Wes Walters is Creative Arts and Pastor of Worship at Restoration Church in Buffalo, New York. Before joining the church in this capacity as it was being planted in 2008, he acquired quite a bit of musical and ministry experience working with churches and ministries in Alabama and Tennessee, as well as touring with a band (artist website). He met and married his wife, Leslie, at Auburn University, and then they moved to Nashville, TN, where they ministered at a church there.

As we get into asking about your call to ministry, how would you define someone’s “call to ministry”? Or what do you think of when you hear that term?

Yeah, it’s kind of a loaded question, or a loaded term, I guess. You know, everyone is called to ministry in a certain aspect, we’re just not all paid professionals. As far as an actual call to vocational ministry, or even bi-vocational ministry, some people say there’s a moment where you know and you knew, and you get all these specific things and a charge. For me there it just wasn’t that. I was in college and just meeting God and really getting into my faith. I was under some really great leadership, a great pastor, and he was just talking about the call to go and do and don’t ask questions. And so for me, as I was looking at my life and praying, I felt like God was saying, “I need you to go for me full-time, but I don’t have any specifics for you. So go!” So for me that was kind of my call to full-time ministry, and I didn’t really put any stipulations on that. I knew I was musically inclined – creatively inclined – and that I liked to speak, and other than that I didn’t have any clue. And it has changed over the last 12 years, it’s been a bunch of different things.

Have you worked at the same church for 12 years?

No, I was at Auburn University down in Alabama. That’s where I met God, that’s where I met the lady who would be my wife, and where I got my call to ministry. I was there for a little while in college and then I went to Nashville and served on staff in a couple of ministries there for a few years. Then I actually went on the road for awhile with one band and then came back after a few years and did another band for a couple of years. So I kind of wasn’t really doing specific vocational ministry for awhile, I was just figuring out who I was.

And then in the summer of ‘08 I got approached by a guy (from our church [now]) who was on staff at our church down there to come back to his hometown, because he was leaving Nashville to go to Buffalo to plant a church. He asked me and my wife to consider coming on. So we prayed and we’ve been here since October of ‘08.

So that was a church plant you were a part of?

It was a church plant. A plant from a bunch of different people who came together and helped out. Several major and different denominational commissioning boards and large churches around the USA as well as the IMB got involved. So every side, from all around, got together and said, “You know, we don’t agree on some things, but we do agree that there needs to be gospel preaching churches in Buffalo.” So they all got together and put efforts into it and got us up here.

Well, that’s awesome!

Yeh, it’s good.

You kind of described your call to ministry as being more of a process than an instant. Is that how you’d explain it?

Yeah. I definitely knew that I was supposed to do it, that year when I felt that call. But it’s really taken this long to define it well. I always knew it was my call to just go and say ‘yes’ and not put any stipulations on God. It’s actually easier that way, to not say, “Well I have this great idea and I wanna write this book and I wanna teach these people and do this thing…” Well, that’s great, but it doesn’t really work as easy that way. We found it much easier to go, “All right…[and agree with and follow God].”

So more of a surrendering?

Right. He [Christ] fills in the blanks. He’s always known every move that we’ve done, from Auburn to Murfreesboro, from Murfreesboro to Nashville, and then Nashville to here. We’ve not chosen any of those things. We would have never sat down and said, “Man, I’d really like to live 20 hours away from family and not be able to afford plane tickets. I’d really like to do that.” We never chose that. That’s just how it works, I think. For the best.

So I guess you would also say that a call to ministry is something that can kind of change over time? Because you said it kind of changed. Has it changed, for you, since 2008 to now?

Yeah, and I would say it never leaves, but it changes. It kind of morphs. And I think that has to do with maturity and also with the context in which you are serving. So, in ‘08 we just said ‘yes,’ and we had no children or anything and it had been at a great breaking point in Nashville and we were at a great place to just go. And we got here and the first six months were, as most church plants in moving that far from your family, really hard. But then getting to know the culture and the people, and what our specific vision was and how we were going to see everyone in western New York experience soul restoration. Once we kinda got our hands in the dirt and started meeting the people, then it did kinda shift. It was less about the actual tasks and it was more about the heart and it was more about figuring out how to facilitate soul restoration rather than just facilitate a new cool place to go worship.

It sounds like God gave you a heart and a call to that specific church as you got into it?

