David Zimmer: Hello and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.
Devon Kauflin: And my name is Devon Kauflin.
BK: And we’re so glad you’ve joined us for this episode of Sound Plus Doctrine.
DZ: Thank you for joining us. Thank you for diving in the waters more.
BK: That’s an assumption. Thank you for enjoying us. Oh, joining us or enjoying us?
DZ: Joining us.
BK: Oh. Okay. I thought you said, thank you for enjoying us. I thought, “Wow, that’s a statement of faith.” Okay, anyway, our conversation today is pretty serious, actually. It’s a continuation… We had a podcast on hard conversations with your pastor. This is hard conversations with your musicians. Not that I’ve ever had or any of us have ever had hard conversations with your musicians. Or maybe have been the object…
DZ: Recipient.
BK: A recipient of those hard conversations with musicians. David, I want you to share that story that you shared with us right before the podcast.
DZ: Oh, man. Well…
BK: This was not the way not to do it.
DZ: Yes. I was playing drums… Back in Los Angeles, I was playing drums at a church that a friend of mine was a part of, and he had me come in. And it wasn’t on a Sunday. It was a different service that they had. But I remember, as a typical drummer coming to a event, I didn’t listen to all the songs.
BK: I loved it.
DZ: I assumed I knew all the songs. Why would they…
BK: I love that you said typical drummer, and it wasn’t one of us.
DZ: I didn’t know that they were going to… There was a song in there I didn’t know. Or maybe I had heard it once. I thought I could just wing it and assume. So it was on me for not coming prepared, I should have. I should have listened to everything. But we got to this song in practice, and I didn’t know a lot of the musicians either. And we play the song, and I realized it has all these hits that I didn’t learn. And so I’m just like, “Oh, this is not going great.” But at least I’ll hold it. I can…pretend.
BK: And play it in time.
DZ: Yeah. And after we got done with the song, the guitar player turns around and just glares at me. I’m in like an encasement. I’m in like my cage. And the worship leader goes, “Well, let’s play it one more time. We’re getting used to it.” He was very gracious. We play it again. I’m picking up some of the hits, but not all of them. It’s clear I didn’t prepare. It was a teaching moment for me, which is good. But after we get done the second time, the guitar player turns around, walks up to the plexiglass, and hits, punches the plexiglass with his hand and says, “Learn the song before you get here.” And I was like…
DK: You felt two inches tall.
DZ: I was like, you’re right. I’m embarrassed. I’m learning from that. But also my initial thought was, I’m never coming back in. I’m never… Not because I was embarrassed, but because this is not a culture where… I feel like all the priorities are out of whack if this is the culture of how we are performing this song. And so while we were talking about this before this podcast was just like, there’s a whole culture attached to this conversation.
BK: Yeah. So before we even talk about… If you’re a leader, you need to have a hard conversation with your musicians about different areas that we talk about. There’s something that comes before that, and it is building a culture, at least these two things, of encouragement and evaluation. There’s a scripture that I think about often, Proverbs 16:20, “Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good.” The ESV, English Standard Version, has in the margin, “Whoever gives thought to a matter will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord.” In other words, as we’re thinking about a situation and a circumstance, a person, if we give thought to it, we’ll discover something good there, and we’re gonna be trusting in the Lord. And then Paul’s example in 1 Corinthians 1, where he’s writing to the Corinthians, who he’s about to just correct in numerous ways. He begins by saying, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. Then in every way, you were enriched in him, in all speech,” which he’s about to correct a few chapters later.
BK: “In all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you.” If Paul can say those kinds of things about the Corinthian church, then certainly we can have encouraging thoughts about the members of our team. And we should be expressing those thoughts as often as we’re able to. So on a Sunday morning rehearsal, if I see something, hear something good that someone’s done, I wanna be quick to say, “Oh, that was great. Oh, that was helpful. Oh, that was thoughtful. Oh, that was really good. That was better than last time.” I just wanna just create that culture where when I see people, I think this is what I appreciate. But then also a culture of evaluation where people are used to just receiving thoughts from other people. That’s not like taboo on our team. I wanna receive thoughts. I want other people to receive thoughts. And most of the time, we’ll just give them publicly.
