Episode 42: Developing a Healthy Worship Culture Featuring: Mingo Palacios & John Cassetto https://thepdpodcast.com Transcript: Welcome to the purpose driven Church podcast where we sit down with leaders in and around the church to discuss current trends and challenges and how the five purposes of the local church matter today, more than ever. Hey everybody. Welcome to the purpose driven podcast today. So epic. I have the luxury of having the worship leader worship pastor himself in studio with us. And we're going to talk a little bit about the values of what saddleback holds as it relays vision and mission to all those who participate in worship. So, John, why don't you give us a little introduction to say hello to our audience and break us into what it means to lead well from the posture of pastor of worship. 1
Well, first of all, Mingo, I love your new studio. You guys have done a great job to be here. I love the PD Podcast and I love all of our listeners and leaders all over the country that are serving churches well. So it's a super honor to be here. But yeah, I'd love to talk about it. So we're actually here and we're gathering all of our worship staff from all of our saddleback campuses this week. It's our annual, what we call Saddleback Worship Summit. And what I was mentioning to you just offline a bit is every year as we gathered together, we just want to reset the deck and remind ourselves who we are, why we do what we do and how we do it. This is so important. If you're on a worship team and you're listening to this, if you're not gathering at least by any sort of frequency with your entire team, you're missing a huge opportunity for alignment, for vision, for camaraderie, relationship. Well for us, and I'm sure like everybody listening over the course of the year, the vision drift can be very strong if we don't kind of recalibrate, at least for us annually. And of course we built in other times throughout the year. But one of the things we're going to talk about with our team today, like we do every single time we gather for this annual summit, is we go back to a vision that God gave a myself as we were charting the course of this team with Rick and Kay Warren When you first came in- First came into this role, yeah. And so I always like to talk a little bit about this because back in those days, you know, Pastor Rick Warren had given us a, the commission to do a lot of new things to develop new songs and sounds and teams. And so our transition was very fast. So we had like five minutes to get our stuff together. 2
But I can remember taking a half day. Actually, I wish I could tell you it was like this three day retreat of silence or something. It wasn't. It was like a morning. It's like what all of us have. It was just a little bit of time. And I can just remember sitting with my Bible and asking the Lord to speak clearly on what his plans were for this team in this new season. And so, you know, for me as a, as a worship pastor, there had been several key passages of scripture that have always been go to moments for me. And so I particularly remember looking Psalm 40, which is kind of an epic passage of, you know, I waited for the Lord, he heard my cry, he lifted me out, you know, set me on a rock and he put a new song in my mouth and I thought, Lord, maybe this is the driving passage for us. You're going to give us a new song, a new sound. But something about it didn't feel like that was where exactly God wanted us to put our stake in the ground. Although of course, we do in many ways. So then I flipped over to the new testament and I was looking in First Corinthians 14. And in First Corinthians 14, Paul is giving a lot of instruction on how to conduct ourselves in worship when non-believers are present. Which is like key insight. Yeah. Big time for Saddleback. Our weekends are all about people who are still a bit suspicious of church, are still exploring faith matters and all of that. And so I thought, OK, this is probably going to be where we're gonna find some gold here and really charter our course. And I just remember turning the page backwards because I'm like, well, what's right before this? Well duh, what comes before First Corinthians 14 is First Corinthians 13, which is all about love, 3
right? Love is patient, love is kind and then the whole resounding Gong clinging, assemble all of that. And what I found so remarkable is this bridge verse between this chapter that's all about love. And then the next chapter which is about conducting ourselves in worship, right is this verse in First Corinthians 14 verse one. This ties them together. It says, let love be your highest goal. That's great. It just kind of jumped out at me like 3d glasses type of thing. Where it just jumped right off the page to me. Let love be your highest goal. It does not say, let new songs be your highest goal. Let a tremendous team be your highest goal. Right. Let a super sexy stage design be your highest goal. Let best music on planet earth be your highest goal. But it also doesn't say, let love be your only goal. Excellent, right? So I mean, we want amazing songs. We want amazing creativity. We want super healthy teams but we went love to be our highest goal everyday of the week. So today we're going to talk about that with the team again, just to remind ourselves let's recalibrate. This is still our highest goal. Loving Jesus. Loving one another. That is our highest goal as worship pastors, worship leaders, music directors, vocal directors. Lighting, console operators, camera guys. You know, this is our goal. It doesn't matter where you sit. Love is our highest goal. 4
