Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #294: Mike Harland and his new book Worship Essentials

<LYRICS>Hymns, Prayers and Invitations</LYRICS> The latest album from Rick Lee James has garnered praise from CCM Magazine, Worship Leader Magazine, UTR Media and more. Written and arranged using hymnals and prayer books for inspiration, this collection of 10 modern hymn-like worship songs will inspire individuals and congregations to draw near to the heart of God. <LYRICS>—in the name of God.</LYRICS> Highlights include Christ Is Lord, inspired by St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer, Advent Hymn, and the Communion Hymn: The Invitation. Worship leaders will be glad to know that all songs on the album are published through LifeWay Worship. Find Hymns, Prayers, and Invitations on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music, CD Baby, and at Rick Lee James.com. .com. Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization automation tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code voices and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. My guest this week on Voices in My Head is Mike Harlan. For most of his life, Mike has led churches in worship leadership roles. Since 2005, Mike has served as the director of worship at Lifeway Christian Resources. He is a published author, Dove Award-winning songwriter, and a worship leader who sings and speaks He speaks nationally and internationally. His blog and podcast Worship Life is followed by pastors, worship leaders, and church musicians around the world. His latest book Worship Essentials releases on November 1st. Mike Harlan, welcome to the Voices in My Head podcast. Thank you, Rick Lee James.

I'm excited to talk to you, and it's good to connect again. Yeah, definitely.

Well, I'd love for you as we get going this morning, Tell us a bit about the genesis of this book and what led you to write it.

Thank you for asking that question. I certainly don't consider myself to be this author that's got to crank out books every so often because the world needs them. I don't feel that way at all. I have a lot of respect for those people that use the medium of book writing to impact the church. This actually grows out of a series of podcasts that I was part of with Dr. Tom Rayner. Dr. Rayner has one of the most amazing audiences that any church leader could have, and I'm grateful that he stewards it so well. But his podcast is called Rayner on Leadership, and his audience is mostly pastors of churches, and literally thousands of people follow his podcasts. Well, a couple of years ago, He asked me, "Hey, I'd like for you to be a guest on my podcast and let's talk about worship." So we sat down. It was one of those deals where we just kind of forgot the microphones were on, and he and I were just talking about worship ministry, particularly in the way a church normally would work on it and think about it. And we just talked like a pastor talking to a worship pastor about worship. And a couple of days after it published, his producer called me and said, this is by far the biggest podcast we've ever had in terms of the number of downloads. People are just downloading this thing like crazy. Would you come back in and do another one? And so I came back in and we recorded another one. And then when that one became public, it replaced the first one as the most downloaded it ever had. And then very soon I was a regular guest on, on his, on his podcast. And what we, what he realized What I realized too through this process is pastors were really eager to have conversations about worship that weren't just driven about music per se. I think one of the reasons pastors can avoid this subject at times is because they may or may not feel equipped to talk about music, and they think this conversation is one about the technicalities of music. But when I began to speak about worship ministry the way a pastor would think about worship ministry in terms of its impact on the church, we discovered pretty quickly this is something pastors want to talk about. So I wrote this book with pastors in mind. Now, it's not to say that only pastors should read it, but I think it could be helpful to church music leaders as well, but really even lay people in worship ministry. But it's not really necessarily talking about the nuts and bolts of music in a church setting. As much as it is how a ministry of making disciples works through a worship discipline in the church. So it's intended to help pastors develop some core language around this subject that's not about quarter notes and crescendos and decrescendos or even technical gear. You know, it's intended to stay away from the jargon that musicians might tend to run to when we talk about worship and really intended to talk about ministry the way a pastor would think of it or church leaders would think of it in terms of the impact it has on the mission of the church.

