Looking Like a Leader

I once heard it said that if you want to look like a leader then make small decisions loudly. Consider a couple of examples. Firstly, you’re standing behind someone in a queue at a fast food outlet. It takes some time to get to the front of the line and inevitably the person before you waits until that moment to decide what it is they would like to order. Or consider driving behind someone into a car park with hundreds of empty spaces. Spoilt for choice the driver in front ends up unable to decide which of the many free spots is best for them, thus delaying everyone behind them. In both of these not so imaginary situations it can be frustrating to be forced to bear the consequences of their indecision. 

“Just make a decision!”

My House Will Be Called A House of.... Announcements?

Announcements.

For any worship leader the place for announcements in the weekly worship gathering can be difficult to fit in. You want to ensure people are as informed as possible, but if left unchecked they can become simply another “commercial break” in people’s lives, or go on for an unnecessary amount of time. Alternatively, they can disrupt the flow of a meeting or cause people to switch off.

Constance Cherry, the author of The WorshipArchitect, conducted a little experiment around this very issue. Having the opportunity to visit a number of different churches over an extended period of time, and with a keen interest in the place of public scripture reading and prayer in corporate worship, Cherry’s experiment was to calculate the amount of time, as a percentage, devoted to different aspects of worship in a variety of churches. The details of the experiment and the results can be found here. It should be noted that this is not an exhaustive analysis and so the results should only be treated as indicative. However, whilst they don’t say everything, they do indeed say something. The name of the article gives much away; “My House Shall Be Called a House of…. Announcements.”