Preserving the Worship Leader - Joshua James | Faithly Podcast

(0:00 - 0:28) There seems to be this hunger for belonging and authenticity, especially in the younger generations. There is this pure pursuit of the glory of God, and that's not an indictment on anything that's happening now or in the past, but I'm just, I'm seeing it. This is The Faithly Podcast. (0:29 - 5:24) Welcome to Faithly Podcast season two. I'm Alicia Lee, and I'm so excited for this episode of season two, because today we're joined by Joshua James of Likewise Worship. It is a ministry committed to serving and preserving worship leaders, and they've already served 2,000 worship leaders and counting. Josh, welcome. Thanks, Alicia. I'm grateful and honored to talk with you today. Josh, maybe we can start with the beginning. What was the catalyst for starting Likewise Worship? Like, what was the gap that you saw in the ministry world? Yeah, so I'd say the genesis of Likewise, really. So our founder, his name's Justin Unger, one of all-time friends of mine, and so he wins this songwriting competition, goes, does the Christian music artist deal, was signed to a label in Nashville, and then he and his wife felt this call to leave kind of the industry and get involved in a local church. And so that was his first opportunity as a worship pastor, and immediately he realized his DNA was not just to lead God's people and shepherd God's people in worship, but it was to develop other leaders. And so that's been core to his DNA. He has done that for multiple staff members on our team, myself included, so that's how we got connected. I was 17 years old. He comes, pursues me as a young worship leader, and I became his unpaid intern at a local church, and I became his associate, and then he sent me out to my first full-time worship leader position. I was 20 years old, and he was pretty influential in the city, and we had a lot of young worship leaders. We were nearby a university. We had a lot of young worship leaders who were just really hungry for some sort of training. They had the gifts, like incredible talent musically, vocally. They loved the Lord, but the gap was, how do I not be a performer on Sunday morning? How do I actually lead a congregation into the presence of the Lord and to worship him without me feeling like I'm a rock star or a commodity? And so that was kind of the region we were in. I leave, and all of a sudden, Justin has a bunch of applications for the next intern, and there's a lot of people in the area. I had the privilege of learning from him, and so he brings on a couple, but about 18 months later, he calls me and says, hey, I have an idea. Can you meet me for coffee? So I go and meet him, and he says, listen, I've been thinking, how do I not let all these young leaders, especially, fall through the cracks? Because I can't have 25 interns. And so he said, I have this idea. Will you help me? And I said, absolutely. Any chance to work with Justin again? You really didn't have to explain much to me. I was all in. And so that kind of began likewise, where we started to meet with worship leaders once a month on a Saturday morning, and we built out this 12-month, it was pretty much like a curriculum for how to shepherd people. So we talked about everything from song selection to stage design to building and managing your volunteer teams. And so that was really the catalyst, was there was just a real hunger for development among young leaders. And so that's how Likewise got going. But as we started to pour into these leaders, we weren't a non-profit at this point. We started to hear the same story over and over again, and it was leaders who had gotten a few years into leading worship and then left the church and said, I just can't do this anymore. I'm going to go use my gifts somewhere else. We were running into a lot of, especially younger leaders who were deconstructing at the time, who had been worship leaders. And so we started to really press into that. And the more we kept meeting with leaders, the more we felt like the Lord was kind of changing the trajectory of the call for us to not just training and coaching, but actually primarily to soul care and discipleship. And that was the real catalyst for what Likewise is today. That's when we began our process of becoming incorporated as a non-profit and going through all of that. We felt clear in the call to go and care for ministry leaders so that they can be in this for the long haul. And so that's kind of how Likewise got started, was we had the need of practical training and coaching, but that kind of led us into being able to see the greater need underneath all that of worship leaders needing to be discipled and cared for. Wow. That is so cool. Thank you for sharing all of that. Now, how long have you been building for? How long since that coffee that you had with Justin when he told you he had an idea? Yeah. So as of this recording, it's been nine years. (5:24 - 5:29) Nine years. Wow. Nine years and 2,000 worship leaders and counting. (5:29 - 7:31) And counting. Amazing. Well, so today you're spending most of your time serving worship leaders broadly right across all these cities. How do you balance between that and then staying rooted in local church calling? Yeah, that's