No Need To Justify
You heard me.
You are under zero obligation to justify to anyone how much time you spend
on your craft. I’ve posted before, God is glorified, and there are going to be situations enhanced more by your
presence than by your musicianship. That
said, since I never know, I like to be prepared both ways, so I prioritize
preparation.
In saying, “prioritize preparation,” what I don’t want to do is lay out some preparation plan for worship, or even my approach to getting ready for the service, what I want to tell you is all the things you don’t have to do. If you’ve committed to increasing your skills, that is a great thing.
Sharpening your skills is a way to honor your gifts.
How you choose to sharpen those skills is personal.
I understand the challenge of using your gifts and while
corralling in the rest of your life means prioritizing. I know worship, as well as preparing for
worship, is tough to do when you have “a lot going on,” (when being, “all the
time”), so a good place to start is:
Don’t Justify
To repeat, you are under zero obligation to justify to anyone how much time you spend preparing for worship. I didn’t say you don’t have to prepare, I am saying you don’t have to justify the amount of time you spend preparing. Should the occasion arise that someone asks you how much time, feel free to share that number, but you don’t have to add any qualifiers or justification for that number. If you spent X hours getting ready for Sunday service, you give that X, not X plus a list of the things going on with your life.
Sharing
what is going on in your life is essential to building cohesion in the team, and
keeping team leadership and team members (if necessary), apprised of added
stress in your life is a good thing, but not the reason you spent X hours
preparing for worship. I am saying “X is
X.”
When you look at X as being the amount of time you were able to mine out of
the reality that is your life, it becomes precious.
Celebrate
that!
An
unintended problem with adding excuses or qualifiers to X is that in a way you’re
saying that the next time whatever extraordinary circumstances you attribute to
“only” being able to achieve X don’t occur, X is going to be 2X, which we both know isn’t true.
Let X be X and let your life be your own. Put in the work and once that’s done, drop it
like PR deadlift, BOOM, and get on with your life.
