepherding part as the secondary, or not at all, and things are just a hot mess. So I work directly with usually with worship leaders, but in this conversation, I'm excited to encourage senior pastors and how they can work better with their worship leaders, that strange creature that sits in the corner that you don't know what to do with. I'm excited to encourage you about a few ways that you can help them. So that's my is that enough? So you want more?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that's good. But you are also a staff member at a church, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I'm still a full-time worship pastor. I do uh I feel like I need to be rooted in that uh in order to continue to grow and also shepherd the worship leaders who, you know, the Lord has entrusted under under my care. Like I want them to know I'm in the fight with them, I'm in the fire with them. And um, yeah, and a lot of my gifts are a benefit and blessing to a local church context. So yeah, I've been in churches of all sizes from church plants in in Russia on the mission field when I was 20. I was my previous church was 10,000 people in Los Angeles, but I recently left that and I'm now at a church of about a thousand people or 1,200 people where I oversee um all the creative stuff and communications, connections, and all that stuff as well. So that's a new role for me. But uh worship ministry training is rapidly growing, and so I'm just trying to balance all of those responsibilities.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that is a lot. How many years ago did you create worship ministry training, by the way?
SPEAKER_00Um in its current form with the full-on academy live live courses and our course library and all that, it's been two years, but uh I started training worship leaders online in one uh 10 years ago, 2014. Um I launched the podcast and the blog and the email list, and so it's just been a kind of evolution and transformation to what it is today. And uh the Lord continues to bless the reach, and I want to continue to steward that well.
SPEAKER_02So, okay, so 10 years, that's a long time. What was the, I guess, catalyst for you pulling the trigger to say, okay, I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna create this. What I'm assuming you saw some sort of a need or you were experiencing some sort of gap in this worship space. Like, what was it that led you to want to even create this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I was working at a church and training up worship leaders from within that church, and I was creating content for them, and I said, why don't I just put this out online? And so I started reading it into a microphone as a podcast, and that was the beginning, and I had no idea what it would evolve into today, but the Lord continues to just give greater influence to encourage more and more worship leaders. And I think the gap is that most worship leaders get thrown into ministry with zero formal training, they have no one telling them what the goal is, what they're supposed to be doing, how to do it. Um, they're literally just reaching their hand into a hat, picking out songs at random. And I know we'll cover some of that today in this conversation, but there's just no intention or thought behind what they're doing. They were holding a guitar, they were gifted at music, and the pastor said, Tag your it, do the thing. And they're like, What's the thing? And so then they're looking online, like, what is Bethel doing? What is Hillsong doing without even asking the fundamental questions of what is a worship leader, what is a worship pastor? And um, what does it mean to be a church leader and a shepherd first? And so that is the gap that we're trying to fill is to help people move from musician to actual shepherd. And um, yeah, that's that's what I feel passionate about and called to do. So it's it's been a blessing to be able to do that. And I'm so grateful to partner with Vanderbloom. And I'm so like, you know, you guys are such high quality, high-caliber people in an organization to to for you guys to reach out and say, hey, can we partner with you as a strategic strategic partner? So thank you for that. It's been a blessing.
