Fostering church cultures the place each pastors and church musicians flourish requires discerning the views and challenges of the opposite, Methodist pastor Andy Stoker mentioned throughout a webinar about pastor-musician working relationships.
Doug Haney
“Creating a culture whereby a pastor and church musician can thrive is really about knowing and recognizing the gifts each one brings beyond their specific role,” mentioned Stoker, senior pastor at Central United Methodist Church in Albuquerque.
Stoker and Anne Scalfaro, senior pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Denver, have been hosted within the on-line dialogue by Doug Haney, government director of Polyphony Music Assets, which offers instruments to nurture the ministry and well-being of church musicians. He additionally serves as interim minister of music at Oakland Baptist Church in Rock Hill, S.C., after retiring final yr as affiliate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
Polyphony has spent two years interviewing church musicians concerning the instruments they might want to thrive throughout the coming decade, Haney defined. “One of the themes that emerged from almost all of these 100 conversations is that in order to flourish, musicians need positive and productive work relationships, especially with their pastor or supervisor.”
Andy Stoker
Such relationships are potential when every goes the additional mile in appreciating how their completely different items may be mutually useful, mentioned Stoker, who’s ordained by The United Methodist Church.
“For example, I want to be seen as a good teacher. Well, how does my teaching role and the thing that gives me passion about teaching, how can that be enhanced by a church musician who has a totally different process of potentially seeing how teaching works?” he requested. “Can I sit at a choir rehearsal and learn something from church musicians that I can take into the classroom, that I can take into my one-on-one conversations and begin to see how those two roles are woven together in really substantive ways?”
It’s additionally vital for pastors to understand that musicians are referred to as not merely to carry out but in addition to proclaim, Stoker mentioned. “If the pastor and church musician role are both proclamation, then it is about a full enhancement of right and left brain, it is the full enhancement of the fullness of humanity — head, heart and soul — that can build on this culture of wholeness.”
However reaching that cohesion additionally calls for a willingness to work by the frequent antagonism between musicians and pastors, he added. “In so many ways, the pastor-musician context or working relationship has been based strangely on an adversarial kind of understanding. ‘You’re in my spotlight,’ or ‘I’m not paying attention to you,’ or ‘You’re not paying attention to me.’ That kind of dance halts a working relationship in critical ways.”
Anne Scalfaro
Establishing significant connections additionally requires pastors and musicians to work together with one another outdoors the Sunday morning setting, Scalfaro mentioned. “I’ve been at choir rehearsals or choir parties — seeing each other in those elements. Also, it’s going to coffee and not talking about worship, but just asking how they’re doing.”
Church management could be clever to ask musicians into conversations on subjects not particularly associated to music, she suggested. “In our case, we do some theme development for an entire year, and we invite the musician into that space to say, ‘What are you hearing and sensing in the congregation? Where are people struggling? Where’s the challenge? Where’s the comfort?’ We are getting their wisdom and allowing their voice to help shape the direction of where we’re going because they’re tapped into people I’m not necessarily tapped into.”
Haney requested his friends what they need musicians knew about senior pastors’ roles past Sunday worship.
Scalfaro mentioned she would really like musicians to know the multiplicity of obligations pastors have past sermon preparation and preaching. “Senior pastors, on any given day, we are wearing a number of hats, pivoting from worship to a budget meeting, to a pastoral care visit to something breaking in the building. It’s just a constant pivoting and a constant level of responsibility in many different areas.”
Nurturing relationships over espresso might help talk these calls for and assist musicians perceive “that if I’m a little bit distracted or if I am not totally zoned in, it’s because of those different responsibilities,” she mentioned.
Stoker agreed, including “I would love church musicians to know they are not forgotten” regardless of the quintessential view by some they’re afterthoughts in comparison with funds conferences or pastoral care.
“And I think church musicians need to know that beyond the performance, there is a want from pastors to be better team players and want to be in broader conversations about how music plays a role in the church’s life.”
That function can’t be understated, Scalfaro mentioned.
“I think of worship as sort of the heartbeat of church life. It’s the place where we all gather together. It’s the anchor,” she mentioned. “The connection point is music, it’s the thread that weaves the entire service together. … Music does something the spoken word can’t do in terms of how it touches the soul and speaks to people.”
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Making peace with my inside worship struggle | Opinion by Doug Haney
Why church musicians turn into scapegoats in anxious church techniques and the best way to make personnel modifications gracefully | Opinion by Doug Haney
“Well bless their hearts.”
