Music and Church Planting

So I'm working in Admissions now. Some might see that as selling my soul to the Man...if so, my soul was sold when I was freshman. The truth is, I love Covenant, and have no qualms about introducing it to other people. I know it's not perfect, but nothing is. I've had the opportunity over the past four years to take my music and use it to show people one aspect of Covenant, in a way that is arguably more human and relatable than the average college recruiter presentation - for me, it's a slice of what I and many others have been able to do at Covenant as a student: pulling musicians together and playing my songs for people. On the Third Lobby tours, we haven't had to give a specific Covenant spiel; we just had to play concerts, services and youth groups and just be ourselves, and people would talk to us. So now I'm doing some of the normal Admissions Representative stuff, but I'm beginning to plan music trips for the late summer and fall, and I've got some ideas to take it to the next level.

While at Covenant, I've been doing this music ministry leadership internship at North Shore along with Dave Hess and David Henry, two very talented musicians and leaders. We three also went on the December Ireland trip, which was a blast as well as an awesome growing experience. One of the great things about both the internship and the Ireland trip (hey that rhymes) is that they both helped bring about a team mentality, for us three in particular but also for everyone involved in both enterprises. The weeks leading up to the Ireland trip were great because the team got together on Friday mornings to pray and talk about our vision for the trip and its implementation, and as we got closer to leaving we prepared and did a concert at Lookout Mountain Pres. as well as leading music in Chapel and at North Shore. Doing these together was great; one, because most of the group were really talented musicians, and two, because we were all on the same page as to why we were doing it. It made me want to assemble a crack squad of believers and start a church somewhere (Sam Belz, you would be the preacher). While I recognize that this is probably a faulty perspective (no-one can just pull together everyone they want and start a perfect anything; effective ministry always involves real people thrown together who are forced to compromise), there was definitely something special about our team.

Because of the talent and connections we've got here at Covenant, I want to take what we've got that's special and share it with other churches, specifically, church plants, which are often short on resources and manpower. Dave Hess and I have been talking about how we can use our gifts, talents and passions for the good of the Church, and I think this is one way that we individually and Covenant as a whole can give back and minister to the Church. So this fall I'm hoping to put together a super-team of musicians that can do a church service on their own, plug into a larger, existing team for a service, lead music for youth group, or split up into smaller teams of 2-4 to cover more ground on a trip and help, say, three churches on a Sunday morning. The plan is to have a small group (5-10, and the personnel may change depending on schedules and area) of musicians that can do all that but that are talented and diverse enough to put together a 2-3 hour concert or coffee house (much like in Dublin) consisting of original music, classics and classical. So if you know any churches that would be interested in something like this, please let me know! The idea is that yes, we will still be representing Covenant, but we will be doing much more than just giving a talk and answering questions; we hope to provide a real tool for ministry that also continues to build the relationship between churches and Covenant.