That's wonderful. And by the way, I want to mention as well your podcast, The Worship Life podcast, and the Rayner podcast is wonderful. Your podcast is really great too, and I think anyone who enjoys those podcasts are definitely going to benefit from reading this book. Talk for a moment, because this book talks a lot about— really, it calls out some of the values that are present when a worship ministry is healthy. And everyone seems to have opinions about what worship is, especially as it pertains to music, and there's so many opinions about it. I wonder if you could speak a bit to us about some of those values that you believe are present when a worship ministry is healthy that you talk about in the book.

Well, people that read the book will notice right away that there's no presumption in the book about a particular stylistic approach to worship. I don't think there is one way you can do it. I think there are many ways you can do music in worship and it be very effective, and I think that's one of the parts that the Lord in His providence allows us to experience with Him. We get to co-create. We get to to be creative musically and go after different nuances and approaches musically. And so the book doesn't— it's not prescriptive in that way at all, and it doesn't even recommend that you pursue a particular music expression in order to achieve something that fosters worship better than anything else. That's not the point at all. There are 4 values that I call out in the book. The first one, the simplest way to say it, is that a healthy worship ministry is Christocentric. It is focused on Jesus. And that sounds okay, well, Captain Obvious here has just said something, but I think ministry leaders might be surprised if they did a really hard inventory of what they are doing in worship. They might be surprised to learn that much of their worship tends to be focused on how we feel about Jesus, maybe even what he's done for us, It might focus on expressing our response to Jesus, our emotion to Jesus, which is very important. We should do that, but the worship itself may or may not say very much about him. And this is one of the attributes I really believe about a healthy worship gathering, that it is completely focused on who he is, on what he's done, and how we respond to him in worship. So a Christocentric focus, I call this value telling the story. It is telling the story in two ways. It's telling the story of who he is, what he's done, what he does now, what he's ready to do in the life of the believer, and it is declarative in that sense. We actually sing the gospel to and over each other. I think it's one of the reasons communion is such an important part of worship. Because it calls us back and draws us back to who he is and what he's done. Uh, and he said, every time you do this, do it in remembrance of me. Um, and you know, and I think when, as Paul talks about our worship, uh, he, he talks like in Colossians 1, that beautiful hymn, uh, there starting in verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for by him all things were created. And you see the Christocentristic focus on— and that's redundant, I know— but you see this obsession and focus on Jesus and who he is and what he's done. And I'm afraid modern worship may not do that as much as we tend to think it does. But so it's telling that story over and over and over to each other, for each other. But the second aspect of telling the story is we're telling our stories of what he's doing and what he's done in our lives. And a healthy worship culture is a place where all of those stories are shared, and the story of his faithfulness to his church, and on and on and on. I give several examples of great storytelling in churches and how that inspires generations to come to remain in their focus on worshiping him. So that's the first value, telling the story. The second one is making disciples. It's actually called Making True Disciples, and it is acknowledging— I'll say this real simply because your podcast isn't long enough for me to tell them all, but it's acknowledging completely that the purpose of music in a church is not to make music, but it is the same mission that the church has, and it is the mission of making disciples. That worship ministry that is only making music and only fostering music and worship expression, but is not engaged in disciple-making, actually can be a distraction in the church rather than a contribution to it. And a healthy worship ministry in a church is in the disciple-making business, and it's led by a disciple-maker and disciple-makers, not just people that are gifted musicians or artists per se, Although artistry is important, artistry is not the point. It's disciple-making. God didn't call us to make music. He called us to make disciples. And Healthy Worship Ministries understand that. And, and I talk about that happens in concentric circles, that there's a smaller— smallest group, a bigger group, a bigger group, and then the world that we are working in to make disciples. The third value, I call it Engaging the Body. And a healthy worship ministry in a church is obsessed with the engagement of the body of believers that are there in worship. They understand that worship is not something you go and watch, it is something you come and do. And I talk about the difference between artists who sing for people and shepherds who lead people to sing. Yes. And there's a really, really big difference. There's a chapter called Artists and Shepherds and what God's called us to do. And if I understand the New Testament at all, when Paul is talking to church leaders, he's talking about a shepherding ministry, not a performing ministry by and large.