So important to hear that from somebody who commands from the worship chair, because a lot of times I think that we can become uni-vision, right? We say, pastors who pastor the congregation will let them have love as the highest goal. Our job will just be superb on the mic. Music. Exactly. I can remember people telling me I'm not kidding, I'm not making this up. Basically looking me in the eye and say, 'you know, you can't have it both ways, right?' 'You can't have great musicians and great Christ followers.' Perfect. I looked them in the eye and I said, watch me. Yeah you have to! Because it's built on humanity. And humanity is called to worship God, to love God. So you, over time you take, a habit that is a high recurring theme of Saddleback's, which is you take a word and break an acrostic into it. But I love what it represents because no matter how much you love or don't love acrostics, you have to love the reason behind it. The sticking power, we can remember it. We can remember it. So six years ago when I was starting, I remember thinking first about the Lord gave me that verse. Let love be your highest goal. That's going to be what we're going to fight for. We might be known for many things, but the one thing we want to be known for is how well we love each other and how we love Jesus. And then after that, I thought to myself, you know, here I am at saddleback and I see a 5
lot of acrostics everywhere. So if you can't beat them, join them. Right? You're going to be the only guy that shows up to the meeting without an acrostic like, 'what's this?' Abstract thinking. So God in all his kindness really just kind of wrote this out for me one day. And so we took the word worship w-o-r-s-h-i-p. And we get the joy of working with people all over the world and this works best in English. Grab your pens if you're listening to this because what you can do while you don't have to copy it, you can certainly contextualize it. Yeah, for sure. So w stands for welcome new team members. Bottom line is we want to be a team that always has room for new team members. No one has anything on lock. We're a church, 20 campuses at this point. We don't have one drummer. There is always room for more drummers. There is always room for more vocalists and when we feel like we're reaching our limit, we figure out new ways to welcome new team members. You widen the circle. Yes, and that affects everything. Again, that's born out of our primary vision, which is love. If we love our people, we make room for our people. Some of the worship guys and gals who might be listening, they know this type of stuff, but that means we have to have good processes to welcome new team members. Do we have an audition process? Do we have a clear onboarding process for that. So we don't just say, oh, what everyone would say is, 'sure we welcome new people' 6
Of course, because you would dilute the quality if you didn't have standards set in place. And so we always want to make sure, you know, Pastor Rick Warren here always says to us at Saddleback, it's every member a minister. Not every staff person minister. No, we're trying to set the table for every person empowering every person that walks through the door to serve where they're gifted. Yeah. So real quick, the first one is welcome new team members. The o stands for one team. We are one team, you know, we've been a part of and being able to see many teams that struggle with this idea of people on platform and people on production kind of being on two separate wavelengths, two separate teams. But we just say no, we're a positive part of one team. We're going to learn to champion one another. We're gonna. Learn to cheer for one another. Our goal is helping one another constantly look great, constantly grow better in our relationships and in our technical skills and all of that. So we're one team, but also we're part of a bigger team, not just Saddleback Worship or part of Saddleback Church. We're all under the same house with our Saddleback kids ministry and our parking team and our small groups team. We're all part of one house in one team together. The R stands for reject negativity because you may or may not have heard that artists can be a little temperamental. I'm going to realize that that is in your top three. It's a reality that what we have to combat against are the lies and the downers. They don't have to all be Debbie's, but they certainly are the downers. Exactly. So we just want it to be a team where we are constantly cheering one another on. We don't want to have that behind the scenes, 'hey, you know, I could have sung that better than she sang it' or 'I don't know why you're not singing that song. You could 7
