Whatsoever Things Are True | Philippians 4:8

What They Say in the Parking Lot | What the Team Cannot See E6

Somebody on your team complains about you to everyone except you. You already know who. James already knows why. It is week two of this season, and we are moving from the wounds you can name out loud to the wounds nobody says out loud, and this is the first one. The text from the band member that copies one other person. The conversation in the parking lot that ends when you walk over. The story you finally hear two months later from somebody who thought you knew. By the time it gets back to you, it does not feel like information. It feels like a knife you cannot tell whether to thank or pull out. James 4:1 starts a layer underneath the gossip. Wars and fightings come from your pleasures that war in your members. That word for pleasures is hedonon. It is the root of our word hedonism. James is not talking about a craving for chocolate cake. He is talking about desires battling each other inside one person. The person wanted the song picked. The person wanted the solo. The person wanted the schedule changed. The person wanted to be consulted. The person wanted somebody to notice they were carrying more than their share. The desire did not get a vote in the room where the decision was made. So the desire went to find a vote somewhere else. And the parking lot is where desires go to vote. Most of the time the person talking about you is not malicious. They are wounded. They are also, somewhere underneath the wound, ambitious. Hurt and want sit close together in the human chest. When the want does not get heard inside the team, it stops asking to be heard and starts campaigning to be heard. You know this is true because you have done it. I have done it. The conversation you had with your spouse about your senior pastor. The drive home where you ran the script of what you should have said. The text to the friend in another ministry that ended in a sigh emoji. Three moves when you are the one being talked about. First, remember you cannot stop it. You can be the most generous, the most accessible, the most pastoral leader your team has ever had, and somebody will still talk about you in the parking lot. Jesus had this. Paul had this. You will have this. Second, refuse to run your own parking-lot campaign about them. They talked. You talk. You tell your version to two trusted people, and now there is a small fire on the other side of the building too. James calls that war. Triangulated speech is how churches catch fire from the inside. Third, carry it to the face, not to the lobby. If something is bad enough that you would say it in the parking lot, it is worth saying in the kitchen at home with the person. Not as an attack. As a question. James 4:2 finishes the thought. You do not have, because you do not ask. The cure for the parking-lot conversation is asking. Hard, slow, in person. And one more thing. Sometimes you are the one talking. The way back is not to scrub it from the record. The way back is to go to the person you talked about, before they hear it secondhand, and tell them yourself. That is also asking. That is also peace. A question to sit with today: what conversation am I having about someone that I have not had with them. Read the written version and get extra notes at ryanloche.substack.com. Mentioned in this episode: If you've enjoyed this devotional, would you please leave a rating and a review? You can keep up with everything at ryanloche.substack.com

The Hymns Fight Is Not About Hymns | What the Team Cannot See E5

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Heavily Involved, Last to Know | What the Team Cannot See E4

Nobody calls the booth a worship leader. Somebody at your church runs the stream, mixes the vocals, fires the lyrics, frames the shot. They arrive before the band and leave after the band. And they find out what the church decided from the bulletin, like a visitor. A tech wrote to me once, and I am giving you the shape of it rather than the exact words, that the hardest part of the role was not the hours or the gear. It was being heavily involved in everything and still outside the circle. The paid staff knows things on Tuesday. The booth finds out Sunday at seven a.m., when the service flow has already changed, the new song has no chart in the system, and the bridge repeats an extra time that nobody mentioned to the person running lyrics. And here is the other thing the same people tell me. They love the booth. One of them put it this way, and I have never forgotten it: I get to see the Spirit move through the whole church, from the booth. The booth has the only seat in the building that sees the entire room at once. The stage sees faces in the dark. The congregation sees the stage. The booth sees everything. The booth holds the widest view of worship in the building and the narrowest channel of information about it. That is the wound. Now look at what Paul does with it. When Paul describes the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12, he goes out of his way to talk about the parts that seem weaker. His word there is not a soft word. He says they are necessary, anankaia. Not appreciated. Not valued. Necessary. And God composed the body this way, on purpose, so that there would be no division, so that the members would have the same care for one another. A body does not just share honor. A body shares information. When your eye sees the curb, it tells your feet. Instantly. A body that does not pass information to its hands starts dropping things. And no one says the hands failed. The body failed. If you lead a team, this episode has a practical edge that costs you almost nothing. Whatever you know about Sunday, the booth knows it when the band knows it. The setlist change, the added element, the moment you might extend. Communication is how a team confesses what it believes about its members. And if you are the one in the booth, hear this from 1 Corinthians 12 before you hear anything from your church. The seat that sees the whole room was not an accident. God composed the body, and he put you where everything converges. The console is an instrument. The lyrics are an instrument. You are not adjacent to the worship. You are necessary to it. That has been true since before anyone remembered to tell you. A question to sit with today: who on my team finds out last, and what does that tell them about what we believe they are. Read the written version and get extra notes at ryanloche.substack.com. Mentioned in this episode: If you've enjoyed this devotional, would you please leave a rating and a review? You can keep up with everything at ryanloche.substack.com