Certainly. I was just gonna say that's one of my favorite chapters from the book. It's really good.

Yeah, well, thank you, and I'm sorry I'm not even letting you talk.

No, no, they're here to hear you today.

That's fine. So artists and shepherds, and it's not to say that shepherds shouldn't be artists, but the purpose is a shepherding purpose. And I think the conclusion I come to in that particular chapter is we need artistic shepherds, but the focus is on the shepherding, not on the artistry. And then the last value is, I call it aspiring with purpose. And this is the part of the book that talks about our pursuit of excellence excellence in ministry and even musically with our craft and with the artistry that we bring. Some people, if they looked at these two values, they might think they contradict each other. They really don't. Engaging the body as a shepherd, but, but it's so important, but it's also important to do it in a way that does not distract from the gospel. So, so we actually pursue excellence. This would be making sure the musicians are prepared, that the the visuals are right, that the technology serves the worship instead of driving it. You know, all of those kinds of things. The healthy worship ministry puts all of that in perspective and has a higher purpose for what we do, but actually pursues excellence in everything for the purpose of eliminating the distractions to the gospel. What I understand about God's Word, Rick, is that if we just get out of the way of it, If we just present God's word in it and, and in its, in its form, in its, in its accuracy, um, in its precision, if we will, if we will focus on Jesus and present the gospel with clarity, uh, and then just get out of the way, God, God's Spirit has a way of doing what he needs to do to his church. Uh, so those are the four values that I call out in the book.

Well, that reminds me a little bit of what theologian William Willemot has talked about when he talks to preachers that are training for the ministry. He says, "When the difficult task of preaching the Gospel happens, make sure you hide behind a big Bible." Absolutely. I agree.

I think he's right.

Yeah, I think it goes right along with that. Well, in the book you talk about, and you've talked a little bit about it here actually this morning, but in the book you talk about the use of music in worship. And how it certainly is God's gift to us as an outward way of expressing our praise. However, you also remind us that this transcends any particular style of music, which you already spoke a little bit to this morning, but you use a wonderful example in the book talking about the Psalms, and I've heard you say this before in person as well, and I'd love if maybe you could talk to us a little bit about that because we have this book in Scripture called the Psalms, which is 150 really hymns of the church in some way. It's a book of music, but we don't have the music. And I'd love for you just to talk a little bit about that, about how we get to sort of co-create along with some sacred things that God has preserved for us.

