Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #303: Jason Scott and The Worship Collective

This episode of Voices in My Head is brought to you by Podbean. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. Visit podbean.com/voices to find out more. That's podbean.com/voices. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com. RickLeeJames.com, where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay, where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head.

As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James.

I'm so glad that you are here with us today for this podcast. It's going to be a great episode with my new friend Jason Scott. Jason has been a youth minister for 25 years in Alabama and Florida and Georgia. He's also a graduate of Auburn University— excuse me, Auburn University and Asbury Theological Seminary. He's married to Jennifer, has been married for 21 years. He has a son, Jackson, who is 19 and a freshman in college. A daughter Catherine who is 13 and is in the 8th grade, and he currently serves as the minister to students at Roswell United Methodist Church in Roswell, Georgia. And he is the founder of The Worship Collective, a collection of those people called to lead worship whether it be on or off stage. Jason Scott, welcome to Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you so much, Rick Lee James. Appreciate you having me on, and I have listened to some of your shows. Love them. Do a great job, and, and, uh, I'm a big fan of yours as well because you are a member of that collective.

So yeah, well, I appreciate that. Thank you for your kind words. I'm looking forward to talking to you about this today, and I'm new to the Worship Collective, and so I, even being a member, I'm still learning more about it and meeting new people from it. And I love the idea, and I wanted to give our listeners here on Voices in My Head, especially those who lead worship or are active in any way in their churches or in any way in services of worship, to just hear some of the benefits of being a part of The Worship Collective, what The Worship Collective is, kind of where it came from. So we're going to have a good conversation today, and I appreciate your time. So let's start out today just with what is The Worship Collective? Just explain to us, give us the elevator pitch, so to speak. If you've never heard of it before, give the listeners the view of what it is.

Sure, absolutely. As you said, I've been serving youth ministry really all my adult life since I I was in college and have done that for years and years. And one of the biggest issues that we always have is when we go to have a camp or when we have a retreat or a conference or anything, we would go to try to find worship leaders, speakers for those things. Well, it turned out to be a really hard thing. The best way to do that would be to either find people you knew and your own network, local people, whatever. A lot of times it was hit or miss and you didn't know how good they were. What one person thinks might be good, another church may not think it's good. It was always a battle and a struggle to find people who were called to lead worship or speak in some way at your retreat or conference. So about I'd say in 2013 we actually launched The Worship Collective. It was a little bit different idea. We said we want to do this. This was a struggle. This was an issue we wanted to find a solution to. We said, "Cool, let's do this." I gathered up a handful of 15 or so worship leaders and speakers and we began a "garashrus" movement of pushing these guys and telling everybody about them. Between me still in seminary and my wife being working, we didn't have the time nor the devotion to the project as we should, and it kind of faltered a little bit. So we put it on the shelf for a few years, and about a year ago or so, I was having a conversation with one of my best friends, and I just kept coming back to this idea when I was looking for— again, looking for a worship leader for a retreat we were going to have in February. I just, I said, you know, there's got to be a way we can do this. And it's just, it's such a, it's such a thing that I know there should be a solution. And I believe in this Worship Collective, but I don't want to be in the booking business. What we were doing before is we would get these people and we would basically be their booking agency. Well, that took a lot of time and effort for both of my wife and I to be in full-time jobs and, and family and school and everything else, and then you have to basically be the representative or booking agent for these artists. And, and I didn't like it, the idea that actually, to be honest, that churches or organizations could just go around us too. There's no contract with these guys. They're all independently, uh, working with us. And so anybody could just contact them separately and go around us. So we just thought, what's a better way to do this? And my friend said subscription. I said, I don't even understand what you mean. He's like, you really should do it more like Netflix. Netflix is such a huge thing right now. There's subscriptions for everything. People are so used to that. I said, yeah, but how does that work? And how do we— how do I verify that someone's good and all that stuff? And he said, He said, "Well, do it like you would VRBO or one of these other sites. Do it with a rating system." So that's kind of how the whole thing literally came about. That spawned the idea. We started doing some creative. I met with some website designers and that's literally how the whole thing started. Kind of evolved into what it is now. We just launched about 6 weeks ago. We're still very new. We've got about 20 or so, including yourself, who understand what we're doing and believe in it. We're just trying to get the word out that we believe there should be basically a database for those people who are called to lead worship. As we said, either on stage or off, whether you're speaking, whether you're singing, playing instruments, running sound, running lights, tech, anything. If you're called to lead worship and help in worship some way and people need to find you, we want you to be part of the collective so they can find you.