a tough one because whenever you start to like grow an organization, you start to think, well, how do we, you know, people talk about like scale, you know, that gets thrown. It's a weird term sometimes when you're talking about ministries and things like that. And for us, I think what's really helped us stay grounded is all of our ministry really is local to a degree. So we are spread out across the country. But as we're spread out across the country, we have a local representative in most of the places where we're doing ministry. And so what that looks like is we have area directors in different cities, whether that's Nashville, St. Louis, you know, up in Twin Cities, Minnesota. We have a boots-on-the-ground pastor who's been a worship leader for a very long time, seasons, knows the culture. And their main job is to pursue relationship with local worship leaders. So there is this sense of as we grow broadly, we actually grow deeper as well, because for any new city we're reaching, for in-person gatherings, it comes with this relationship that's most important to us. I mean, because especially when you're talking about ministry leaders, which I'm sure we'll probably talk about at some point, you know, you're getting up on stage and people just see that version of you, but there's a whole world underneath. And to let anybody in on that world's a scary, sometimes, you know, it's a really vulnerable thing. And so for us, building relationships, having that relational equity as a third party to worship leaders is intensely important. And so for as much as we want to grow the reach of the ministry broadly, for us, it needs to be happening at the same time. We're going deeper with worship leaders. Otherwise, you know, we feel like we're missing an opportunity to help worship leaders get to the roots of who they are and get them rerouted in Christ, if they feel like that's an issue for them. (7:32 - 8:45) Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. So you said that as you were meeting young worship leaders, they were deconstructing. And that was nine years ago when you first started doing this. Has that changed? Like, is what they need still the same? The things that they're struggling with, the things that you're finding as you're getting close and deep with worship leaders? Yeah, I think some of it's the same. But really, the deeper, I think, need right now is just to understand, who am I in all of this? And I think when you talk about, you know, things like burnout, one of the main contributors is this performance culture that we live in, right? You know, I started leading worship at 13 years old. And, you know, you get some opportunities, and then by 18, you know, you're leading worship in arena. It's like, you're an 18 year old kid, like, what business do you have doing that? And if you don't have somebody walking alongside you, like, that does something, you know? And so I think the need now is people are more interested in how do I keep myself intact? How do I keep doing this for the long haul? So I think a lot of the deconstruction that was back when I was in college, that was a really like hot topic item. (8:45 - 11:09) And I think part of that was you had young leaders who were being given opportunities, mainly because of the gifting that they had. And, you know, I think there was this assumption that the character and discipleship, all that's going to come eventually, let's give them the platform so that they can do Sunday morning really well. And then all the other stuff, just by osmosis or something, you know, they're going to grow into maturity in Christ. And so I think now there's more of an emphasis on, okay, how do we curate an inner life that sustains our ministry for the long haul? So I think that's the need at this point. Wow. Amazing. I know that you guys have a lot of different programs, care programs and academy offerings and more. Like, how do you decide which offerings to prioritize? Yeah. So it kind of, I know we were talking about this with Faithly too, there's always so many things going on. And I think the beauty of our staff has grown so much. So this is, the answer is twofold. One, you have the worship leader who is really telling you through your relationship with them, what do they really need? Like that, you're kind of uncovering what's going on. Cause you know, it shifts, you know, every six months or something, there seems to be some sort of new challenge that collectively worship leaders are working through. And so you were learning what the need is by being in relationship with these leaders. But the other side of that is we've essentially been working on a ministry that we all wish we would have had 10, 15 years ago. And it's fun for me to say that because in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm a product of likewise, because of Justin's mentorship in my life, those early years, but I'm actually the second youngest person on our staff. So there's lots of longevity. There's lots of experience there, lots of faithfulness there. And so we have a lot of people coming from that angle of how do we develop something that I wish I would have had as a worship leader earlier on in my time as a worship leader. And so between those two things, we felt