Well, it's a question that I began to ponder probably 10 years ago or longer as I began to study the Psalms. And by the way, I think anyone that's engaged in worship ministry and really cares about it would do well to study the Book of Psalms, um, in a, in a deep way, in a, in a very intense way, because there's so much we learn about worship from just the structure of the Psalms themselves. From, uh, you know, I, if I, if there is a next book for me, Rick, it's going to be about this. So, so I'm real passionate about this. But, um, the Book of Psalms teaches us so much, and not just the one book of Psalms, but all of the Psalms that are in the Bible. There are many that are in the Bible that aren't necessarily just in the 150 that we have in that one book. I think it's fascinating to think about Revelation 15 tells us that in heaven we're going to sing the song of the Lamb and the song by the servant Moses. That's fascinating to think about in heaven, a song that one of us wrote is going to be part of the eternal setlist. And it makes me wonder, uh, Rick, you're a songwriter too, you know, it makes me wonder. I wonder if, if there's any chance I'll get one on that list. I mean, can you imagine? I know what I feel like now when I— when somebody says, hey, we sang your song somewhere. I know what that is, such an encouragement. Can you imagine, uh, all of heaven joining in a chorus of something? That was just— I mean, I'm grinning when I think about that. Sure. Uh, but, but the point, the point that I've I've pursued, or the question I pursued for a long time, is in the earliest manuscripts of the Psalms, we have a number of them that have what scholars call superscription. That's one of the things that's talked about. But in addition to the text of the psalm itself, we have some other information that in God's providence he's allowed us to discover this in the very earliest manuscripts consistently throughout time as we found the book of Psalms. And by the way, It's the most common ancient manuscript we have. There were more copies of the book of Psalms than any other single ancient text. And it doesn't take me long to figure out why that is. I think they were copying it over and over and over because the choir had their own copies of this as they would use this text. It's very common in the ancient literature. The book of Psalms is the most common manuscript found. And in all of these reliable texts, this consistent appearance of these superscriptions. And to give an example, I've got my Bible open in front of me now, so I'll just kind of find one real quickly. I always kind of like to go to— there's some of these that give us a lot of information. You know, I love to look at Psalm 30— oh, where is it? We're looking here. Psalm 34. Yeah, this is a great example. The superscription reads, or this particular rendering of it, concerning David when he pretended to be insane in the presence of Abimelech, who drove him out and he departed. And so Psalm 34 gives us the context. Everybody loves song stories. Sure. And God gives us song stories in some of these, and Psalm 34 is an example of that. But there are a number of them where we get the information of what the tune was, and that's fascinating to think about, that there was a tune name associated with a particular psalm. And I think about Psalm 46 is a great example. The superscription reads, "For the choir director, a song of the sons of Korah according to Alamoth," or "A-la-moth," however it would be said, which was a tune name. So it occurs to me that obviously when the psalms were written, there were particular tunes that were associated with some of these psalms, and in a few of the psalms we actually have the tune name given us. So here's the question: if God could preserve the text, which we certainly believe he did, why didn't he preserve the tune? He could have. I understand there are people today that are chasing some of these tune names and, and studying the musicology of the biblical era and trying to discern and get some grasp of what these tunes would have been like We certainly don't have recordings of them. There's no notation of them anywhere, but, but there were particular tunes that were associated with some of these psalms. So the question that just hits me— maybe it's because I like to write songs— is if he preserved the text, why didn't he preserve the tunes? And I really believe at least part of that answer is that every generation has had their opportunity to create the song of faith with the Lord, that the text of the scripture gives us all the truth we need, We don't need any other truth. As a matter of fact, there is no other truth. I've heard the old preacher say, "If it's new, it's not true, and if it's true, it's not new." I mean, truth is— truth has been truth all along. It's not something— we don't discover truth as if it didn't always exist, or at least we don't uncover truth. We just kind of discover the truth that's been there all along. Our songs should represent that as well. So, but every generation has had the privilege of writing our own tune. And, um, and I think that's one of the great privileges God has given us. We, we, we're invited with this profound text— musicians are invited to collaborate, uh, with the God of the universe who has handed us this truth, and we get to engage it and come alongside it and reconfigure it. We certainly don't have the right to change it at all in terms of its content and its truth, but We get the opportunity to collaborate with God. I don't know a co-writer I want to work with more than that. Yeah. And yet he invites us in to create and to sing. And certainly the biblical admonition to sing a new song, and then certainly that's in that idea. I think that admonition is actually bigger than just music. I think the new song is the new heart that sings the song. But we're welcomed in. And just like Moses is quoted in Revelation 15, one of his songs, I think that you and I have the opportunity to come alongside the truth of God's Word and create, and I think it's one of the joys we have as church musicians.

I agree with you there. You know, this question that I have for you is not so much from something you wrote about in the book, but what you just said there and what you wrote about in the book made me think of another question that I'd love to have you speak to for a moment. I've been thinking about that and the idea that you talk about with each generation finding its own tune and its own way of expressing its worship through song. We think of the time that we're in now, and it seems like there are so many tunes, so much to the point that a song that came out 5 years ago seems old. Yeah, exactly. Churches just change so rapidly with those tunes. Sometimes I feel like that's maybe too fast. But at the same time, I also think about churches, and I'm not picking on anyone here, but my brother-in-law, for instance, goes to a Catholic church, and it seems like oftentimes when I visit, they're somewhere stuck between the medieval era and maybe '60s folk music, you know, somewhere in that range, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of variance there. I'd just love to get your thoughts on, do you think that churches that might be musically stuck in some ways, could really benefit from the idea of some new musical response, and maybe even in the way that revival comes about in some way as the Spirit starts moving. I'd love to just kind of, you know, hear your thoughts on that. Well, I think one of them—

