Joshua Swanson: Welcome to The Walk; a devotionals podcast led by worship leaders.
In this episode, worship leaders, songwriter, and artist, Patrick Mayberry, brings a passion for Wednesday night rehearsal and a vision for how to use your God tools. Here we go.
Patrick Mayberry: Hey guys. Patrick Mayberry, here. Um, I have had the amazing privilege of getting to serve on church staff and, and lead worship teams, um, every week, every Sunday, um, and call me crazy, Wednesday night rehearsals. And actually, uh, Wednesday night rehearsals are probably my favorite thing in the world. Call me crazy and, uh, I know a lot of, a lot of churches, you know, uh, they rehearse Sunday morning and I’m not judging you, but I’m just gonna say you’re missing out. You’re missing out on some serious magic and a whole lot of fun.
I grew to love rehearsals. I think I’ve always been a band dude and I love just kind of spending Wednesday nights, um, really thinking through, I always called it like, let’s take care of business on Wednesday night, so that Sunday we just get to show up, we get to high five each other, we get to drink coffee, we get to not be stressed, and we get to kind of be fully present in leading our church, um, in, in creating a space for people to meet with Jesus.
And so, uh, Wednesday nights became such a big part of our culture at our church, and it’s crazy, um, we would, we would have rehearsal at seven, but we would have people start getting there at 5:30 just to hang out and get set up and just, just laugh and, and, and just be together. But one of the funny things that I think is, is kind of this, um, thing that anybody who’s ever led a worship team, uh, can, can resonate with is that like, well, we’re here at rehearsal and you know, it doesn’t feel right just to jump in and start playing some music. So, maybe we come together and we, uh, oh, uh, maybe we do, uh, like a devotional or maybe we play a game or an icebreaker or, uh, share some highs and lows.
Uh, uh, and then, you know, It can turn into a three-hour devotional, which is awesome. Like I’m, I’m all for that, but sometimes you gotta just get in there and you gotta get to work and, and you’ve got songs to run and transitions to think through and all that. So I, I love that, that little five to 10 minute thing that we’re all like, what do I do?
And I can remember there would be rehearsals where, you know, we wouldn’t do anything and, and I would, we would start just jamming and start playing. And I would kinda like, be like, okay, did we, are we, did we, are we clear? Did we make it out without doing anything? Awesome, let’s go. And then, you know, there’d be weeks when we would be like, all right, real quick, everybody share a high and a low from the week and, or, you know, maybe the Lord had a scripture that we needed to share, or maybe we would just pray for one another.
Um, and I feel like, um, it’s such a tricky, tricky time, but I think we often overcomplicate it and we try to make it more than it is. And, um, my, one of my, my pastors has said this thing where, “where there is no, um, vision, the, the people will perish,” and, um, I’ve always thought that it doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be crazy. Um, obviously praying and asking God, like, what do you want this time to look like? But I always found that if I could just give my team a little bit of vision, remind them that, of what we’re here to do, that we’re not just, we’re not just here to like nail some songs like, anybody can do that, but we’re literally here to create a space for people to meet with Jesus, and, and we work really hard and we’re super intentional and we think through as much as we can, but ultimately we’re here to serve our people.
And just being able to like cast a little bit of vision, um, again, 5 to 10 minutes, I would say probably 5. Um, casting that vision and being able to pray is, is a way that I found was super helpful to launch us, um, into our time before we got into rehearsal.
Joshua Swanson: When we come back, Patrick helps us all understand the bigger picture surrounding our mission here on earth and how our creative gifts fit into the spiritual battle going on around us.
So, Ihave a question for our listeners, do you find our podcast to be edifying? Does it build you up and encourage you? We really hope so as that’s our goal here at Worship Leader, but we also want to challenge and equip you. So, how we do that is through the Worship Leader Institute, which I know you’ve heard me talk about. But we are launching an amazing 1-on-1 coaching program headed by Willow Creek alumni Joe Horness. Joe said this to me recently, Imagine if every time someone walked into your sanctuary, your worship led people into an encounter with God? Yes. Yes. I want that. We want that, right? So if you want that for your worship experience, check out Worship Leader Institute for more on our one-on-one coaching.
Okay, back to Patrick.
Patrick Mayberry: So several months ago I was spending some time just reading, um, some scripture. And, uh, I felt like I was in a season where kinda like the story of Elijah, like I felt like I was looking for God in the fire or in the earthquake, and God was just inviting me to kinda like, like Elijah, like to just be away in the cave and be quiet and be still and just listen for the whisper.
