Joshua Swanson: Welcome to The Walk; a devotionals podcast led by worship leaders. In this episode, Dustin Smith, who’s a talented, songwriter, musician worship leader, and pastor gives an inspired devotional that starts with him being asked to learn how to play the piano overnight. Here we go.
Dustin Smith: I actually went to college for music and, uh, went, had to be a vocal major, and when I was there, I all the way to my junior year, I, you know, was sure I was gonna be a music teacher, so just went for vocal, did music, and then I got put into a piano proficiency class and did not wanna play the piano. All I wanted to do was, I just wanted to sing, you know, and they tried to get me to do classical stuff and I was like, I, I really don’t enjoy this. And then they told me basically like I had to pass this piano proficiency. So I took one basic piano class and did not, did not enjoy it at all. And so I actually, this is embarrassing a little bit, but I dropped my major my junior year and switched to a BA in music just so I didn’t have to play the piano.
And so this is the crazy thing, years later, I’m leading worship, and I, you know, I just led vocally and I didn’t lead from an instrument or anything like that. And we had moved to Kansas City. I actually then became a youth pastor. I didn’t think I would ever lead worship again. Didn’t, there’s a whole other story behind that, but I was just doing youth pastoring, and really loving it. Really loving it. It was probably felt like it was probably a future thing for me. I’d be that 80-year-old trying to still hold on to youth pastoring and uh, like I’m sure some of you, okay, probably none of you think that, but, and so I, uh, I was standing in the room and the guy who was our worship pastor was one of my closest friends and he came up and said, “hey, pastor asked if after service you could jump on the piano and just try out the piano and we got a piece of equipment trying to try out. And I said, I don’t play the piano. I could play a C, F, and G chord cuz I took a basic classic at college. And he’s like, ah, that’s all we need. That’s all we need. So, I jump up on the piano with the band and it was, I played a C chord, an F chord, and a G chord. That’s all we played, you know?
And I could see them talking in the back and afterward he comes up, the worship pastor did and he said, “hey, um, I don’t know what’s going on with Pastor wants you to play in service uh, tomorrow night.” I was like, I’m not playing in service tomorrow night, are you crazy. And he is like, no, I’m not joking. It’s not, it’s actually not optional.
He’s not giving you the option. Can you play it or not? You have to play. And I was like, Are you doing everything in C? And he’s like, No, I’m not doing everything in C. And I was like, I don’t know how to play anything else. And he is like, Well, you probably need to go probably practice. So that night, like I went home, I took a keyboard, I went to my basement and I fretted all night.
Like I went through these songs and it was, it was so horrible. And my left hand was it, it’s incapacitated. It can’t do anything except for hit one note and I don’t know what to do with the rest of my fingers. I’m basically only know how to play the key of C.
I end up getting into the service and I play and it’s, it’s horrible. It was really rough. It was really bad. I wish I could tell you like the miracle of God touched my fingers cuz the pastor said so, that would’ve, actually, would’ve been a great story, but that’s not the story. Afterward, my pastor, I go to the back and we, we actually did three services. We would do Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday.
So that was a Friday night. So, my pastor said, “hey, um, you know, I know you’re a little flustered up there, but I want you to do it again tomorrow, and I want you to lead a song with it.” And I was like, I can’t even chew gum and walk at the same time. Like, this is horrible. What is happening here? And I thought this is a joke, you know?
So, I went home, I practiced actually in the key of C, a song that I could sing cuz I could actually play three chords, which is, which for most of you worship leaders know that’s all you really need. But, um, so I did Shout To The Lord in the key of C, which is way too high for a guy, but I just screamed it.
When we got done, I was so embarrassed and I went back to my pastor and, and I said, “what, what is happening?” And I thought he’s gonna be mad at me cuz I didn’t do great. And he, it was so funny cuz he looked at me and he goes, “Dustin, I don’t know why, but I feel like you’re supposed to start playing in every service.”
Well, we had a really good piano player that they took off of piano to put me on. And you’re thinking like, “what is happening?” And, and I told him, I just straight up looked at him and I said, “I can’t.” And he said, “good.” And I thought, what a weird answer to, I can’t. What is happening? And so I went home incredibly frustrated and you know, I thought through and I know what he’s doing.