Yeah, it definitely had to develop for me. Because I was the only guy on the leadership team who wasn’t from here. Even though I met Dan, our vision pastor, in Nashville, he’s from here, and so for him it was coming back home, and it was this great, grand thing to come back home to his home town. And Alex, he’s our executive guy and details dude, he’s from here and loves Buffalo. For us [Leslie and I], we’re both from Alabama, and it was just a real adjustment. We had to pray for it, we had to pray, “God, we love your mission and we love what you want us to do. But we don’t love these people yet, we don’t love this city yet. Because we just don’t know it.” And so fortunately we were able to live downtown near all the art and music and all the craziness and all the students and really get submersed in what the city was about. And over time he developed in us this love for the people and a love for the church. And mainly it was just seeing people changed and be restored. Once we saw that start happen we were like, “Oh yeah, this is it. Love this.”

In general, in responding to a call to ministry of any type, what do you think is the wisest initial response?

I would say the first thing, my gut reaction, is to stop and pray. Then spend more time in prayer than even talking about it or getting details about it. For us, we spent prayer at each move, but this specific move was such a big deal. I was in a military family growing up, my family was all over the country, so for me a big move was not as big a deal. But my wife, she grew up in the same town for 18 years, went to college and came right back, and all her family lived within five miles. So she would be the first person to move more than three hours away, anywhere in her genealogy. So it was going to be a big thing that God was going to have to say to both of us, “Go!” So we stopped and we said, “Let’s at least pray and not shut it away.” And so I would definitely say stop and pray and pray and pray and pray.

And, definitely for me, a big deal was listening to my wife. She’s got this incredible gift of discernment and she can kinda tell some things when I want to just charge the gates. So it’s easier to stop and pray and then see what God is saying to her and what God is saying to me and then come together. So definitely stop and pray.

Now, you are a worship pastor? Is that your official title?

That’s one of the things I do. I’m actually the Creative Director and Pastor of Worship, so anything that goes into a creative aspect of the service or an event or anything that happens I’m in charge of. The music of course, and then I also speak as well – all five of us speak at different times. We have a plurality of elders here, instead of a lead pastor model, and so we all function according to our gift sets, but also we all preach. But I do, right now, also do the worship on Sunday mornings as part of my role.

What are some basics that you would suggest to someone who feels called to that type of ministry?

I would say to make sure – it’s funny, this is really fresh on my brain because earlier this year I was writing some articles for some magazines about this specific thing. It was to make sure that it’s not just this cross-centered thing or this God-worship thing or whatever, but that it is Christ-centered. And that doesn’t mean just his words or just his cross or just his resurrection, but all of it. So that means that when you sit down to plan anything, especially a gathering, that, from front to back and beginning to end, is this thing pointing people to the cross? Is it gospel-centered? In the prayers, in the announcements, in the worship music, in the sermon, in the communion – whatever it is. Are each of those elements pointing – is the gospel being said, is it being spoken out? Is there a direction towards the cross?

And actually I’m a songwriter as well, and that’s what I spend a lot of my time doing as well. And I’m still doing that with some people back in Nashville, so for me words are a big deal. I’ve even changed our vernacular when we sit down and talk about this. No longer just like a service order or program, this is a progression, like a gathering progression: we are trying to progress towards the cross. So when people leave they need to have been pointed to the cross, whether they like it or not, whether they agree with it or not is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to point them there. So if someone is going to sit down and do creative things – paintings, videos, music, skits, whatever they want to do – you just need to make sure that it is Christ-centered, or that it points towards Christ and that the motives are for that. Because he can take care of the ends and we can be the means, and that’s why he gave us the Holy Spirit. [There] definitely needs to be this Christ-centered focus.

Just last year, summer of 2010 is when it kinda came to a head for me. I was looking through books of worship tunes that we do and I’ve done in the past. And I just realized that so many of them were just kind of shallow, kind of vague or empty. And I just thought, “This may be engaging because they’re popular or easy to sing, but at some point that’s gotta shift and you’ve gotta challenge people to move and grow.” So I whittled the whole book down to about 40 songs. I said, “Each one of these songs you can sing and it’s not only lyrically rich, but it actually points towards Christ. It points Christ-ward.” Not that there aren’t lament songs and prayer songs and things like that. But that those songs end with pointing towards Christ in some way. So having that kind of focus on everything has allowed us to build a catalogue of about 80-100 songs that we could pick any single one and you don’t have to worry about it. That’s now transferring into other parts not only of the ministry but the gathering progression. So when a guy gets together and says, “I need to announce these things in the service.” How are we going to tie that to the Gospel and make sure people get it? This isn’t just a rogue thing. Or, “Hey we’re having this art auction deal…” or “We’re doing this thing for the boys and girls club…” How do we tie that to the gospel and make sure people understand it’s not just another program, but there’s a reason behind it. It definitely needs to be Christ-centered. And this is especially for the creative guys, because it’s such a killer if it’s not. Because you can see a very well put on and performed show, and you can have a speaker and have people give money, but I think that’s just a concert, it’s not really an actual worship service unless it’s pointed towards Christ.