that's a great question, Rick. I think one of the most important values that anyone that's planning and leading worship is context. I think every community, for so many reasons, the variables are— it would be hard to capture all the variables here, but I think every worship experience happens in a context of people, and that there is— I think the first responsibility of the leader is to engage those people And so I think in some communities, for sure, we could be even more engaging if we were willing to color a little differently from time to time in directions perhaps that they haven't colored in before, just for the purpose of keeping it interesting, refreshing, current, the transgenerational where— and I think any church that finds itself with a hard, fast collection of music that we can't go beyond that, I think that can be very risky as time goes on because certainly as culture develops and changes, we don't want to be culturally dependent But we do have to understand that we're in a context and we're dealing with people from a variety of places culturally, and that what we do in our music, and I would say beyond our music, I would say to that same church, has the way they dress changed over the years? Is the way they handle the text or when they in sermons Does their sermonizing, is it ever updated? Is it ever become— do your illustrations get updated? Are you still telling only using biblical illustration, which everything should be based on Bible truth, but is there a cultural way to say some of these things that will connect with emerging generations? I think the same thing's true with music. You can't imagine ever building a church building and never refreshing it, never putting on a fresh coat of paint, never changing the carpet out, never— I mean, it— well, this is the way we built it, and it's good, and it was good enough for our grandparents, it's going to be good enough for us. Well, obviously we would never do that. We all have inside plumbing these days, but the church didn't used to do that, you know, because it didn't exist. I mean, I'm reaching for examples here, and I get in trouble when I do that, but in the same way, I think I think it's very appropriate for music to have its own newness about it and freshness about it, because that— when I talk about engaging the body, that's one of the ways we engage, is we connect. Now, we don't serve the culture, but the culture becomes a tool for the truth, and the truth hasn't changed, but the way we sing it, the way we say it. And thank goodness, Rick Lee James, I mean, you and I back in the day when I'm studying music history and I'm in the Renaissance period, I can't imagine doing worship today using the earliest music of the church from way back then. Thank goodness Bach came along and Beethoven came along and other great master composers that began to push the boundaries of where music would fit. If Handel felt this way, we wouldn't have Messiah. So I think that every generation has that opportunity to bring a cultural context of the truth musically, and that's not for the purpose of impressing a congregation. It's for the purpose of engaging one. And if we ever came to a place— I don't think any generation would have the right to say, okay, what we've discovered musically is all that ever should be done. I don't think any generation has that right. I think every expression, every generation finds their own expression, and that it would be dangerous, I think, for a church leader to marry one approach and stay right there in perpetuity. I think they're missing opportunities to engage when they do that. Sure.

Well, thank you for speaking to that a little bit. I appreciate it. And I think what you had said about the Psalms really guides us in a lot of that too, and so I appreciate that perspective. Well, we're getting a little low on time, and so I was trying to decide— there's so much good territory in your book to cover. But I think for the end today, I was either going to ask you about Oprah or conflict. But I think I'm going to let listeners read the book to find out more about your Oprah story, which I love.

I'm very interested if Oprah ever will see my Oprah story. That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

That would be great. It would be a great dialogue, you know, for sure. But I think I'm going to address maybe conflict. Today, just because we seem to be in a world and in a state right now of just constant conflict, it seems like. Whether it be social media or people that get in political arguments or all kinds of different things, that conflict happens all the time. And churches tend to run away from conflict often. And you talk about this in your book, and you say that many churches seem to make decisions intending to keep the peace or to placate certain segments of a congregation. Congregation. And I've often heard that peace is more than just the absence of conflict, but you talk about unity in your book and that unity is not achieved by eliminating conflict and that there has to be a higher purpose than chasing down issues. So probably what's going to be our last question today, I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about that and the idea of dealing with conflict in a worship ministry.