He’s basically saying, good, cuz now you, now, oh, you can’t do it, God will do it. But you know what’s the funny thing? God didn’t do it. Uh, I had to sit at a piano and I had to practice. I had to sit at a piano every single night. My wife would tell you, I would go down to the basement, uh, the, give them a kiss, goodnight, put ’em in bed. Sometimes even lay in bed with my wife till she fell asleep. And then I’d get up, I’d go downstairs to the piano, and I would just sit there and I would open up the Psalms and I would just start singing the Psalms so I could try to do two things at one time. I’d try to play and read. I’d try to play and read, and then I would try to reword the Psalms so I didn’t have to stare at it.
I would reword it and I would start singing the Psalms in a different way, and I was so frustrated. One night I remember hitting the piano and I thought, “God, why do you want me to play the piano so bad?” And I remember hearing God speak back to me and he said, “I’m not trying to teach you how to play the piano. I’m trying to teach you how to worship.”
“You thought this was based on your perfection. You thought this was based on how good you can sing and I actually need your innocence again. I actually need this to be pure again.” And I feel like there, you know, for me, in that moment, God just started to settle in and start to reconfigure my heart in my life.
Joshua Swanson: In the second half of this episode, Dustin challenges us to push into those places where we are totally reliant on God. But first, I had the privilege of interviewing Aaron Stewart, one of the co-founders, and the Chief Product Officer of Planning Center, about how Planning Center can not only be used by worship leaders to organize the Sunday service, but it can also empower staff and volunteers in every area of the running of a church.
Aaron Stewart: We started planning center to solve a need in our own church, and we wanted to keep focused on solving things we cared about and that we felt like we had solutions for and at the beginning it was worship teams. As time went on, we saw a lot more areas in the church that could use our help that we gained new passions for, and so we developed products to help people give, to connect the small groups, to register for events to maintain their entire church calendar. And now we’re an entire church management system that can make sure that all of that administration from your church happens in one central place.
Joshua Swanson: Since so many of us use Planning Center to plan out our worship services, I asked Aaron, what are some of the other features that our audience should know about?
Aaron Stewart: our people membership database is especially helpful to make sure that none of the people fall through the cracks and there are lots of features to make sure that you know what’s happening in your church so that you can prevent that and reach out to people.
The second part is our group’s product, which keeps anybody in small groups or other types of groups, not only connected with each other by being able to have like a chat app on their phone, but also to make sure that they’re connected with the church as well.
Joshua Swanson: And then finally, I asked them about some of the great stories of people using Planning Center and, and being blessed by it.
Aaron Stewart: The types of stories that I especially love hearing are from people who are bi-vocational. They have a different job and are trying to help out their church in whatever ways they can, and being able to use software that they can get on their phone or from their work or from, um, from home that helps them organize the church and helps make sure that they’re following up on the people that they care about at church, um, is one of the things that I love that Planning Center empowers anybody to be able to do.
Joshua Swanson: We’ll put the link in the show notes, but of course you can head over to www.planningcenter.com to check out more. And thanks again, Aaron, for your time. Okay, back to Dustin.
Dustin Smith: The interesting thing though is like from that, that moment of my own insecurities, in my own stuff, I started just, um, getting unlocked and from that moment I just started singing and I would just record what I sang and write, wrote down. Nobody taught me how to write a song, I had never sat in a class or anything like that.
But I started to hear my pastor’s sermons and realize like, I wonder if I can write that into a song. So, at night I wouldn’t just play the piano. I stopped even thinking about the piano. I just started singing at night and singing to the Lord and just worshiping and not even thinking about how good am I at the piano and how good am I at singing, or how it was something that got unlocked for me.
You know, I’ve had people actually ask me like, “would you pray that God would remove this insecurity from my life?” And I look at ’em and I say, no, I won’t. You know why, uh, I felt, God tell me, “I’ll never remove your insecurities. I’m only gonna remove your excuses.” The reason he doesn’t remove insecurities is because as soon as you’re secure, you don’t need him anymore. You’re solid in it. You don’t even need to ask his opinion anymore. And I think it’s important for us in these seasons of where it feels like I don’t know what to do. I’m, I’m exhausted. I feel like I don’t know what to do. Well, a lot of that is based on what you see happening around you. So, we feel like we gotta live up to certain things.
I felt like I had to be the best piano player in the world because now I gotta, I gotta live up to whatever is up on the stage. And God is saying like, “no, I want to create something in you. I want to do something in you. I don’t want this to be about how good you can perform. You know, I don’t want this to be about how good of a piano player you are.”