DZ: Without screaming.
BK: Yeah, well, you know…
DK: Or punching the Plexiglas.
DZ: We don’t have a Plexiglas.
BK: Sure. Absolutely, that’s a standard we try to attain every time. You’ll give thoughts to the bass player. The bass player gives thoughts to the guitar player. They’ll just be different forms of helpful critique coming.
DK: How about you try this?
BK: Yes. Yeah.
DZ: It’s relational first, though, before it’s like, “Hey, play that part that’s more aligned with the recording.” It’s relational, always.
DK: Yes.
DZ: So this would help. “What are your thoughts on this?” But so often we are on time constraints when we get to our practice to learn the songs, and it’s just high stress. It’s like, let’s not pray, let’s just jump in, let’s learn the songs.
DK: We don’t need the Lord right now, we don’t have enough time.
BK: No. We’ll get to him.
DZ: Yeah, it’s just like, “Okay, let’s repeat the song again, let’s repeat the song again.” And so it’s just this, to what end? What are you trying to accomplish? And so that’s the culture of, what are we trying to accomplish?
DK: Yeah, so I miss that you mentioned encouragement and evaluation, as a leader I want to cultivate, and yes, those things, but also an environment where we’re never in a hurry. And so I’ll make a habit of showing up a little bit late, just to…
DZ: Yo, my word. We actually completely believed you, Dev.
DK: But not being in a hurry, and I’ve learned this from you, but it’s just, no, we always need the Lord, and when we have less time, we need the Lord, we need to acknowledge our need for the Lord even more right now. So let’s take time to pray. And because we’re not in a hurry, there’s also time for relationship. And so we can have conversations, and then we want to model as leaders and cultivate on our team, not just the evaluation where we’re giving other people feedback, but it really starts with where we’re at, inviting it and asking for it. And I love that, I’m really grateful to serve with a number of just humble musicians and who regularly ask, like, “Did you have any thoughts on what I played?” And if I’m not giving them feedback, they’re like, all the more insistent. Like, “No, like really. I really want your input and your feedback. Tell me what I could be doing differently.” And that’s just a wonderful environment to be in, but it takes time to get there. And we’re addressing circumstances in this episode, we’re talking about hard conversations where that environment is probably not typical. So it’s not an environment of encouragement, not one of humility, not one of inviting input.
BK: Yes. And it makes the hard conversations even harder.
DK: Absolutely.
DZ: Oh, my goodness.
BK: So we tend to resist them, tend to not have them, which just creates a foreboding, growing anxiety, and then it explodes in different places or it just never gets talked about. People leave. And so that’s… Our teams are meant to glorify Jesus, our music teams. And we hear… Well, you know how musicians can be. And our response should be, well, no… I know how musicians can be, but they don’t have to be. We’re believers in Jesus Christ. We have a new identity in Christ. We can actually resist sin. It doesn’t reign in our lives anymore. We can put on godliness. We can put on the fruit of the Spirit. And that’s something that… Such a joy when you meet a group of musicians where that’s the case, think 1 Peter 3:8, “Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” That’s what should characterize our teams.
DZ: Definitely.
BK: So that’s the culture we want to build. So let’s talk about the hard conversations. First, and these grow in increasing significance.
DK: These are categories of hard conversations.
BK: Categories of hard conversations. First, lack of skill. And this happens for different reasons. Maybe you inherited a team. Maybe it’s the pastor’s daughter, the pastor’s wife, or son or whatever. Maybe it’s, you didn’t notice it, and now you’re starting to notice, but there’s… The vocalist is pitchy, or they’re weak, or the guitarist doesn’t know as many chords as you thought they did, or the pianist just are overplaying everything, and they’ve been a part of the team for like 15 years, and there are drummers who don’t play in time or don’t play with any nuance, or an instrumentalist who can’t play the song without mistakes. You just realize there’s a person on your team, and you’re thinking, “They probably shouldn’t be on the team.” So what would you guys say? David, I want to ask you first, because Devon always talks, which is right, because he’s not on the podcast as much, but I’d just love to say, what would you say to a musician who just lacks skill? How would you approach that conversation? Would you go up and just punch him and say, “Learn the song next time?” That’s your experience.