Well, I mean, conflict and worship ministry sadly are two ideas that most churches think of at the same time because as with any aesthetic there are always going to be preferences. Everyone's going to have preferences and if any church that hasn't had a good conflict lately just needs to elect a committee to redesign or renovate the worship center and they'll have conflict immediately over the carpet color, over the location of the speakers over— it is the piano in the middle of the room or the, you know, or— I remember one church I was part of that the piano had always been on stage right and the organ on stage left, but for some really, really good reasons during a renovation, we were going to flip that. And man, there were some people that couldn't wrap their brain around that. You know, so conflict seems— well, I would say this: anywhere you have people, you're going to have some measure of conflict. Even in the perfection of the garden, Cain and Abel, you know, after Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden and Cain and Abel come along, they have conflict because they're two people, and so it brings with it. I think the mistake in worship ministry is when we make choices for the purpose of trying to eliminate conflict in the name of creating unity, and I'll give you an example of some of the ones I talk about in the book. 'We're gonna do a contemporary service at 8:30 and a traditional service at 11,' or fill in the blank with whatever nuance of that your church may do. But I contend that those kinds of choices never eliminate conflict. What they actually do is delay the conflict that's going to come. When you segregate generations from each other, you may have a short-term peace but it's only because they're not in proximity. And the church loses when you isolate the generations from each other in the name of eliminating conflict in worship. You're actually delaying an inevitable conflict will happen over time, and sadly, by the time that conflict does come, these people don't even know each other. They become two different churches or three different churches built around a generational segregation that was fostered by a musical choice. Or a preferential choice. And remember, the book— the subtitle of the book is Creating a Healthy Worship Culture Without Starting a War. And I think we've done more to try to avoid the war rather than creating a culture that fosters unity. And the culture that fosters unity transcends style. It actually appeals to a maturity on the part of believer where where not only can I experience and worship using a style that may not be my favorite, it actually— I begin to prefer that your worship experience is more valuable to me than my own. And I begin to— the generations begin to prefer each other. And unity now comes not in the placation of music preference. It comes in the preference of each other. In worship. When generations begin to prefer the other and begin to serve the other, that's what Christian maturity is. And so I have a book, there's a chapter in the book that I imagine is going to make some people mad, and I'm not trying to make people mad, but there's a chapter in the book that talks about worship segregation or worship desegregation. Yeah. Where we begin to find unity around the gospel and around the corporate response of worship to Jesus instead of finding unity around a music style. Because here's the truth, in the seat that I sit in at Lifeway, I get this question as much as any question. I'll say for every time I get the phone call that says, "Hey, what do we need to do to start a new service of a different music style?" I'll answer that question. I'll have that discussion. I can talk to church leaders, and I'm not even one that would say you should never do that. I don't think any of us can be prescriptive enough to say to a church, "You should never do anything." I think every church leader has to pray, has to seek God, and God gives leadership, and who am I to say you should never do something? But I want to tell you, for every one time I get that phone call, today I'm getting the call much, probably 5 times. That the pastor that calls and says, "Hey, we've done 2 worship styles for the last 15 years. How do we put it back together?" Wow. And that's— now I don't have a study to show you, but I would say it's a trend, just my own experience anecdotally. Churches— and it seems to be 10 to 15 years later, and that's what I would tell any leader is when you're thinking about, let's start that contemporary service, I want to ask you to play that out 15 years and ask yourself the question, "What is our church gonna be like 15 years from now if we do this today?" I want to tell you, 15 years from now, it's very possible, maybe even probable, that you're gonna realize, "Gosh, we need to put this back together somehow because what we've done is we've created multiple congregations," is what we've done. And as one of those ages and the other one, it's hilarious to watch somebody just in 15 years to go from a 30-year-old to 45-year-old. And it's hilarious to see the 45-year-old now relating to the 20-year-old. And if they don't— if they haven't found a way to relate to each other in biblical community already in worship, it's going to be a big, big, big challenge. And then other issues come up in the church., and you'll see this generational divide that the worship community has actually created, but then will begin to make itself apparent in other issues that the church is dealing with. Here's what I would always say, Rick. I would say that when churches learn how to prefer each other in worship, they now begin to create something that has community around it, and music doesn't have the power to do that in and of itself. One person's contemporary will be another person's traditional, and you really cannot build unity around a style. It won't last. It might have a short-term benefit, and you may actually delay a battle doing it and making that choice, but worship was never intended to be something to represent my preferences. It actually represents my sacrifices. And we need to create a community of believers who prefer each other in worship rather than demanding their own preferences. So man, I mean, we could talk about this the rest of the day.