like the Lord shone a light on what's most important. And that's always the challenge, right? There's so many amazing things you could do in ministry, right? And so the question is, God, what are you actually asking us to do? And we feel like He's slowly, bit by bit, uncovering that for us as we go along. (11:10 - 14:34) That's good. That's so good. So how many cities are you in now, Josh? We're in 11. So we have regular gatherings in 11 cities right now. All right. Yeah, I know you guys are in California, you're in Phoenix, you're in Nashville, you're in a bunch of places. Does community look different, depending on which of the cities you're in? Totally different. And it was a little bit of a learning curve for us. So we started in Phoenix, and Justin, a couple years in, ended up moving to Southern California. And so we roll into Southern California thinking, we'll just do the same thing we did in Phoenix. And then I was like, oh, wait, this culture is so different than Phoenix. So the times of the gatherings were just weird. Nobody would come to the time that would work in Phoenix. And there was a little bit of a learning curve there. But what I feel like helped us with that is we've brought people onto our team who already know the culture of their cities. So when people ask us, how do you choose what city to go and be in? For us, it's, well, who has God brought along the way that's a right fit for the ministry? Because you talk about this with Faithly, I feel like wherever there's worship leaders, there's a need for worship leaders to be in community. So that's pretty much anywhere. And so what's happened is God's brought the right people, for example, in Twin Cities, our area director, Terry. Terry's been there for years and years and years. So Terry knows the culture. He knows the worship leaders already. So we're not taking an outside person and planting them in a city and trying to understand what is this culture like. We're taking people who have been rooted in a place, who have that relational equity already with pastors, who have the experience, who understand the people, and then just empowering them to do the ministry in their own context. Because it is so different. It is so different. Right. Wow. That's so interesting. So you mentioned people in Southern California didn't meet at the—didn't want to meet at the same time as people did in Phoenix. Are there any other differences that you would call out? You know, I would say that—it's funny because you hear stories, you see pictures of all these gatherings. I think in some cities there is this desire for, I want to learn. I want to come to a gathering and I want to stoke in some sort of practical tip. I would say some of our cities and worship leaders tend to maybe have more of that bent where you get to some of the cities that we're typically are a little bit more busy and they want to come and their highest value for the gathering for the most part is just the relational time together. I think the pace of the city influences the desire of the worship leader for what the gatherings could look like for them. And so our gatherings, they aren't—it's not just time that's different. They aren't cookie cutter. We're not running through the same curriculum where we've really trusted our directors to discern, okay, Lord, what do these group of people that I know need this month or need in this season? And we've empowered them to do that. And so, but yeah, it's funny. Every area has their little quirks. And what we didn't realize is a lot of people in those areas, they just absorb the culture and that comes out in the way that they engage with our offerings, which has been fun, but it's been not as difficult as we thought it would be simply because we've, we have people who understand it all in those areas. Yeah. We're the right move to make, so. (14:35 - 16:58) Wow. That's so good. Thank you for sharing that. How do you make the decision about whether or not to add a city? Yeah. So lots goes into that, but really the main thing is, Lord, what are you doing? And that sounds kind of like a cop-out answer, but, you know, we mentioned it earlier. It's like, there's a lot of things we could do if we, you know, do we want to just go and try to be in as many cities as possible? Well, that sounds like success. Like that sounds great. But I think the question that the Lord keeps bringing us back to is, what is he, what is he doing? What does he want to do? When does he want to do it? So for us, it's all about people. Every single area that we have started has started because God has relationally connected us to a person that was the right fit for our staff and culture that caught the vision that was, you know, bled for the same things that we feel we do. And the Lord, through a bunch of different circumstances in all these different area directors we have, just made it abundantly clear this is the right person. And so for us, it's like, okay, then let's roll with it. And then there's challenge of, you know, fundraising. So we're a nonprofit, mainly donor-based. So we've walked that journey with our staff of helping them start to raise their own support to do this. So a lot of our staff will start on like five to 10 hours a week, or maybe 20 hours a