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. I mean, you have a lot to offer. And so that segues right into the conversation that we are going to have because I think it's incredibly valuable for anyone who's in a senior leader position who's listening, or anyone who manages worship leaders, has worship pastors, worship directors, worship people reporting to them. And they're sitting here thinking, what on earth do I do with these worship people? And so specifically, the topic we're gonna talk about right now for the next couple minutes is how do, we'll just say, how do senior leaders help their worship pastors? So, how can we help these senior leaders help their worship pastors? And so I, before we jumped on, I took notes based on things that you taught me. So I'm gonna ask you questions based on some of the things that you have already taught me about this topic, and I'll let you sort of put color around that so that we could really help anyone who's wondering, I don't know what to do with my worship pastor. Please help. So, one of the first things that you said said was in any senior leader who has a worship pastor reporting to them or you're managing them, you need to help them to understand their role. So unpack that for us first because that feels obvious.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it feels obvious, and yet it's not. Like I said earlier, most worship leaders don't actually know what the goal is. They don't know what their role is, they don't know what actual success is. They think they do, but they're mistaken because they're taking their cues from what they see online. They're not taking their cues from what does scripture say my role is? And so most worship leaders don't understand the fullness, the importance, the impact of their role, but they are one of the primary disciple makers in the church. Like they are actually putting words on people's lips that are going to carry them through the week. It's gonna uh shape their theology. And so, you know, really helping the worship leader understand you are primarily a disciple maker, a pastor, a shepherd. You're not a performer, you're a pastor. You're not a song leader, you're a shepherd. Your job is not to sing songs, your job is to lead the room. Your job is to help the church get a bigger, grander, more beautiful view of who Jesus is. And I don't just want you randomly picking songs and just getting up there singing. I want you to lead us through scripture and prayers and confessions and and yes, songs, but to really help them understand the importance and the impact of their role and that they're a leader first and a musician second. And so that is what I mean by really helping them get a grasp of because I think when people understand the importance of what they're doing, they take it more seriously. Um, but they'll they might just think, yeah, they might just think, oh, I'm just singing songs, like what's the big deal? No, bro or gal, you are literally uh shaping people's soul. The the corporate worship experience is a formative experience. It how we do things, what we do is forming people in a certain direction, whether for good or for bad. And so how we do our production, how we pick our songs, how we lead the room, all of that is a formative experience that happens habitually week after week, that is shaping people into something. And so really helping them understand the fullness of what they're shaping people into.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's good. This might be an unfair question, but I'll ask it anyway. How often do you find worship pastors that actually do not understand their role?
SPEAKER_00Do you run into that a good bit or I would say no one has ever taught most worship pastors what they're supposed to be doing. Oh wow. So I would say 70% of people are just musicians who got put in charge of a ministry and they're fumbling their way forward. And that's why they come to the academy. They're like, please, I have like most of the people who sign up for the academy or who listen to the podcast, you know, we're we're coming up close on about a million downloads in probably in the next year or so. Wow. So there's a lot of people who are hungry, uh, and they're like, they always tell me the same thing. I got thrown into ministry and I was like dying in the desert, and I just needed someone to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing. So I would say 70% of worship pastors have never really been taught what to do.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Okay, that's very significant. Okay, so that's a that's a that's a very important point. All right. The second way that senior pastors can help worship pastors is uh help them get organized. And I feel like we probably all have jokes about worship pastors who are unorganized, but give us some, I guess, detail around what that looks like.
SPEAKER_00Sure. And it's obviously we're, you know, caricaturizing people and saying that all worship pastors are creatives, which is not necessarily the truth, you know, the truth, but but generally speaking, if someone really loves music and singing and songs, they're probably a creative person. And most creatives are not good at being productive or proactive or focused, and they struggle with follow-through. And so, as a senior pastor, like, why not mentor one of the most important people on your staff to be a better human, not just a better Christian? Yes, we want to cover discipleship, but like disciple them also in the practical areas of time management and developing routines or developing systems and processes for themselves in their personal life and for their ministry. And so, what this could be, it could be a conversation where you're just asking about their current workflow and you're offering suggestions. Oh, have you ever thought about trying this? Or, oh, this is how I plan my week, or hey, tell me about how you um do your tasks each week. I'm not trying to micromanage you, I just want to help you streamline your workflow. And so you could give them homework and say, hey, this week, you know, I want to help you develop uh a more streamlined workflow so that you have more time to just encourage your team or take people out to coffee or take people out to lunch. So I'd love for you this week to categorize your tasks that you do every week by type, write them all out on a paper, and we can start to batch your tasks. So just teaching them those concepts, because I've found most worship leaders don't listen to um like leadership podcasts, they actually listen to like dumb, stupid. I'm not even okay. This sounds so bad, Kristen, but like most worship leaders like are not actually interested in the stuff that I teach, which is like practical training. They're literally scrolling memes on their Instagram. Like the the most popular, yeah, the most popular worship accounts are are meme accounts, and it's like, and I'm friends with the guys who run those accounts, but it's like, guys, like, oh no, like this is what our worship leaders spend their time scrolling past and thinking about. So anyway, for us pastors, senior pastors, le uh leaders, like disciple your uh worship leaders to be more organized. And the reasons this is important, and you guys in listening intuitively know this, is that stability precedes growth. Like an organization can't grow unless there's stability and reliability. And so you want to help your worship leader become a stable, reliable, consistent person and create a stable, reliable, consistent ministry. And we do teach all of this in the academy, but the reason for that stability is when things are stable and things aren't shifting and just changing constantly week after week, then things can go up. Like you can't build a skyscraper without a solid foundation. And so really helping your worship leader get, you know, organized and efficient with their their structuring of their life and their ministry is like a huge thing that you can help them with, probably, unless you're also unorganized, which hopefully you're not.