Sure. Well, and what a great—

That may be a long elevator ride.

No, that was good. That was a perfect elevator ride. That was good. It gave everybody a good idea. And so that tells a little bit of what you do on your end on the website. And so what I thought would be kind of fun to do today as we talk together, I have the site open and so if If you're a person that's looking, let's say, to book someone for a retreat or a worship event, or just you're doing maybe something special at your church and you're looking for somebody, wondering who's out there, and I certainly know how that is, and you'd like to find somebody that is good quality and really has the right heart for ministry. One thing I like about your site is you can go to the site, which by the way, the website is theworshipcollective.com. I want everybody to know that, theworshipcollective.com. And when you go there, there's a button that says Search the Collective. And when they push the button to search the collective, there'll be some different options. It'll say the different needs you might be looking for, like find a— and then there are some checkboxes. So if you're looking for find a worship leader or band, or find a production person, or find a musician, or find a speaker, things like that. And it allows users to put in keywords and search different locations so you can hopefully find somebody that's near you. And I think that's an incredible resource and a help to a lot of different different people on there. And so since this is a new launch, it's a great time for us to be talking about it and trying to help people find that. I know that a lot of pastors and organizers of events can really use a tool like this and find it to be extremely helpful. I'm curious, what kind of feedback have you been getting so far? Have you been getting feedback? I know it's very new into the process, but has it been good so far?

Absolutely. We've been able to connect a few people so far. People have called and said, "I look on there and I see, but I don't really know. Here's what I need." Then we kind of direct them that way. It's mostly a regional thing. We've had a couple phone calls from Florida. Small churches. They don't have a huge budget, so they need somebody more local. I think that's what one of the greater advantages of The Worship Collective would be, finding regional people, people close by who are willing to travel travel and it wouldn't be that much of a travel for them, a journey for them. Smaller churches who can't afford huge names can reach out to people and find people. Right now just among the 20 or so that we have, we have people who are just getting started and we have seasoned veterans like yourself from the whole gamut. One of the questions was when they called, said, "Well, how do we determine a price range?" We decided a while back not to put that on there. We want that to be a conversation that the person has with the church. We don't want you to be labeled by an amount because it's all relative. How do you put on there that you're going to— how much you charge for a single worship service versus a conference versus a whole weekend versus I have to travel to California versus something that's right in my back door. So it's just, it's very relative to that, to that effect. So we just needed to, needed to let that conversation happen with the people who are looking. And the, the members of the collective dictate that by how they create their site. We allow them to put pictures up, they can put YouTube videos or, or video links to their own things. They have a bio and they can write as much or as little as they want to on there. They can write references. They can give as much information as they may think helps people find out who they are. Sure. That's what we were really looking at. A lot of the larger churches have resources to be able to pull these kind of things off, but I started out in small churches and I've worked medium and large size churches. In today's world we have so many people who have this desire to lead worship and can do so and be connected to these even the smaller churches to help them lead and help them hone their task and get better at it and all the while serve those local churches as well.

I'll tell you what I like about this as someone who both works at a church part-time but also is traveling full-time. I do a lot of different things so I'm kind of on both sides of this. So I'm somebody who is always looking for new places places to play and trying to make new connections. But I'm also one that's looking for other people to come, on occasion, to come be at my church. I like the fact that I feel like this is very accessible because the pricing, if you're a worship leader for one thing, is not very expensive at all. It's $9.99 a month, I think, if that's what I remember correctly. Or you can do a yearly plan for $89.99. And the benefit of that, again, you're in this database which is growing, which helps people to be able to find you online. And all of us have our own networks, and sometimes we get lost in our own little place. And anytime that I've talked to people in the past about working with the booking agency or whatever, it always seems to be, well, you know, pay us all this money up front and we'll, you know, work with you, and then you have to start charging X and Y. And so the thing that I really like as a worship leader on this end of things, or someone who's going to be booked through The Worship Collective, is that you allow the artist to kind of set their own price. If the artist wants to come for a love offering— I say artist, but I mean worship leader when I say that— or a speaker, whoever, they can say, you know what, this is very close to my home, I can see this is a small church, and I want to help out, so you know what, what can we do? And I love that. That way Everybody, as you said, they can set their own thing, and everybody has a different feeling about this. Some people have no problem saying, well, I need $1,000 in order to make this happen, right? And other people— and other people go, I just need to serve, and I want to do it however I can. And this allows everybody to be on that platform together. So I think it's a great idea. And just—