And the powerful thing is, I’ve, I’ve traveled the world now. I’ve written songs, you know, with people like I never could have imagined being in the room with writing songs, with, uh, I’ve played the piano, you know, around the world and, and still not that great. That’s the power of it though, is that I, I’m not, I don’t have to be that great and, and I don’t have to feel secure in it. I don’t have to feel like, you know, man, Dustin is so good of a piano player. It’s like, no, it’s actually not based on that. I very, very few people come up to me and compliment me on my piano playing, but they compliment me on my passion. They compliment me on, on my pursuit of God. They, they compliment me on my family, loving God.
And you know what causes them to wanna write songs? My kids, my kids are writing songs now. My kids are playing the piano better than me, which is really embarrassing. But, and, and, but what they’re doing is they’re jumping in and they’re saying like, man, if he could do it, why can’t I? It isn’t that the power of it, you know? Revelation says this, says “the testimony of Jesus is a spirit of prophecy.” And what if instead of just trying to build our own testimony, we try to build a testimony of Jesus, we try to tell the testimony of Jesus. You know that the testimony of Jesus in your life is someone else’s future? That means like whatever Jesus has done in your life, someone else can look at it and go, man, if, if Jesus did it for them, maybe he’ll do it for me.
And I think that’s the powerful thing about this journey with God is like we’re all trying to become stronger, so we don’t need a parent. We’re trying to become more grown up so we don’t need another authority in our lives where we can be the authority and God keeps leading down. “hey, do you want my opinion anymore? Do you like it anymore?”
You know, my father-in-law told me when we first moved to Nashville, there’s so much happening in Nashville and so, you know, obviously so many great musicians and so many powerful songwriters and all this stuff. And, uh, my team was asking me once we moved here, like, “what’s the plan? Like, what are we doing?” You know? And I didn’t know, and I kind of felt like I’m back at the piano again. Like insecure, not sure what’s gonna happen. But at that point, I wasn’t afraid of it, cuz I just learned to push into God to just ask God. And I asked my father-in-law that first Sunday morning that we were all together in my house, I said, “hey, would you just, would you sit down and lead us in a word and just talk to us?” And my father-in-law, a great theologian, he, he goes away for five minutes, you know, and comes back, “he’s like, I think I got something.” It’s like, Okay. So, we all sit down and he says, “you know, all of us have been asking Dustin what the plan is. What’s the plan? What’s the plan for our future? What’s the plan? What are we supposed to do?” And he said, “I was reading Jeremiah, and Jeremiah says this, he says, I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans for a hope and a future. I have a hope and a future for you.”
And he is like, “but I was reading it and I realized the word plans is not a great translation for us because plans for us is like, I need it written down. I kind of, God, I need you to show me so I know what to do. And he says, the better word for that instead of plans is counsel.” So, he said, “I know the counsel that I have for you says the Lord, counsel, listen, counsel that will not harm you. Counsel to prosper you, to bless you, to give you open future.” He said, “the difference between plans is this; plans is something we write down that we feel like we can rely on, but we can’t rely on it. So, we can do it. Counsel is gonna require you to get your ear to his mouth every morning. So, when I wake up in the morning, I don’t have to have all the plans and all the future and all the stuff. I know. what he has for me is good. So, I’m gonna wake up and I’m gonna say, Holy Spirit, what this morning? What do you wanna do this morning? What are we gonna do? Like, what’s the journey today? What’s the adventure today?
And it’s always an adventure with God. You know, it’s always an adventure to put yourself in a position where I can’t facilitate this without him. You have to ask yourself, am I only stepping into things that I know I can accomplish, even if he doesn’t show up? And I don’t ever wanna be that person. I wanna be a person who starts pushing myself into the positions of where, if God doesn’t show up, I’m in big trouble.
Right? That’s why it’s powerful to be able to stand as a worship leader and sing healing over people because I’m not a healer. But if God doesn’t show up, I’m in trouble. I need God to show up. I want God to show up. I desire God to show up. I want to take a risk of faith. I wanna step out. I wanna speak encouragement into somebody’s life.
I wanna, I want to do that thing, you know? I want to play the guitar. I want to play the piano. I want to, I. wanna write a song and what’s holding you back? What’s causing you to not be able to just sing out in your car and write a song in your car? Cuz you’re afraid of what somebody else is gonna think?
Listen, nobody’s even in your car with you. Just release it. Like release it for God singing it. If he’s the only one who ever hears it, release it. And I know the counsel he has for you is good. It’s not to harm you, it’s to give you a hope. It’s to give you a future.