SPEAKER_02Then that would be problematic. But you bring up a really great point because I don't I cannot tell you the amount of conversations I have had with someone in a position of leadership and they have been frustrated that their worship pastor is so creative, and all he or she wants to do is sit around and ideate and comes up with these massive dreams, and they think that they're actually going to come to fruition, and they do not because the person the person actually does not have the skill set of executing. But I feel like what you just said gives a lot of hope because there's a lot of practical steps that you can do to create learned behavior, even if you are not naturally bent toward organization. So that was excellent. Okay, number three is oversee song choices. Why is this important?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, senior bastards are going to hate me for saying this, and I love you for listening to this guy that you don't know. But truthfully, truthfully told, most people forget what your sermon is about after their lunch. Okay, so I I say that with such love and such respect. I'm not saying the sermon is not important. The sermon is so important, and God commands us to preach the word. So thank you for faithfully laboring hours every week doing that. However, people walk out of church humming the songs, and they they often maybe it's just me. I forget sermons. Okay, maybe it's just me. I forget sermons. But songs are sticky. Songs are the stickiest thing, they go with us from cradle to grade. Like that's why we teach people the ABCs in song form and we teach kids the 50 states in song form because songs are one of the strongest mnemic devices. They they stick things into our minds. And so your church is actually learning more from the songs that your worship leader is singing than your sermons, at least in the sense that they're carrying those those ideas with them much longer and uh you know, much more actively in their mind. And so your church is learning their theology from the songs, they're learning about God through the songs, they're learning about themselves and the world and worldview through the songs that your worship leader is singing. And so, as the senior Over Shepherd of your flock, don't you want to make sure that you're you have an eyeball on the songs that your people are singing? Um, and so I would love for worship or senior pastors to work directly with their worship leaders. Again, not micromanaging, but again, casting that bigger vision of, hey, this is really important and here's why. And I would love to partner with you in making sure that the songs we're singing are are clear, congregational, biblical, singable, right? There are there are a lot of great songs in the world, but that but just because a song is great on the radio doesn't mean it's great in the congregational setting. And so, really, and I have five, you know, five criteria for that, which we won't get into today, but your worship leader can listen to my podcast, Worship Ministry Training Podcast, and learn that, or, or join the academy. So the thing is, the we we we as senior pastors should be making sure that at least for a season, we've got our eyeballs and our minds on the songs that are being sung in our church. And that we're telling our worship leaders, hey, don't just pick five random songs or five songs that you like. No, we can do better than that. Like, why don't we pick our songs around the theme of the sermon and of the service? But what that means for senior pastors is that you need to actually get your worship leaders the songs in it or the sermon title in advance, not Friday night. Okay, so even like if you can give them a list of the whole month, hey, this month I'm gonna cover this passage, then this passage, then this passage, and I want you to pick songs around those passages. So, you know, there's a lot that goes into this. And uh actually, I have a free ebook that I can uh give you a link for Kristen, and I'll actually make it really easy for them. Okay, I love it. It's an ebook on the power and importance of strong songs, strong congregational songs, what that means, where to find them, how to pick them, and they they can get it at worshipministry training.com slash songs, because I know we don't have time to go into like the depth of where this goes. So we'll we'll just leave it there. But but yeah, oversee the song choices.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's a great resource. Also, do you talk at all about um keys? Like I feel like I feel like sometimes people choose keys that they're a little bit too high for the room to sing.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, we cover all of that in the academy. So we we teach worship leaders how to build Christ-centered worship sets that flow thematically and musically to a climactic destination of God's goodness, grandeur, and glory. You can tell that I've said that many, many times. But yes, there's so much that goes into having the church participate in worship, and one of those factors is is song keys and um prioritizing the people's voices over our own voices as worship leaders. It's not about us, it's not a performance, it's not it's it's not about impressing, it's about inviting, right? And so, yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_02All right, that's really good. And we'll definitely link to that resource as well. Okay, next point setting a cadence of encouragement and discipleship. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so what I mean is it's aka a standing meeting. Set up a cadence of communication with your worship leader. I I've unfortunately heard of many worship leaders who don't regularly meet with their senior pastor. But you guys are like two Ps in a pod, whether you like it or not. Like you're the two primary faces on stage. And so you really want to be in a good connection with your worship pastor, worship leader. And so you want to have a regular point of connection for encouragement to your worship leader because uh clear communication does a lot of things, but it definitely fuels trust and understanding. And because now you're worship leader and you are actually talking instead of assuming, and you're actually able to give them specific things you are think they're doing well and specific things you want them to work on, and then they don't have to wonder if they're where they stand with you and if they're living up to your expectations. Um, and also like if you ask for something, you're more likely to get it than if you don't ask for something. And so you need to just be clear with your worship leader what you're wanting from them, what you wish you saw more of, what you think they could grow in. Also, of course, pepper in lots of encouragement in those conversations, but you want to have a standing meeting where you two can clearly communicate, and then you want to really try to stick to that. I personally like to do it like Monday mornings. Um, you know, we just had service, it's all fresh in our minds. We come in, we kind of debrief, and then we uh talk about the next service and the worship pastors hopefully being proactive and asking, like, is there anything you want to see more of or anything you want me to do this weekend, or all those things? But if they're not proactive, you can kind of just lead the conversation as well. But usually Monday mornings works well because it's it's fresh in your mind and the worship pastor's mind.
SPEAKER_02That's good. This might be an overkill question, but is it is there an appropriate amount of meetings that you could have? Here, here's where I'm going with this. For example, is it okay? So we meet Monday to debrief what just happened yesterday and to look at what's happening in the future, and then maybe we'll regroup again on Thursday to make sure, or is that just like is that just too much?
SPEAKER_00I tend to avoid too many meetings. Okay, that's helpful.
SPEAKER_02That's helpful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there might be you can do a lot in an hour if you if you know what you want to accomplish. It's like, all right, we're gonna debrief Sunday, talk about upcoming Sunday, and here's a few like thoughts that I want you to consider discipleship thoughts or mentoring thoughts. And God bless you, you can email me if you need anything else. You know, you know what? Honestly, pray. Pray pray with the worship, though. Very important.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's helpful. All right, the next one, resource the team. I'm assuming you're talking about resource the entire worship team.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and this uh this is a little bit different than the others in the sense that this is not something that you are doing to your worship leader, it's something that you're asking your worship leader to do for the team. And a lot of pastors say that their worship ministry struggles in musical excellence. And what they don't understand is that a huge part of musical excellence comes from the resources that the team has access to. And so what I mean by that is your worship leader should be giving their team a clean, clear, correct chord chart, an MP3 in the proper key, and any tutorial videos about how to execute the song that they can find on YouTube or get a subscription to worship artistry or worship uh worship online. But basically, if your worship leader is resourcing the team early enough in the week, then the team actually has time to practice at home and show up prepared, which elevates musical worship. Which elevates the experience on Sundays. And so so many people don't, they they just don't understand how to get musical excellence, but it's it's not that hard. Now, this is just one factor of musical excellence. I have a whole course on on it, but this is an important one, which is your worship leader should be giving the the team the tools they need in the time that they need to succeed. The tools they need with the time that they need to succeed. In other words, tools plus time equals excellence. And so this is something that you want to have a conversation with about your worship leader, or you want to have a conversation about with your worship leader and say, hey, are you doing this? Are you, what are you, what kind of resources are you giving the team each week? And and how early are you getting those resources to them? Because if your worship leader is picking the set on Friday night, like I can guarantee you that no one on the team has time to practice. And then they're showing up Sunday and just like barely making it through rehearsal. And then, you know what I mean? And so we really, as worship leaders, want to get the team what they need to succeed as early as possible. And so this is more of a hey, heads up, senior pastor, make sure you are checking in with your worship leader about what they're giving their team and how early they're giving it to them. So that will help the excellence level at your church improve.