and I think that's a great point as well, because it really is— should be up to the person and be dictated how much they want to charge or not charge at all. One of the greatest advises I had ever heard was from Roger Davis, who is one of the founders of youth ministry YM360, based out of Birmingham. He had told me that people call him all the time asking how can they be speakers, how can they go speak at camps and conferences. He said the number one thing he tells them all the time is just go do it as much as you possibly can. If you don't get paid, whether you get paid or you don't get paid, just go do it. Anytime you're ever asked, just go do it. You learn by situations, you learn to be in different settings, learning from different people, and so just do it as much as you can. And so that's kind of what we had in mind as well. So whether you do it for free, whether you do it for a cost, whether you do it for an offering, whatever it is, go do it as much as you can, and we hope to help help people get connected to the people who are looking for them.

Well, that's fantastic. What questions are you asked most often whenever people are inquiring about The Worship Collective? Maybe there's not a common question, but what are some of the questions you are often asked?

Yeah, that's mostly it is how much. People want to say, "Well, I see this person. How much are they?" Or really right now the biggest question is Why should we be a part of this? What benefits do we have to be a part of the collective? And that's really probably the number one most asked question that we have. Because right now our biggest focus is to try to increase the size of the collective as much as possible, to get as many people on there as possible so we can promote it as usable all across the country.

Sure.

If we're regional, if we only have people in the South, you know, people in the East, I mean in the West Coast, are not going to ever look at our site because it's strictly regional to the South. So we want to have as many people across the country as we can to make it accessible for everyone. So one of the benefits is exactly that, is to try to get the word out, and that's our job. Our job is to promote the site and in return promote our members, the members of our community is really what we're trying to form. We'd love to see it as a place people can come and learn more about worship, learn how they can lead better, learn how they can serve better. It forms not just as a network but as a community. Worship leaders to come and find musicians when their drummer backs out on them for the last minute. You know, not that drummers would ever do anything like that.

Not drummers, no. But trying to really form that community, that's the biggest thing. Yeah, and sometimes that does happen. Just on occasion somebody gets sick or you just need a change of plan kind of last minute and you'd like to know who's around you and who's available. But it's also great to know, you know, for a future event you might want to bring in somebody from across the country or even out of the country. Maybe, you know, I've traveled out of the country on occasion to do music, and it's always a wonderful experience. So I think this is something really neat, and I'm glad to sort of be on the, on the early end of this because I think this can be a great tool for many people in the church. And honestly, that's one thing that I get asked about a lot too from pastors. They'll say, hey, we need somebody in that could lead worship, and they're always asking me. Now it gives me a resource to say, "Well, hey, if I'm not available right now, why don't you check theworshipcollective.com because there may be some people that are available when I'm not," or something like that. I like the community that that can build and bring about that we can actually use it to help each other. I wanted to tell our listeners today who are listening, if you do go to theworshipcollective.com, the website, at the bottom of the page there's actually a sign-up. You're just curious to find out more about it, you can go to a section that says "Sign up to receive our weekly emails," and you can put in your name and your email address, and that can help you know more about what the resources are that The Worship Collective has. So I want to encourage all of the listeners who think this might be a good tool for them to maybe just start there. Go and add your email to the list and find out more from the emails that are sent out from the site because you can get a lot of information from that. And it actually helps both of you because it provides those of you listening who would sign up, it gives you good information, and it helps the Worship Collective to have more resources as far as people to reach out to as well. So I love the aspect of community.

And we're also on Instagram and Facebook. People can find us there and keep up with what's going on and how they can be a part of it as well. And right now, Rick Lee James, I would love to offer up a special just for your listeners. If they do see it as something they'd like to be a part of and want to join the collective, we give them a $10 off if they want to join the yearly rate. So it'll only be $79.99. $10 off if they would use the code where it says discount code, enter the code RICKLEEJAMES, no spaces, all one word, RICKLEEJAMES. They can get $10 off if they sign up in the next few weeks.

Well, that's wonderful. And I have to tell you, I think this is the first time ever that I have ever been a code in my life. So that's great.

And a discount code at that, right?

That's right. That's right. I'm not just a code, I'm a discount code. Now, did you say whether it was all lowercase or uppercase, or does it matter?

It doesn't matter. I think it's all lowercase, but I don't think it matters. Just as long as it's all— no spaces.