DZ: The first thing that came to mind as you were talking was Piper’s quote on undistracted excellence. It’s like, the lens I want to think through is not, hey, you’re not as good as our… You don’t sound like the recording does. Or you’re not whatever it is. It’s like excellence for our church is that it’s not distracting or we’ve limited distractions. So in any conversation that we’ll probably talk about of things that are happening, we don’t want to distract the congregation. If it’s hard for them to sing, whether it’s someone who is explosive on their instrument, they don’t have any nuance or ability to control their dynamics, that’s distracting. If it’s a vocal… Or whatever the category is, and so we want to… As you have talked a lot about, we just want to ingrain in our team that they’re not the main thing. So if it’s distracting, well then…
BK: They’re the main thing.
DZ: Yes. It’s fighting against…
BK: They wanna be the main thing.
DZ: It’s fighting against the main thing. Yeah, that’s where I would start.
DK: It’s important whenever we’re in the realm of art and creativity, it can become very personal for people. That’s what actually makes these conversations hard, is because if you critique my voice, then you’re critiquing me. And you have no idea how many people have encouraged me for doing what I’m doing. I think that’s where people’s mind can go. There’s got to be an aspect of these conversations as a leader where we’re talking clearly about identity, and who we are in Christ, and that’s where our identity is, not in the things that we do. And when that gets mixed up, that’s when these conversations are really hard. So there’s that part of it. In the context of a local church, and this is one of the beautiful things about a local church… And this is something we’ve talked about before, you have time. We have time. We’re not…So I just mentioned a culture that’s not in a hurry, so we’re not in a hurry. So it’s not a, “I’ve noticed a pattern of you being pitchy. Fix it this week.” That’s not what we’re… It needs to stop now. It’s recognizing.
BK: Just use autotune.
DK: It’s recognizing that, no, we’re a body, and there’s more that’s happening as we gather together than just our performance. And some in this category of musical skill, I think that’s… We can tend to just hone in on better performance at the end of the day. And there’s a place for that, but there’s also edification. And so I’ve talked before about people that will be involved that are less skilled, but it’s intentional on my part as a leader, as a pastor, because it’s edifying the church for this person to be up there participating. Right now, we’re in a season where we’re training a couple of new pianists, and they’re young, and they’re learning, and it’s going to take time. But it’s also, I know when they’re up front, that’s communicating something to the church. It’s edifying, it’s building up the body, even though skill-wise, it’s not as good as our… Anywhere close to what our best pianist is doing. So I want to have those categories in these conversations, have that disposition of like, okay, I want to differentiate between, is this just a, yeah, this isn’t going to change situation?
BK: In which case, you might have to ask them to step off the team.
DK: To step down. Yeah, or is it a, no, this is really something I want to… We’ve got time to see this person develop and grow. And so it could be, “Hey, I love your heart to serve, and I think it really does bless the church. It’s wonderful to have you be a part.” Start with that encouragement. A vocalist, a musician, it could be, “Hey, could you consider taking, whatever, the next three months and having a couple of voice lessons, or doing this or doing that, and then let’s reevaluate and see where we’re at.” That could be a path. Or it could just be a, you know what, I see the deficiency here. I don’t even necessarily need to have a conversation, but I’m just going to encourage this person over the next several months, and just observe and see how they grow, and go from there.
BK: We have some vocalists on our team who, it’s not a lack of skill, I would say, it’s a different background, a choral traditional background. And so it doesn’t quite fit this category, but it is something where it makes it harder to blend. So I’ll just say things during rehearsal. I’ll say something like…
DK: Back off.
BK: No, I would say, thanks for… After we’ve sung a few songs, remember, watch that vibrato, or remember… Sometimes you can tend to sing lines longer than everybody else.
DZ: Hold out the notes.