Thank you so much! Is there anything else you would like to add?

If I had anything I could say I would just say you need to feel the weight of your position. It’s no joke this thing that we do. And yes it’s joyous and fun to be in the charge and lead people in worship and those things. Of course, that’s the joy that comes with it. But it’s not a toy to be played with and a chance for a spotlight deal. If anything, our whole reason for being in ministry and being here is to point a spotlight towards God. So that needs to be kind of a driving factor behind anybody, especially the creative guys because they can really kill a worship service if they point it towards themselves.

Yeah, I would really just challenge guys to do that because I’ve learned it the hard way.

Here is a simple concept, but one which is overlooked in many churches: that all those who are on stage, in front of the congregation, are worship leaders to some degree. This is especially true of your praise team. Your drummer is a worship leader. Your guitarist is a worship leader.

This is something which must be continually reinforced in their minds. Though you (as the Worship Leader) lead them as a team, as a team each of them lead the congregation. If they are not entering and worshipping then the congregation will find it difficult to do so as well.

Having this understanding in mind as you build your team is also essential. This is why the praise team is not a “missionary endeavor”, so to speak. How can someone who doesn’t know Christ help lead a congregation in his praise? And if the only reason someone is coming to church is to play their instrument or sing (or serve on the technical staff…), then they may not be at a spiritual place where they should be leading others in worship. Therefore the first qualifier of whether or not someone can be on the team should not be in their level of talent or skill but in their spiritual maturity.

Having a team of individuals who are focused on bringing God glory and encouraging/challenging others to do the same is essential for every body of believers. And that team can be made of one, two, three or forty people. But their focus is on worshipping and glorifying God – and helping others do the same!

What can be so hard about it? You just want to get the lyrics up on the screen, right? Just like an excellent mix off the sound board, the displaying of the lyrics on a screen during a worship service is almost unnoticeable when done correctly, but horrifyingly distracting when done poorly.

There are several different programs available, ranging from $400-500 programs like MediaShout and SongShow Plus, to freebies like Lyricue. I am going to go over the pros and cons of different systems in various posts to follow (at random points in the future), but for right now, I just want to give a few thoughts or general guidelines in understanding good lyric display technique and how to maybe achieve it regularly.

Leading Worship

The way you display lyrics directly affects how the congregation visually understands the lyrics in a song and can even affect how they sing them. If your slides are divided up so that singing breaks occur when the slides change the congregation will feel much more comfortable about singing out – they won’t have to “remember” lyrics which are on the next slide before it is displayed.

Also, notating on a slide when you have a bridge or repeated phrase exactly how often that slide will be repeated is another way for you to lead your congregation clearly. The less questions they have about what is going on, the more confidently they can worship.

That said, the person who is managing your slides should be as familiar with the songs being sung as any person on the praise team (that’s why I many times draft musicians and singers on their “week off” to help with managing the slides). If possible, it would be excellent practice for the person doing the slides to be at the practice the week of the Sunday they are doing the slides, as well as being there with the praise team the morning of to walk through the songs with the band to make any final adjustments needed.

Is that too much to ask of a volunteer? I don’t think so. Someone who is unfamiliar with the songs is much more likely to mess up or get lost and prove that much more a distraction to the congregation.

Spelling

Spelling mistakes are distracting, and sometimes can severely confuse the understanding of a song, if not render it theologically incorrect.

This can’t be stressed enough. A program such as MediaShout or SongShow Plus, which can store a songs lyrics for later use, is helpful in this area because any spelling mistakes caught one week are kept for all later uses of the song. One church I have visited a few times used PowerPoint (please…please…just…don’t) and the secretary was writing up the slides brand new each week. Not only were there several horrendous (and sometimes embarrasing) mis-spellings every week, but it was almost a game to see what was going to happen the next week.

Mis-spellings are inevitable. I think it’s a great practice to at least double check any slide program the day of. That way, whether it was myself or another who set it up, I am approaching it freshly and also have specifically what is happening in that service in mind as I go through the slideshow (also another strong argument for having the lyric display volunteer there for the band practice, that run through gives at least 8-10 people a chance to catch any and all mistakes).