Don’t let the insecurities hold you back. You know, if I would’ve just said, I can’t do it, I’m not gonna be a piano player, then all of these opportunities in Nashville, you know, all these opportunities for me to have a church, Hope UC, and all this stuff, none of that is possible in the way that it happened because I’m not in position and some of you aren’t in position for the next thing because you’re afraid of the now thing, and I just release that from your life right now. I release you from the fear of stepping into the now thing. There’s giftings in your life. There’s burnings in your life, and there’s things where just like a Gideon, you’re kind of hiding off in a corner and God calls you a warrior and you’re like, but I, I don’t even know how to fight.
And he is like, “yeah, but I’m gonna wrap an army around you, but I can’t do it in a cave. It just gets crowded and it gets messy, right? An army is to step out and fight. So, if you’ll get out of that cave, I’m gonna wrap an army around you. But if you hide in the cave, I can’t.”
Step out beyond yourself. Don’t be afraid to do that thing that you’ve been holding off on. Even, even some of you worship leaders who, who want to speak over your congregation, but you’re afraid to talk, you’re afraid to speak. I’m just gonna encourage you. Take, take a ten second thing. You don’t have to go 10 minutes just within. Look in the people’s eyes and speak over them. Don’t let the fear of, “what am I gonna say?” hold you back. You know, Jesus told the disciples, he said this, “he said, you’re gonna front of stand in front of kings and magistrates. Don’t even, He said, don’t even think about what you’re gonna say. Just open your mouth and I’ll fill it with words.” And that’s powerful.
I feel like some of you’re really held back by words from the past of something that somebody said against you that, that maybe like, oh, you’ll never be able to do that or you couldn’t do that because of this, or because, or even the voice of the enemy saying, “hey, with your family history or your past because of something you’ve done, or something you’ve been,” and I release you from that voice right now.
And I say, you know, the only real way to fight that voice is number one, become a voice yourself. Sometimes you gotta just speak it out. And Jesus says this, he says, “you speak to the mountain and it’ll move.” Some of you’re waiting for God to speak over something. He gave you the authority to speak over. So some of you are being held back by voices of the past. Some of you are being held back by past abuses, things that have happened in church, and you just say, I’m never gonna do that again. But you know what? It’s always easier to reject something than to redeem something and Jesus isn’t the one to reject. Jesus is the one to redeem. So, he’s always gonna step in and, and work at redeeming.
So, don’t be the one who just rejects it because you’ve had a bad picture of it, because you’ve seen something that didn’t work because you maybe, a rough situation at a church and you’re like, I’ll never do that again. You know what? A lot of people are missing out on the power of your voice, because that’s what the enemy intended from the very beginning to silence you.
That’s what he always wants. He always wants you to be silenced, and so he uses those situations in the past to silence your voice. And I release you from that right now. And I’m just gonna tell you, like it’s time for some of you to have those dreams, reawakened, and some of that is, some of you actually, uh, misperceived something you thought your dream is dead, even if it is, he’s the god of resurrection, which is powerful.
Number two is that sometimes it wasn’t the right time. Things were not in place, They weren’t ready for you yet. The anointing and gifting on your life, the places would not have released it and you actually would’ve been crushed in the process and, and I’m just telling you like there are some of you that dreams are coming back and they’re gonna be redeemed and they’re going to actually facilitate the next move of God in many people’s lives and probably will be the rescue for your family.
And so the simple way to start that is to, is to start doing it with your family. Start doing it in your living room. This isn’t something you have to stand on a stage to facilitate. Start doing it in your living room and watch what God does. Watch how God brings you into position. And the powerful thing is some of you for a while were positioned by man, and some of you were hurt because man took you out of it. But the Bible says when God establishes you and God exalts you, no man can take you out of it.
And I would ratherm, much rather be put in a position where God establishes me than man establishes me anyways. So, lean into God, lean into his counsel and the desires for your life, and I believe God is gonna do amazing things through you.
Joshua Swanson: Lean into God and let him establish you. What a great word for today. Thank you so much, Dustin, for contributing to our podcast and over the years for being such a huge supporter of our mission here at Worship Leader Magazine. Dustin has a lot of music we could use, but the song we chose to play out this episode with is a favorite of mine, and it’s called Taste and See from Dustin’s Ministry Collective called Here Be Lions.
As always, special thanks to Matt McCarty for producing and editing today’s episode, Jacob Fairclough produced our theme song. The Walk is brought to you by Worship Leader Magazine, which is an Authentic Media brand. I’m Joshua Swanson. Here’s Taste and See.