Nobody Paid to Come See You | What the Team Cannot See E3

You are not a rock star at church. Nobody paid to come see you. And the most gifted person on your team is the one who most needs to hear that. Sometimes that person plays in your band. Sometimes that person mixes your front of house like it is their personal showcase. And sometimes, this is the episode where I have to say it, that person is you. Our church used to host a volleyball league. Serious players. Referees. And every summer at the church retreat, somebody would say, let's play. Everybody in. Nobody worrying about the rules. It turned into a family thing. And then one of the league players would spike the ball into a sixty-five-year-old grandmother's face, and when we said, whoa, what are you doing, the answer was, I'm not dumbing down this game. That sand pit is exactly what happens on worship teams. The moment your skill stops serving the room and starts performing at it, you have switched games. The room came to sing together in the sand. You are spiking at grandma. Peter's instruction in 1 Peter 5:5 is stranger and better than be humble. He says clothe yourselves with humility. The Greek word is egkomboomai, to tie something on, the way a servant tied on an apron before kneeling to work. Peter watched Jesus do exactly that with a towel, the night he washed feet. So this is not humility as a feeling. It is a garment you put on, on purpose, before you pick up the instrument. You tie it on at the console. You tie it on at the center mic. And notice who Peter says it is for. Subject yourselves to one another. The gifted to the ungifted. The seasoned to the new. The platform to the booth. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Resists is a military word. It means God sets himself in array against. So the most dangerous place a gifted musician can stand is at the top of their own game, opposed by the God they are singing about. The grace flows somewhere else. It flows downhill, to the player who simplified the part so the new bassist could lock in. To the vocalist who came off the melody so the room could carry it. A question to sit with today: is my skill making it easier for the room to sing, or harder. Read the written version and get extra notes at ryanloche.substack.com. Mentioned in this episode: If you've enjoyed this devotional, would you please leave a rating and a review? You can keep up with everything at ryanloche.substack.com

Exceedingly Above What You Asked For | Before the Doors Open

You have been praying for a small thing this week. You have been praying for the volunteer to show up. You have been praying for the in-ear mix to behave. You have been praying for the senior pastor to text back. You have been praying for the bass player who has been out sick to be ready. You have been praying for one specific person you know is going to be in the room today, to actually hear something. Small prayers. Honest prayers. The prayers of someone who has been doing this long enough to stop praying for the world to change and started praying for the next thing in front of you to work. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be the glory in the assembly and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Paul is not saying your prayers were too small. He is saying the God you are praying to is not bounded by the size of what you asked for. The volunteer might not show up. But the man who walked in tired and uncertain might encounter the Lord he has not heard from in months. The in-ear mix might still be hot. But the bridge of the second song might land for someone whose grief you do not know about. The pastor might not text back this week. But the day might be richer than you would have known to ask for. The benediction is doing your imagination a favor. May the one who is able do exceedingly abundantly above what you have been asking for this week. May he expand your small prayer into something you did not have the imagination to pray for. May the power that works in you, quietly, all week, be the power that meets the room today. And may the glory of it not need to be yours. Go. The room is waiting. But more importantly, Jesus is already in it. I will see you tomorrow. Mentioned in this episode: If you've enjoyed this devotional, would you please leave a rating and a review? You can keep up with everything at ryanloche.substack.com