BK: Hold out the notes. Thank you. What’s that phrase? But I just say it, and it’s not like a big heavy, “You’re holding out the notes again.” And recently, I was saying something to one of those vocalists, and she said, “Yeah, I’ve been really working on, not over-pronouncing my consonants.” And I was able to say to her, “You know what? I didn’t even notice that. You’ve done that. You’ve nailed that.” And just encouraged her. But it’s one of those things where, because we have a culture, that it’s okay to do that. And it’s not life and death. It’s not, you’re horrible. It’s no, just we can all grow, continue to grow. So that’s good. All right, lack of practice. I hear this a lot. Yeah, you have young musicians, you have experienced musicians who just aren’t… They’re not practicing. Whether you are doing it like the recording or just being familiar with the songs, they’re just not practicing. They come unprepared. And so, Devon, what would you say to someone like that?
DK: I think with both these categories, we’re talking about them in terms of hard conversations. They’re only hard if we make them hard.
DZ: That’s right.
DK: Most of the time.
BK: For a lot of people, they are hard.
DK: But they don’t need to be. And so I think of a conversation I’ve had consistently. But it’s not even a conversation. It’s just, I’m asked, “Hey, what could I do better?” Or, “Do you have any feedback for me?” And I say, “Do you know what? I think it would really help you if you played through the songs before and just be more familiar with them.” And it’s addressing the lack of practice. But it’s not making a big deal. Like, “Hey, I’m really concerned that you’re not taking this seriously.”
BK: “What do you do with your time all week?”
DK: “Do you even care about serving the Lord?” I’m not approaching it that way. It’s just, I know, full life, family, job. It’s like all these things going on. And it’s just like, “You know what? Yeah, if there was a way that you could improve, I think this is probably a great place to start.” And so that’s how I’ve had those conversations and encouraged guys in them. And then it would be, there might be times where I’m giving specific direction in what they might be practicing. So it’s one thing to just practice, but you could be practicing the wrong things, and it’d actually be detrimental to you. And so I try and give some specific direction. So maybe if it’s a percussionist or a drummer, it’s, “Hey, how about you play… ” Like maybe tempo is just off or it tends to drift. And so it’s like, “It’d be great if you just played with the recording at home. Just play through the songs, listen to what they’re doing. That’ll help you expand your repertoire of like what tools you have in your tool belt.”
DK: So those kinds of things. But these are not… I wouldn’t put these in the category of hard conversations because I just think of them as just, this is just what it looks like for us to grow. None of us are finished products. None of us are perfect musicians. None of us are masters of our craft. And so we just want to… Incrementally, I love Harold Best. He’s defined excellence before as just “being better than you were yesterday.” And that’s what we want to be pursuing. And so from the best musician in our church to the least experienced musician, let’s just have a disposition of, we want to be better than we were yesterday. And so what might we do to do that?
BK: And it’s good, I’ve found, to do that when you can with an element of humor. Like, what was that? We had a bass player who came into the church, was familiar with… All he played in was metal bands. And so the music we were playing wasn’t exactly that style.
DZ: He wasn’t exactly stoked.
BK: No, but wanted to grow. And so I just, “Hey, missed a lot less notes today than you did last week.” But he wanted to grow, knew, and this is important too, that our practice is not so much to perform as it is to serve the church. 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.” It’s to build up the church. So it’s not just my preference. It’s not just, these are my standards. And we want to serve the church. But we would laugh about it, and that just really helps too.
DZ: Well, so what makes the conversation hard is what’s your aim as a worship leader. So like exactly what you’re saying, if your aim is that everything is perfect and that no one embarrasses you or your preparation of your team and the music, I do think it boils down to what’s the perception of the worship leader. I think you’re able to joke because you have the humility to go, it’s not about me, it’s not even really about you, it’s about us collectively. But I talk to so many worship leaders that the aim is this will be excellent, this will be Instagrammable, this will be able to… You could capture this on a GoPro, you could put this on a record. And I’m not joking, it’s like that perception, that philosophy of ministry will produce all these hard conversations. When in reality they could just be like, “Hey, if you listen to this song one more time, I think you would have a better grasp of it. And let’s try it again.” It’s just a different… It’s like a different planet. It’s a different aim.