have done that better.' Or 'she's such a diva with her in your mix always...that or the other.' 'He's so grumpy back there at the soundboard.' So we don't, we don't want to hear that stuff. We just reject that. And so we've asked people to take time off the team because of that. And I don't care if they're the best singer in the bunch here. So huge to hear. It's not tolerated. No. We have zero tolerance for that garbage because we've seen the evil one break teams down. So good. And it's really true. It's the um, they see often in leadership, it's what you tolerate. Sometimes that stands out more than once you implement. So if you tolerate downers, you just let them live, it's a festering reality. Absolutely. So whether you're brand new on the team or you're really highly regarded and been around for a long time, we just have no tolerance for that. So strong. So that's the r. The s stands for share everything. In our culture, we have so many campuses and what we say with about sharing, the whole idea is whatever you're learning in Hong Kong, Saddleback, Hong Kong, we want to learn here in Lake Forest or Irvine or Anaheim. If you are trying a bunch of things and something doesn't work, we want to know. Yes please tell us, totally. 8
Then when you strike gold, we want to hear about that too. And so we really championed this idea of sharing the learnings and the win and the success in one place is a win and a success for all of us. If you wouldn't mind just digging down into that just a little bit more. Are you using an online forum for sharing? Is it a weekly call? I mean, if people want to set that kind of method into motion in their own circles, how would they do? So that's really practical. I appreciate that. Well, we use everything on Planning Center, so all of our resources, all of our stuff is accessible for all of our teams on Planning Center. We're so thankful for the team at Planning Center. They have been nothing but a dream to work with and they provide resourcing for us and for our churches all over the world that are tremendous. So we do that, but then we use the Zoom app, which is similar to, many people are familiar with Skype. But, Zoom, what we have found is the ability to have many people on a call. So I'll have a video conference call. It's very easy from phones, from desktops, laptops, all of that. And so we do, we gather once a month all together via Zoom and that's everybody that's, you know, Manila, Buenos Aires and Irvine and Anaheim, California. So we're all on it there, I just think staying in touch. And then we do smaller breakouts. Different teams or in smaller groups that connect throughout the month as well. So it's like two connects a month. It's a balance between technical and physical. Absolutely. So we try to do like, the monthly connect, on Zoom. But then we do this annual gathering face to face. Which is what we're prepping for right now. OK. So you got me to w-o-r-s- 9
Was share everything. And so the h is, we value a high standard of excellence in every area. Some people say, I hear all this talk about love and sharing everything. What about the actual music stuff? Are you guys any good? Absolutely. Absolutely, we value high levels of excellence and in every area. We believe that of course God is a God of excellence, that God is a God who has given us a gift and we want to refine that gift. We want to get better and better at whatever it is. If it's the gift of leadership, we want to be better. Of course. Grow. If it's the gift of playing the bass guitar, we want to help you in the best bass guitar player. So we value a high level of excellence in every area, including our technical areas. And so this is the fine line of balance of OK, well how do we get people who may or may not be professional in that they are paid to do this Hollywood stage lot or something like that. And so like, how do we have that along with people that are just, you know, I played guitar in my garage. And so we want to take everyone where they're at and help everyone grow. So what we provide different opportunities, whether those are master classes or whatever. But we write it on the wall so people know. Don't get it mistaken and you're going to hear us talk a lot about love and a lot of some character- Well, it's character and culture first, which I can appreciate so much. But don't get it twisted. We still care about technicality. We still care if you can carry a tune so I need you to be able to harmonize. 10
Yeah. So that's the h. The, I is, we're gonna implement new processes with joy at Saddleback. One of our thoughts is we want to stay a team that's fast, fluid and flexible. So we want to put it on the wall, put it in our values that we will implement new processes with joy. Because my whole point is in what we do,everybody has an opinion about what we do, right? Everybody. Because everybody who's at church comes to church. And so everyone who thinks it's just right too loud to too quiet, too fast, too slow, too... you know, not everybody has a kid in kids ministry. Not Everybody is a doing student ministry or whatever, but everybody knows what they like. Everybody's got ears to hear and eyes to see. We are often changing things because we want to make sure we are creating environments that are helping our target audience come into a relationship with Jesus period. And so that