week. And it's funny because they start to do this ministry and realize, like, this is all I want to do. This is what I feel like I'm made to do. And so then we have those conversations of, okay, how do we help you raise the support to make that possible? Right now we have a host in Boise, Idaho, for example. And so instead of doing gatherings in Boise, he does quarterly gatherings. And it's kind of a way for us to get a foot in the door in the city with the right person as we figure out, and as they discern, okay, God, what are you asking me personally, my family, to do in this life, in this time period? So yeah, that's kind of how it works, is trying to keep our eyes open to, God, who are you bringing along the path? Who's the right fit? And what's been amazing is we have taken so many leaps of faith over the past nine years that, you know, doing that, you just grow your confidence in the Lord. Like, if you feel like He's calling you to do something, you just learn to just take that step. (16:59 - 18:32) And over and over and over again, He's affirmed a lot of that, and He's provided for our amazing team to be doing this ministry. So. Wow, I love that answer. Thank you. I mean, the Lord has clearly put a huge burden on Justin's heart and your heart for serving worship leaders. And what I hear from you all throughout this conversation, not just in this response, is a continual going back to the Lord and seeking guidance and His direction on how best to serve worship leaders. I love it. So, you've mentioned burnout in this conversation, and I think that, you know, on your website and in other places, you talk about all those worship leaders who have considered leaving ministry, and it's a lot of them. How have you designed your programs and likewise really to address that reality? Yeah, so burnout, burnout's a buzzword. It's hard to talk about burnout, because you hear about burnout, like, just in the workplace, you hear about burnout in ministry, you hear about burnout, you know, for parents, like everybody has their own usage of that term. So I think the way we define burnout is when a worship leader begins to feel the burden, whether that's emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, they feel that to such a degree that they think they and the church would be better off if they left. So if you're starting to feel like that as a worship leader, that's what we would consider as the symptoms of burnout. (18:33 - 19:42) I think it's important to clarify what we mean by that, because I feel like everybody has, you know, definition. But we heard that from a lot of leaders, of like, this is taking a toll on my family, or I'm not as engaged as I want to be, my volunteers know that, my senior pastor knows that, and it just grinds the soul after a while to where they feel like the only way I can get some relief here is just to walk away and do something different. And with that comes, you know, for a lot of people, comes guilt after the initial relief, like, did I walk away from my calling, my being disobedient? So we try to help worship leaders walk through that process. But the way that we are designed to do this, and it's so funny, I keep coming back to this, but, and the reason I keep coming back to this is I feel like we're always just so keenly aware of the fact that we're just a bunch of worship leaders who, like, God kind of pushed into starting an organization, you know what I mean? So you're learning all these things along the way, but I feel like God's uncovered the next five feet for us as we've gone along. And then you look back and you're like, wow, that actually makes a lot of sense. And you see how God put all these pieces together. (19:42 - 21:42) So right now, the way we're designed to do that is we're able to help worship leaders first identify where they're at. Self-awareness for worship leaders is so difficult. Most worship leaders aren't spending the time to really ask how they're doing. And I think that's ministry leaders in general, mainly because there's so many people that need you, right, or are depending upon you to provide some sort of ministry to them. You're running a bunch of programs, and you start to feel like, I'm going to be okay. I'll deal with myself later. There's so much on the plate that I have to attend to. And so then you ask a leader, how are you doing? Oh, I'm doing good. You know, it's busy. And we all hear that all the time. And I think we become content with that answer. We expect that answer. But I think the problem is, is worship leaders don't know the right questions to ask. And that was our first clue. Because when you think about burnout, everybody just thinks, okay, I'll solve my burnout by taking a vacation. But I think most of us realize that that actually didn't help. It just gave a temporary relief to what's going on underneath the hood. And so we ended up developing this self-assessment of worship leaders called the Worship Leader Health Check. And it's about 50 questions, and you kind of get scored in a few different areas. And the goal of the assessment is to help you ask good questions, and then to probe further investigation into what's going on underneath the hood. It's like, is the check engine light on? We would say the check engine