BK: Okay, another category, lack of physical engagement. I should mention we did a couple podcasts on this, three podcasts on this, physical engagement. So you just go listen to those. Moving on. No, I’ll say a little bit about it. Because this is something that I tend to be expressive and I tend to appreciate expressiveness because when people are looking at the musicians, if they’re in front, they might be on the side, but if they’re in the front, they have a chance to model Psalm 34:5, “Those who look to him are radiant, their faces shall never be ashamed.” We have the chance to model that. So when I’m trying to encourage musicians on the team, it’s never just about something external. It’s always about what are we understanding, what are we taking in of what we’re doing, which is why we always encourage instrumentalists to sing. This past Sunday, I was… Again, I was not leading, and the drummer did a great job, but he didn’t sing that much. So afterwards, I just told him, “You did such a great job, you’re joyful and everything, don’t forget to sing.” That’s all I said. “Don’t forget to sing.”
BK: That’s an element of physical engagement that doesn’t require a long conversation. It’s just a reminder, this is what would be helpful to do. So that’s just encouraging any growth that you see. And then encouraging people to focus on the lyrics, and then talk about the effects of physical engagement. I watch a lot of videos of churches for different reasons, their Sunday services, and it’s just fascinating how some churches, it’ll be everybody… You can tell, they’re being affected by what they’re singing, they know what they’re singing. Other churches, I’m just not sure. What are they thinking? What’s going through their mind? And maybe I just want to get all the notes right. But there is this effect that physical engagement has, that God intended it to have, that means these words matter, we understand what they mean, they matter, and we want you to see from our physical expression how glorious Jesus is. And what he’s done.
DZ: Yeah, well said. Yeah. It’s such an effect that it has on the congregation. When you’re seeing that, it feels like we’re all connected.
BK: Yes.
DZ: When you don’t see that, it feels like a divide.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: And it’s funny, it’s like, sometimes a choir would stand up, and we would feel so weird if a choir stood there and just with deadpan expressions sang the song back to us.
BK: Well, a lot of choirs do that. Which I don’t understand.
DZ: But my point is, sometimes choirs, they don’t get a pass, but musicians get a pass. Oh, well, they’re focusing on their music. They’re focusing on their instrument. It’s like, that’s such a great opportunity to not focus solely on your instrument and think outside of what you’re doing and how it connects with everybody else.
BK: I think a lot of choirs do get a pass, actually. I’ve seen some choirs recently where I thought, “They’re getting a pass.” They’re singing these amazing truths that have changed their lives. You could not tell. There’s nothing… Okay. Anyway, physical engagement. Devon, do you want to say anything about that?
DK: Nope, that was good.
BK: Okay. Sinful attitudes on the team. This is getting more serious. So by that, we’re talking about not off the platform, but on the team. So it could be disrespect, could be strong opinions, could be criticism during rehearsal, gossip. So, Dev, since you didn’t answer that one, what would you… How would you encourage a leader to addressed that on their team?
DK: It’s interesting, if perhaps you’re listening to this and you saw the title, and you’re like, you had somebody in mind right away. I need to have a hard conversation with this person. And one caution that I would give, and God does not call us to put together our documentation on why this person should be removed from the team. And you could be listening to it and thinking that. Some of the feedback we might give in these first categories of physical expressiveness, of lack of practice, of lack of skill, they could be a part of, oh, well, I want to offer enough critical feedback that now I feel justified in asking this person to not be on the team anymore. And that flies in the face of who we’re called to be as a church and what we’re called to do as a body. And we’re not… It’s just the environment of employer, employee, like that’s not what this is. We’re a body of sinners saved by grace, now saints in Jesus Christ. And this is what we get to do.
DK: We get to… Colossians 3, “put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.” And so it starts with us putting those things on. The person that has an awareness that, you know what, there’s this sin going on that’s clear. Somebody’s sinning against somebody else, someone’s sinning against me, but this needs to be my disposition. This needs to be where I start. And so we come and we ask questions with this compassionate, gentle, kind, meek, humble, grateful heart. So in this case, this category of sin on the team, it is. It starts with questions. There could be times where you need to… And in the moment, you need to redirect things. So it’s rehearsal, and it’s clear. The guitarist just came over and punched the drummer, and it’s like, you step in.