Well, that's a very kind offer for you to make to our listeners today. We do appreciate that. Well, I'm excited to finally get to have a conversation with you because we've kind of been doing it over email for a couple months now, and then the holidays came, and holidays just in themselves, especially for church people, are very busy. And then I've been in the midst of getting for a new album release, and it's just been totally hectic. So I kind of dropped the ball for a while, but we finally made this happen, and I'm so glad that that we did, and it's great to meet you. Before we end our conversation today, we have a few minutes left. You still good on time?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

All right, let me just ask you a couple of personal questions about you that maybe are not even related to the collective, but just in getting to know you a little bit more. So you've been in youth ministry for 25 years, and that kind of makes you a legend in the youth ministry field.

Well, I don't know if that's— yeah, maybe an urban myth. I don't know about a legend.

Is, uh, is that something that you feel like you'll probably be doing the rest of your ministry career? It seems like you must have a real call to that. Or I'm just curious, I'm always interested to find out about people and where they feel led.

Until God shows me another direction, I, uh, we— when my, when my son, as we mentioned before, who's 19 now, began to almost enter into the youth world into middle school, we had some serious conversations, my wife and I and God together, and said, "You know, if this is something we're going to do, then we want to do this and do it well, but I don't want to be the only influence in my son's life." So we were at a decent-sized church, but I was the only youth staffer there. I was the main person. I had some great volunteers, so I said I want to go somewhere that Either, either I'm going to get out of this and help somebody be the youth pastor to my son and my children, or I'm going to go somewhere where I can have a team of people who can be that influence to them as well. And, and we were, we were blessed to be able to go to a larger church to where we had a staff and a team. And, and we moved over to Georgia from Alabama, and we've been over on this this side of the line for about 10, 11 years now. And so we've been blessed to be here and to be a part of this. And so, you know, until God calls me to do something else, this is what I do. And the other conversations we've had is my daughter's now 13, 8th grade, and I'd love to, if it's possible, and and is in the plans. I'd love to see her finish, uh, go through high school before we, we've moved on to something else. So, uh, you never know, never know. We, we love the idea of The Collective and would love to see it take off, and it might be something that we look at full-time if it gets there, or we, you know, you never know. Just, uh, just trying to keep our hearts and, and Minds open to what God leads us to and, and be receptive to that.

Well, that's terrific, and I appreciate you just sharing a little bit of your own story and your ministry experience. One more question for you, and then, uh, we'll probably call it a day for today. But I know that in ministry we have a lot of moments where, uh, you know, God allows us to be a part of, uh, some really great things in ministry. Um, can you think think of, of one really great moment that, uh, you have just been— and I know this will be hard to narrow down, but is there a great moment in, in the years of ministries that you've done that God's allowed you to be a part of that you could just say, I'm just so proud that I got to be a part of that?

Sure, absolutely. Yeah, having done it so long now, um, and, and not being ordained yet— I've graduated seminary and I'm in the process, and it's been a— it's a long, long, tedious process, the United Methodist Church. And I've taken some time off and and then revive that process again. And that's been a— that's a whole nother podcast for another day.

That's for sure, yeah.

But I'm not finished with that process yet, so I'm not able to do weddings or those kind of things. But I've been asked many times by students to be a part of those. So when I get a chance to be a part of those next step, big next step moments of former students, I think those are always those things. Notably, to go and be there when I've had a couple of students who were ordained who have gone into full-time ministry and got to lay hands on them and pray over them when they were ordained or graduated seminary or whatever. Those are always my proud papa moments, I guess, when you've had people kind of hear their own call on their lives from God and they're not doing something that that we have urged them to do, but they know that this is truly their calling and what God has called them to do, to be a part of those things, have been great.

Well, that's terrific. Well, those are great things to be proud of. And let me just say I'm proud of you for all that you're doing. And it's— having just one ministry is enough, but then to take on other things in addition to that, like the Worship Collective, I think that's great. All of us listening, we could probably all echo what I'm saying, that we're proud of what you're doing and just wish you all the best. I'm so glad to be a part of it and to finally get to meet you and have this conversation today.

So I want to tell you real quick, congratulations, well, new launch on the new album.

Oh, well, thank you.

I had a chance to check some of it out, and we're going to be pushing it, promoting it through the collective as well. So congratulations on that. It's great.

Well, I really appreciate that. Yeah, February 8th is coming fast when it releases, so I'm so excited about it. About that. That's great. Um, well, thank you so much again. I want to just remind everyone listening, it's theworshipcollective.com. You can go and find out a lot of good information there on the website. Jason Scott, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now For the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.