Finding Time to Focus on What Matters
As music ministers, music pastors, worship pastors and music directors, we are involved in many aspects of church work. We spend most of our weeks focusing on the music of church, whether for the days, weeks, or months ahead. We are learning how to manage our time at church and in life. We make sure Sundays are planned, music is ready, the pastor is familiar with what will be sung or played, and work with fellow staff members on other events. After all of this is complete during the week, the time left in our work day is probably very little. We have heard and know the importance of reading our Bible, prayer, and other devotions for our walk with Christ, but we come up with numerous reasons and excuses as to why we can do it later.
As Christians, especially leaders in churches, we know how important it is for us to know more about God. We must make it a priority we spend time with God in His Word and prayer. It should be a priority because our lives with Christ need to grow as people, Christians and leaders. All of us know the importance of God’s Word and we make it important by planning out time or times in our days to read it and know more. Whether we read our Bible in the morning, afternoon, evening or all three, starting and keeping the discipline of reading the Bible will shape our lives for Christ and our churches. Planning out times to read is a discipline because we must make it a priority and not let our lives get in the way of it. Just like a workout regimen, we must plan the time, prepare ourselves ahead of time for it, and be consistent with it.
A good way to make sure we are consistent in the discipline of reading our Bible is having an accountability partner, or someone who will check on us each day to see if we have kept up with our reading. It would be better to have that partner read with us daily so he or she knows we are indeed keeping up with our discipline as well as growing in God’s Word together. Here’s a thought: what if the accountability partner was someone on our church’s staff? We would grow in God’s Word, spend time together and learn from one another.
As leaders in the church, we are ministers first and musicians second. With that in mind, another way to help make reading God’s Word a discipline is sharing it with our praise teams and choirs weekly. It could be before or after a rehearsal and it doesn’t have to be long. We would be growing our teams and choirs for God while sharing what we’ve learned. We are not doing it to show off our knowledge, but we do it to shape others for Christ. We want our churches to grow in their relationships with Christ. Having a devotion time with a smaller group of people like our choirs and bands, compared to the larger number in the congregation on Sundays, we can interact and answer questions that could not be answered during the pastor’s sermon.
The time we spend in God’s Word impacts more than just us. We can use our time better for learning more about God. We can schedule time to share what we’ve learned with our choirs and bands. We would be doing this to grow their spiritual lives and we would show others how much we care for them.