DK: You know what, this I… We’re not gonna go there, we’re not gonna do that this is why. And you reorient people to the gospel. You reorient people to who we are as sinners saved by grace, and we want to live in the good of that. You cultivate an environment, again, where we’re a family, we’re a body, we’re individually members of one another, and it’s wonderful and beautiful that we get to do this together. And so those are kind of… That is a longer-term thing that we want to be cultivating. But even in those moments, those are the categories we want to be going to.
BK: I have found over the years that when someone is proud, opinionated, that it brings out the pride in my heart, and I feel justified in shutting them down, or giving some response that lets everybody know, that was inappropriate, without saying, that was inappropriate. And I want to be quick to examine my own heart. I think that’s what you’re saying, if something brings a rise out of me, that rise is probably not due to the righteous judgment of God or discernment. It’s probably due to things I’ve felt, things I’ve seen, things I feel about myself, and I want to be quick, and I’ve done this in different occasions, to acknowledge my own sin. “When you did that, that thing,” talking to him later, “I reacted in a way that was sinful. It was my own pride. I didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t want to be challenged. Would you forgive me for that?” And that so often just opens the door for them to see more clearly, “Okay, yeah, you know what I did was not really helpful.”
DK: I think along those lines too oftentimes when there is tension on a team, they’ve learned it from somewhere. They’ve seen it somewhere. And so all the more reason just to evaluate our own hearts and invite input and feedback. Are there things that I’m missing or things that I’ve been doing or ways that I’ve been communicating that have cultivated pride and bitterness towards one another on our team?
BK: And to ask others, someone you trust, not gathering evidence, but just to ask someone, “When they said that, did that feel right to you?” And they might say, “Yeah.” And you go, “Okay, this is really about me, not about them.”
DK: Yeah, so with this category of sin on the team, there’s different… There’s a couple categories of that, where one could just be just one instance of somebody just seemed impatient in the way they responded or proud in what they commented or critical or whatever. And then, and you need to evaluate, all right, is that something I should ask them about later? Or is that something that I just should overlook? And it’s okay for that to be a category.
BK: Yes, it is.
DK: Then there’s the other, and this is more the hard conversation, where it’s, no, this is a consistent pattern. This is something I have asked about. I’ve talked to them. And where do we go from there? So what would you say to that? It’s a consistent pattern of sin. They’ve persisted in their sin in how they’re functioning on the team. How do you go about that conversation?
BK: Well, as we start with all of these conversations, you ask questions to make sure, what’s causing this? Where is this coming from? Am I seeing what I think I’m really seeing? And then have those conversations privately. Just say, “Hey… ” And it could be a brief conversation. It could be coffee. It’s not an email. I just want to keep driving home.
DK: Say that again.
BK: Just don’t send corrections.
DK: Or a text message.
BK: Or a text. Yeah, for sure. Don’t send correction by email or text or just some written form. Just talk to them. They can see your face. They can hear your heart.
DK: And we think that, oh, no, we need to write it out because it’s going to be more clear. Have at it. Write it out for yourself.
BK: Yes, exactly.
DK: And then go talk to them.
BK: Exactly.
DK: Because we want to be able to communicate our hearts and show our love and encouragement in those contexts. All the more important in times of correction.
DZ: Can I also just add one more thing? If you’re someone listening to this podcast and you’re so deathly afraid of hard conversations, sometimes the tendency can be that you don’t keep short accounts. So then it becomes a very long list. And then when you sit that young person down or that old person down or whoever it is, it’s now a list of 20 things I’ve observed.
DK: And then you did this. And six years ago you did this. And five years ago you did this. And then last week you did this.
DZ: And then they just feel completely overwhelmed and deflated. And so keeping short accounts with your people will so help you in this category. Have the hard conversation in private soon after, or overlook it, like you’re saying, but keep short accounts.