It's a huge topic for sure.

But this— and I'll tell you another thing that feeds this is churches will make that worship decision and then they're backed into a corner on the discipleship side of things because of that worship choice. And I'll give you an example. Most student ministries don't want to split their students up between multiple services. So they will— and almost every church I know, even when they don't split their students up in discipleship hour, if they offer something for high school students, one of those hours will be the one they all go to, and then there'll be this second hour with 10 or 12 kids or 5 or 6 kids who go to the other service because mom and dad made their worship choice, and, and so without intending to, and if you're in a church that has a lot of families in it, Grandma and Grandpa are going to one service and Mom and Dad are in one and the students might be in a different one, and then if your church happens to do a kids' church, then that might happen. So without intending to, we've actually blown the family up at worship and, and the family never comes into a worship moment. And here's what I tell any church leader, and this is probably a good place to stop because if I get going much more on this, we'll be here for the rest of the day. But, but, but mom and dad in a nanosecond have more influence over their children in worship than Kids Worship could ever have in a year. What mom and dad do in worship by far influences their children more in worship than any church leader could in a service that are designed for kids. So when we blow the family up in our worship choices and then the discipleship ministry follows suit by putting this age group here and that age group there, we actually make it possible for people to come to our church for years and never worship with anybody outside their own generation. And then someday they're 45 or 50 years old and they look up and they realize they've missed something that's vital about the community. I'm telling you, Titus chapter 2 is in the Bible for a reason. The older men speak to the younger men. The older women speak to the younger women. And yet in our church ministries, we isolate the generations from each other because of worship choices. Yeah. And we actually undermine one of the core functions of the body of Christ, and that is the mature believers discipling and developing the younger believers. And that not only applies to Bible study hour, it applies to worship as well. And we are actually undermining the purpose of the gathering of the church when we isolate the generations from each other in worship. So I'm telling you, music style is important, but I don't know any music style that's worth that. Yeah, I just don't know that there's one that's worth blowing the family up like that in worship. We lose so much when we do.

That is, that is so good. And, and the listener, you've been listening today and You can tell that this is already a wonderful book just by hearing what Mike has been saying. So I want to point all of you to Worship Essentials, the new book from Mike Harlan. It comes out on November 1st, and chances are by the time this podcast releases, it'll already be out. So you can just go to wherever you buy your books, preferably lifeway.com.

That suits me, yeah. That'd be great.

But Mike, this has been wonderful, and I want to thank you for taking some of your time, and I know you have an extremely busy schedule, but you've enriched many of us today. Thank you, Rick. I appreciate it.

And brother, let me just say, all of us at LifeWay Worship are so proud of you and the work you do and the songs you've written that are part of our world, and we're thankful for you. And I follow what you're writing and what you're doing and appreciate you so much. Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate it. Well, as I always tell my guests, Mike Harlan, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week. Oh, thank you, man. 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, follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing on my author page on Amazon. There's also the Voices in My Head Facebook community found at facebook.com/groups/voicesinmyhead. /voicespodcast. And if you want to follow my alter ego on Twitter, follow my popular Mr. Rogers quote account found @MrRogersSay. Also, make sure to follow my appearance schedule on my website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website at rickleejames.com/bookings. And it would mean the world to me if you would write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction. May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen you in your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.