means- Keyphrase: target audience, not the total audience. Yeah, and quite honestly, that's not me. I've walked with Jesus now for over 25 years and so our target audience are men and women who aren't walking with Jesus. Right? And so we work with our team on as they continue to unpack more of what our target is. So when we talked about implementing new processes with joy, what we say is like when anybody comes with an idea, we're all hoping that somebody says 'yes, that's a great idea,' right? No one's hoping to hear, 'dude that's awful, never bring that up again.' Right? And so we've just tried to say like, hey, we're going to try stuff. We want to build a culture that's nimble enough to try something and knows that, hey, we're going to try this this week. We may never do it again. So let's not lose our mind because someone decided we're 11
going to do the sound check differently today, or let's not lose our mind because we're experimenting with new instruments on stage, which means you're not playing this weekend. Cool. Not a problem is our mantra. Not a problem. Not a problem. More people should adopt that mantra. Because whoever wants to hear, 'we've never done it like that before.' They say that's one of the biggest triggers to an unhealthy culture Super triggered. Yeah, so if you are hearing we've never done that before. We've never tried that before. It's a stronghold in not being willing to shift for potential. Right. And so, you know, we're, we are so blessed to serve at Saddleback who has a long history before any of our team walked in the door of trying new things of failing more than we succeed. And they say fail fast. Fail fast. Right? And so we want to implement new processes with joy. Um, and then the p of our, our last letter in the word worship, the p stands for pray continuously that we will be a team that is ruthlessly tethered to God, right. And so that everything we're doing is coming out with a vision that's coming from God, not from ourselves. Not a particular person or not the most popular or talented person on the team. 12
Absolutely. And so I think in those values you hear us trying to balance and blend actually maybe more than balance because I don't think it's usually in balance, but blend the spiritual and the technical blend. This heart and hand piece, the blend, the mind, the heart, the hand together that we're stewarding all of what God has put in our hands in this. So excellent. It's what we're going to unpack with our team today. You know, the beauty and the podcast is that it lives right where ministry is taking place. And for us this morning, John, we're so blessed that you would share just a little bit that you peel back the veil a bit into the processes and the, the heartbeat behind the saddleback worship experience. If people want to follow along, I know you guys have several social channels that people want to connect to you or the worship team, how do they do that? Well, thanks for asking. Definitely, we do have a webpage, saddlebackworship.com. To be honest, it's underdeveloped, right? But the, that that's a place where you can get some information. And then also, I think we're more active on Instagram at just very much saddleback worship. Um, and that's probably the best place right now. And then of course, saddlebackchurch.com, you can check our weekend services every week and that's our team working really tirelessly to create those spaces a before, after, during the message, all of that to, for people to hear about a great God who loves them so much. That's great. And if you're listening to this at a wider frame and you're not quickly coming into those web resources, social resources in June, you guys always run a very strong track of 13
teaching conference for people who want to implement more purpose in what we say healthy ministry inside of their efforts locally. So, June, you can catch that information if you want to come to the purpose driven conferences at pd.church, you can register there and if you register before the end of January, you'll get a pretty solid discount even before the end of February. They get a pretty good rate. So John, thank you so much. Can I just say one last thing? Yeah. Of course. If anyone out there is listening right now and finds themself in any sort of leadership seat in worship ministry. If it's volunteer, if it's contract as part timers full time, it's, you've done it forever or you just started. I guess I would just say to you, you some of our favorite people here because we get you. You're doing what we're doing. Might not always seem like it, but I can assure you your joy is our joys and your pains are the same pains we feel on a weekly basis to. And so we'd love to connect in any way. So find us out there. Again, my name's John Cassetto. In the show notes we'll give access to you at least an email address. Please. That'd be great. We'd love to connect and encourage you because we're in this together. This is one kingdom, one thing that we're all working together. And so love you guys. This is what the podcast is all about. Take it, consume it, share it, and be better because of it. We love you guys. We'll talk to you soon. 14
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