BK: “The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent overlooks an insult.” (Proverbs 12:16) Just helpful to remember. If I ge… And it’s possible to overlook what you perceive as an insult. And then the only thing I’d add is consider… Ask them to consider, if appropriate, I think it might really help the group if you just talked to them about it. And just that we wrap that up. If it was a significant challenge to the leadership. But a lot of these things are just things that bother us. They may be real issues for the person. But again, if you have someone on your team who is persistently disrespectful, persistently gossiping, persistently angry, that may be a reason…
DK: And it could be your best musician.
BK: Absolutely.
DK: It probably would be your best musician.
BK: It probably is.
DZ: They would be proud?
BK: Probably the drummer. It doesn’t glorify the Lord to allow that to continue, because it breaks down the unity of the whole team. It brings dishonor to the Lord. And so you really might have to say, “I’m going to have you pull off for a while.” And if you’re not the pastor, involve a pastor in those conversations. Absolutely, sure. Okay, last category. We’ve talked about sin factors on the team, character off the platform. We’ve talked some about this in some of the other podcasts, but it could be family life, could be anger, could be immorality, could be worldliness. Just you know… I’ve been shocked at some of the questions that I received over the years. Someone saying, “Yeah, I just found out my bass player is living with his girlfriend, they’re sleeping together.” And like, “I don’t know, how should I address that? Should I address it? How should I address it?” And I’m just thinking, this is not our band. This is the Church of Jesus Christ. And those who lead on a platform, those who are up front, whether it’s a platform or not, they’re examples. They’re models. They may not be elders, but they are models, they are examples.
BK: And it’s so instructive how Colossians 3:16 is followed by Colossians 3:17, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom with thankfulness in your hearts, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” You sing the gospel, you live the gospel. They’re meant to go together.
DZ: It’s not a gig.
BK: Oh, it’s not a gig. God expects gospel-rich singing to lead to gospel-rich living and to flow from it. So again, if you find out about something, you don’t rush to them. Don’t shoot off an email. You go to them and say, “I heard this.” Or maybe you do know it. Maybe you saw it. And you go to them. You ask as many questions as you can. But make it clear to him then that this behavior, and it may be just their lack of diligence as a parent. You have a 12, 13, 14-year-old that’s just living in outright rebellion to the Lord, and you’re not doing anything about it. It’s one thing to have a rebellious child, as I did in Devon, for a season and be going after it. I didn’t step out of ministry. I was willing to, and I told Devon that. “Look, if that’s what it requires, I’ll step out of ministry.” But I was going after it, just doing whatever we could to speak into that. But if the parent’s not involved, not caring, just kind of, whatever, that’s something to address, and if it’s a pattern especially. So that conversation can be had. And again, if you’re not the pastor, involving a pastor, where you say, “We want to honor the Lord, and we know you want to honor the Lord. And this area of your life, pornography, anger, just blatant pursuit of the world, it’s a dichotomy. It’s a contradiction to what we’re saying.” And you want to find out, are they aware of that? Are they repentant? Is it just, “Well, can’t I do both?” Each of those require a different response. If someone’s repentant, I’d still say, “Yeah, for your good, and for the good of the church, and for the glory of Jesus, it’d be good for you to take a step back, just to devote yourself to focusing on that, give time to it.” And then checking in with the person.
DZ: Totally, yes.
BK: Just not, okay, you’re gone. Yeah, see ya. But in three months, six months, just saying, “How you doing? How’s it going?” And just expressing that care. And sometimes they may say, “You know what? I was in the wrong place. The Lord used my sin to show me I was in that for the wrong reasons, and I don’t need to come back.” Or it may be that, “No, the Lord’s changed me in that, and I’d love to serve again.” And that’s always a happy ending.
DK: Well said.
DZ: That’s good. Yeah, thank you so much, Bob and Dev, for your thoughts.
BK: And yours too, Dev. What’s your name? David?
DZ: Yes.
BK: Yours too, David.
DZ: It’s confusing.
BK: It is.
DZ: And thank you for joining us on this podcast. I hope it encouraged you and gives you great faith for whatever hard conversations or, hopefully, easy conversations that you have in the future. So it’s great to be together.
BK: Amen.