And I was reading and I felt like I came across this scripture that as a worship leader, as a songwriter, as a pastor, was so like aligning to the thing that I think we all desperately, like, long for. What I was talking about earlier, the idea of vision and vision for ourselves as worship leaders, vision for ourselves as songwriters, visions for our team.
And um, this is from the Message version and this is 2 Corinthians 10, and when I read this, I, like had never felt like more right in the world with what I was called to do.
2 Corinthians 10, “The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. The world doesn’t fight fair, but we don’t live or fight our battles that way. We never have and we never will. The tools of our battle aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion, and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.”
So I come across the scripture, I’ll, I’ll get back into more of the scripture, but I was so energized and felt like literally like I just went to the chiropractor and they just realigned my entire vertebrae of worship leading, and I couldn’t wait to get to church that next week and share this with my team, and I felt like this was some vision that we needed, that I needed, that they needed. And I love how all this is says like it is a crazy world out there. It is. I love it. Says it’s dog-eat-dog out there and the world doesn’t fight fair and if you’ve lived for five minutes, you know that that is very true. That we live in a broken, hard, unfair world. And I love that it says, but we don’t fight our battles that way. We never have, never will.
And then it speaks so much to the tools of our trade, our craft, our God-given talent. What we do, our tools, and there’s nothing better when you’re talking to a worship band, when you get to say, no, no, no, no, you’re not playing bass here buddy or you’re not just singing or you’re not playing keys, or you’re not just playing drums. These are God tools. These are crafts. These are things that you’ve worked on for years that you probably spent time on Monday or Tuesday, hopeful, uh, rehearsing, getting ready to show up and be ready. These are not just little things we’re putting together. “These are tools of our trade, and they’re not for marketing, they’re not for manipulation, but they’re for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture.” And then it goes on and read again, we use our powerful God tools. We use our bass playing, we use our songwriting, we use our worship leading. We use our, um, drum fills for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers, erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion, and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand. Like we’re ready. We’re ready to go. We show up on Sunday and we are ready to go for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into it.
If, if you’ve ever felt like you’re going through the, through the motions and you’re struggling to get your team to see the bigger picture, I would encourage you to look at 2 Corinthians 10, and for me it was such a gift to me. I literally read this to our team probably seven days in a row, and I’m like, guys, I’m sorry, you’re gonna get tired of hearing this, but you gotta know, like we are doing bigger things here. We are proclaiming truth and putting it out into the world. We are trying to demolish the lies erected against God, saying that God is this mean, corrupt, religious God, when that is so not true. That our gifts, what we do as worship leaders, what we do as worship bands week in and week out is we put truth out into the world and we pray that, it, it puts people at, at the position of like, oh man, there’s this opportunity put before me that I could step into and believe that God is good. That Jesus died for me. That there is a hope and a future for me. That’s what we get to do. It’s more than just a worship rehearsal. It’s more than just playing worship songs. We’re getting to proclaim the truth in Jesus.
So, if you need a little vision in your life for you or your worship team, 2 Corinthians 10, um, I pray that it would bless you and that, um, you would feel that your role as a local Worship Leader, Worship Pastor, is so important to the bigger church, um, in the globe, that you are a truth teller and a a truth bringer.
So don’t stop. Keep going. You’re awesome.
Joshua Swanson: Here’s to smashing the enemy’s attacks and using our “God tools” to break strongholds. That scripture from 2 Corinthians 10, I just feel like we need to read it again from the ESV, “4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…”
Joshua Swanson: I wanna quickly pray for you, Lord, my prayer is that as a tribe of worshipers, we would draw upon this truth in your word and destroy the strongholds that are set up against us, against us as individuals, against our ministries, against our businesses, against our churches. Please God, identify right now in our listeners what those strongholds are.
Just bring them to mind. Bring those strong holds to mind and I pray, God, I intercede on behalf of every listener and ask that you would simply break any hold the enemy has on them, and we take back any ground given over to the enemy. In Jesus mighty name, amen.
Patrick has a song called Holy Spirit Come that will play out this episode with, and it’s a perfect rallying cry to accompany this prayer of breaking strongholds.
As always, special thanks to Matt McCartie for producing and editing today’s episode. Jacob Fairclough produced our theme song. The Walk is brought to you by Worship Leader, which is an Authentic Media brand. I’m Joshua Swanson. Here’s. Holy Spirit Come.