Backgrounds

Moving backgrounds, static picture backgrounds, solid color backgrounds – bright or dark colors? So many options, so many chances for things to get out of hand.

Moving backgrounds – these can be distracting, if there is too much movement going on.  And you have to be careful, because the backgrounds which simulate flying or moving through tunnels can make some people sick (or at least throw off their equilibrium). I would suggest that no more than maybe a ‘rain’ type background, or snow – if you feel the need  for movement. The key is that a primary portion of the background, the part you are seeing the most, shouldn’t be moving. You don’t want people to think about how cool the background is – you want them thinking about the words they are singing.

Picture backgrounds – Here too, you do not want people to focus on the picture. And you must make sure that the words are legible apart from the background. Always check how visible the words are on the screen you will be displaying them on – this is absolutely crucial, no matter what your background is. Many times what is clear on a computer screen is washed out by the lighting situation on stage or just an older bulb in the projector. Many times, too, I have taken an awesome picture and just used a simple photo editing program to slightly ‘blur’ it so that while an image is there, the words are the primary graphic on the screen.

Solid Color Backgrounds – These are the most surefire way to make sure that it is the lyrics that people are seeing. You always want to contrast a bright color with a dark color in your text and background color choices. Thusly, Black background with white text is excellent. A yellow background with white text is a big “no, no”. Why? Some people have problems with different colors or are just colorblind. By making sure you use very contrasting colors you ensure that the lyrics will always stand out from the background.

In the end, the best choice is to just try it out where it is going to be displayed. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Is the background drawing my eyes away from the lyrics?
• Are the lyrics clearly visible against the background?

I personally lean towards either static pictures or a color for a background. It is much simpler and doesn’t require a more advanced program or put a drain on the computers resources as much as a moving one would.

Punctuation

This is always a tricky question. Mainly because lyrics to songs are a form of poetry, and punctuation can change the meaning of a poem. I generally look at the the song as a whole and, if I can get away with it, use no punctuation.

But, many times this is not the case. If a line is a question, it must have a question mark at the end. And commas cannot be dropped unless they are at the end of a line. So sometimes I will only punctuate using commas where necessary in the middle of lines, but avoid ending punctuation (like periods and exclamation points).

In the end, managing the punctuation in the slides is an artform, and practice doesn’t quite make perfect, but it definitely makes you get better at it. The general idea is that you want punctuation which helps the congregation read, understand, and sing the songs.

In my last post I wrote a little on what I thought about the different titles for the “music guy” at a church. I concluded with a statement referencing the fact that I thought “Pastor” was an appropriate title for the primary worship leader – the Worship and Arts Pastor.

Why, you ask? Simply put, if the individual you have leading the worship in your church is not of sufficient spiritual, moral, and emotional maturity to participate in pastoral level leadership in the church, then he really shouldn’t be leading worship.

That’s a bit extreme, you say. Not really. In fact, I would argue that the Worship Leader has almost the same level of impact upon the doctrine and theology of the congregation as the Senior Pastor (or preaching pastor, as is the case in some churches). The songs he leads them in shapes their theology, the statements he makes about scripture and even the scriptures he chooses also shape and inform their understanding of the Bible and God.

Therefore, the Worship Leader needs to be one who is sound in his doctrine and theology, as well as having a pastoral perspective and practice in his leading of the congregation. Many times, also, he will pastorally minister to those serving directly under him.

This is why it is imperative, in my mind, to never hire or ask someone to lead just because they are talented musically. The need for spiritual maturity grossly outweighs the need for musical talent. It is much better to have a musician of questionable skill but whose doctrine and theology you trust implicitly, than to have a musician of unparalleled skill but who has such slippery theology you’re not quite sure where he comes up with some of his more esoteric declarations. No, the former is much better for the spiritual health of the congregation.

And I think this is where many churches fail their congregation. They only want to hire a musician to lead songs (or a choir, or play the piano), but they do not realize how much they need an individual who will not only choose good songs, but pastorally shepherd the congregation into understanding the theology behind them. They need someone not so much who can sound good on stage, but who can develop the music portion of the service in such a way that it gets people thinking about God and opening their hearts for what the Pastor is going to preach.

Is that asking too much? I think not. In fact, I fear that many times a church decides to hire a Worship Pastor (or just a part-time Worship Leader) to “fix the music” because that must be what is wrong with the church. While there may be a musical issue, my personal opinion is that there is a deeper heart issue going on that needs to be addressed first. But, alas, that issue itself could fill up many pages. I will come back to that later.

next time: Understanding the difference between a worship leader and a Worship and Arts Pastor.