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's a good point. Okay, the last one, well, the last one for this conversation is senior leaders can invest in their leader. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so obviously a lot of this now. You're like, Alex, I don't have time to like sit down with my worship pastor and tell him why he's he's not organized and all this. And that's honestly that's why we created the academy is like senior leaders don't have the time for this stuff or the knowledge. And that's okay. That's not your your sphere of your domain that you own or or are knowledgeable, knowledgeable about, nor do you need to be. Um, and that's where I love to partner with churches to say, hey, put your worship leader in the academy and we'll train them for you. Now that doesn't negate, it's kind of like you know how the Bible says like the the parents are meant to disciple and raise the kids and don't just give them that doesn't mean that the see the senior pastor should just be hands-off. We've already talked about how you should be investing in them relationally, spiritually, in their life, practically, you know, developing them. But invest in them, send them to conferences, or um, you know, I mean, just selfishly, like put seriously, put them in the academy. It's it for it's $19 a month. Um, that's you know, if you pay annually. It's $19 a month. That's yeah, it's like I'm not trying to get rich, I'm just trying to help people, you know. So $19 a month, and there's 10 in-depth courses. We have uh we cover all the major topics: production, team building, musical excellence, increasing congregational engagement, participation, um, group communication. I mean, everything a worship leader needs to know, not just the musical side, but the leadership side, the discipleship side. We have done for them team devos to lead their team spiritually. We have done for them musician training resources so that I can train the musicians on the team for them. They just have to send the link. Like, we've done all the work, onboarding documents, uh, you know, audition process. It's all done. They just take the system and plop it into the ministry. It's 19 bucks a month. And so I just would encourage worship uh senior pastors, like, if if you don't, if you don't want to do it, I will do it for you. Um, and would love to just partner with your worship leader to to see a more robust and biblical and fruitful and impactful worship ministry. Because I don't know about you, Christian, but like when I go to a church and if I sense a very vibrant worship time, like people, not I'm not saying like Pentecostal or like you know, but just you can sense that like Christ is revered in that place and that the people are like it's all eyes on Jesus, that directly impacts the rest of the church. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the health of the church and also like new new visitors, new like people checking out the church, like when they go and they sense like wow, there's something special going on here, they're more likely to come back, you know, and and maybe make it their church home. So I think it's very important that we get worship ministry right in our churches. It's besides the preaching, it's like it's like 50% of the time is preaching, and 50% of the time is worship. It's like almost a 50-50 split, maybe 60-40, but it's so visible and so vital, and so really, you know, do what you need to do, senior pastor, to invest in your worship leader.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Also, I want to clarify in case someone just heard you say um academy and they're thinking, wait, am I supposed to be sending my worship pastor to this school for two semesters and they're gonna be gone for a year? So talk about the time commitment. What what when you say academy, what does that mean? What is the time commitment?
SPEAKER_00Sure. It's an fully online platform. It's got all of our courses, it's got live monthly trainings, we have expert interviews with you know some of the best worship leaders in the world, and the the academy students get to ask their questions. And it's completely in terms of time commitment, it's completely up to them. We have weekly like assignments that they can do in under an hour that will help them improve their ministry one week at a time. But we all they can go way deeper if they want to. Like if they just want to binge watch all the courses, they could probably get through all the courses in like a month or two. Um, but then they end up sticking around because we do live monthly trainings and we do live interviews and we do live coaching calls and live stream assessments and um, you know, set set assessments and all these things. So they so it it's most people stay for between four months to two years. I mean, we've only been around for two years, but we've had people staying the entire time. Yeah, so um, yeah, and then we have a 15 day, it's a 15-day trial, so you basically don't get charged for 15 days, so they could just check it out, and we have a 60-day money-back guarantee. So there's there's not really any reason not to put your worship leader in unless they're just stubborn, you know.
SPEAKER_02High reward, low risk. So um before we wrap up, one question that um I have a thought that I guess keeps running through my mind. I think about there's probably someone or someone's listening to this and they're thinking about maybe all the ways they've failed as a senior leader with their worship pastor, or they're thinking about their worship pastor, and maybe they don't know, they don't, they probably wouldn't say they failed, but they're just frustrated with their worship pastor, and they just felt like they're on that verge of just it's a lost cause. Why don't like I I still I feel like there's never a lost cause and there's always hope. So can you just speak some words of encouragement and just reassure that if someone is sitting in that position listening to this, that all is not lost.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and there are kind of two parts to your question, which is the word one, the senior pastor feels like they've failed. And then there's the other side, which is like my worship pastor is a hot mess and I it might be unscrated unsalvageable. Yes. And I want to talk about those separately because I do think I have two different answers for that. The first is regarding this the senior pastor beating themselves up, the best thing you can do is humble yourself and go to your worship. I tell worship leaders this all the time. When they realize, like, oh my gosh, I haven't actually led my team at all. Um, I say, then go own it and say, guys, I'm so sorry. I have not been leading you well. And I didn't realize it, but now I do. And I am so sorry and I want to do better. And here's what I'm gonna do gonna do to do better. And so that's what I would say to the senior pastors is like, just how much would that mean to hear your worship leader because they might be feeling frustrated, like, my senior pastor never makes time for me, my senior pastor never asks about my family, my senior pastor XYZ, and they're frustrated. But if you come to them humbly and say, hey, listen, you know, I heard this podcast and it really made me realize I'm I'm not doing the best job leading you, and I just want to apologize for that and own that, that would mean so much, first of all, for them to hear that from you. And you would set a great precedent for them to have that humble posture towards their, the people they lead, and then say, and here's what I want to do about it. I'd love to set up a Monday meeting with you, I'd love to be able to ask what's going on in your family life and pray with you, and and then just begin to make the changes. So that's how I would answer the senior pastors. Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, my worship leader is a hot mess. First of all, do everything you can to help them grow. But the thing is, not everybody's gonna want to grow. So but you can only do what you can do, which is I'm gonna invest in them, I'm gonna encourage them, I'm gonna speak, I'm gonna help them develop as a person and as a Christian and as a musician, and I'm gonna do what I can do, and I'm also gonna uh vision cast that higher calling for them and ask them to step into that. If they refuse, because some people don't want to, then they will make it clear to themselves that they no longer want to be there. It's kind of a natural like pressure cooker where you're like, hey, we're gonna make some changes. I want to grow, I want you to grow, this and that. And you're you're you're help you you're helping them grow. It's either grow or go, basically. Yeah, yeah. And you're not saying it like that, but they will be like, ugh, I don't like all this pressure that I'm all of a sudden getting from my senior pastor to like level up as a leader and to actually take my role seriously and actually lead my team and actually disciple people and actually think intelligently about the songs that we're singing. I don't like all this, I'm getting out of here. So they're either gonna lean in and grow or they're gonna lean out and go. And so I would say, lead well, Pastor, and lead. You know, there's a passage where Paul says, you know, strengthen the faint-hearted, I'm gonna mess it up, but strengthen the faint-hearted, uh, comfort the weak, and then something, something, and then be patient with them all. So be patient with them all, be patient with your worship, Pastor, but speak that truth into them and hold them to that higher standard and help them try to get there. And if they don't want to do it, they'll leave. And then you're then you're free to call Vanderblumen and be like, hey, help me find somebody.
SPEAKER_02We need a new one. Oh my gosh. That's funny. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. There is a reason that worship ministry training is a strategic partner of Vanderblumen's because what you have to offer is incredibly valuable to anyone in that worship creative space. So if you're listening and you're kind of on the fence, like, oh, maybe I need this, maybe I don't, just go check it out. It's if it can never hurt. And honestly, um, what Alex is doing to help train and equip worship pastors is furthering the kingdom and helping us to create healthy churches. So, Alex, thank you so much for having this conversation with us. I've so enjoyed it. And we will make sure we link to all of your resources in our show notes. So, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Kristen, and thanks everybody for giving me your time.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderblumen, we help organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, culture, compensation, and diversity solutions. Visit our website, Vanderbloomen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. Wherever podcasts,