lights on if you're starting to feel that really heavy burden to a point where you're considering the only way out of this is for me to take a step back from ministry. And so why? Why are you feeling that way? And so this self-assessment is designed as the first step on that journey for you. So a worship leader will take this self-assessment. We feel like there's really three general areas that make a worship leader healthy. And we talk about that likewise a lot. Our vision statement is healthy leaders, humble worship, one church. And we feel like God's called us to focus on helping leaders become and remain healthy. (21:42 - 22:00) And so they're healthy when they're rested, not just from ministry, like they're actually taking vacations, but they're resting in ministry. They have rhythms that help them to detach their identity from the work that they're doing. And they're resting in the Lord as they do ministry. (22:00 - 31:08) So are they rested? Are they trusted in their ministry role? That's a big thing. Does my vision for what we're doing on Sundays match the pastor's vision? Because if it doesn't, that's a grind on you. Do my volunteers trust me? Do I trust that the elders and the church leadership actually cares about me? Or do I feel like a commodity? So am I rested? Am I trusted? And then am I discipled? Can I articulate the gospel clearly? We just did a national survey and 35% of worship leaders said that they were not confident in their ability to articulate the gospel and other theological concepts. 35%. Wow, that's a staggering stat. People who are getting up on stage, leading people in worship, don't feel confident articulating. Talk about a burden in your soul, like I'm getting up on stage and I'm actually not sure totally. I mean, I get it. I believe in Jesus. I'm not a fake or phony, but there's a lot I don't know about this and I'm supposed to confidently lead the charge in this. Or the big one underneath that is sin in the life of the leader that's covered. When you're a ministry leader, you feel this temptation to just bury it because your alternatives are, well, do I go tell my pastor about this? And depending on your relationship, is my job at risk? Is my livelihood at risk? So that's a temptation to not disclose, hey, I'm struggling with X, Y, Z. What about my small group? Well, people are putting me on a pedestal. Do I really want to disappoint these people by letting them know that I struggle like a human being, just like everybody else does? Or I'll just bury it, and I think it's the most common. I'll bury it and hope that one day it'll go away. And I think that it's easy to believe that. I'll get through the season, right? And I'll get over this on my own. I'll work through it and I could come out the other side. And so even on the health check, we straight up ask you, is there anything hidden in your life? And the reason we're trying to get there is because the things that are hidden can't be healed. And you can only last so long as a ministry leader, as a worship leader, getting up on stage to lead people in worship. And you're looking at stuff you shouldn't be looking at the night before, or you're drinking yourself to sleep. I mean, the stories we've heard from worship leaders over the last nine years are wild and nobody would ever know. And so these things are happening inside of us, right? We're humans. We still cling to the flesh. God's working that out of us as we go. But there is this temptation to keep those not so glamorous parts of our lives hidden. And that just eats away at the soul over time. So anyways, this is a long answer to your question, but we're designed to help worship leaders identify what actually underneath is making me feel this way. And then beyond that, then they get connected to our programs. So for example, if they come back and rested needs attention, if they need rest from ministry, we do an annual retreat every year for worship leaders. It's been in Southern California. We did a cruise two years ago, which was a blast. It's for worship leaders and their spouses to come. I think people don't think about the spouses as much as they probably should and the burden they carry as being the spouse of a ministry leader. So we provide rest for worship leaders that way. If they come back trusted, need some attention. We have so much experience on our staff to help worship leaders prepare for and have a respectful, genuine, loving conversation, hard conversation that might need to happen with leadership. So helping them discern, is that the next step for me? How do I go about that? And how do I reconcile any bitterness or something in my heart before I go and have this conversation? So there's that type of coaching. There's ministry coaching. It's kind of how we started with building sets or managing teams, all of that. We do so much of that stuff. So we want to help worship leaders identify what's going on underneath the surface. So it's not just this general, I don't know if I want to do ministry anymore. Helping them understand and identify what's causing that feeling. And then beyond that, getting them connected to our staff or a program or a tool in our ministry to help them take that next step. Because a win for us is that a worship leader that we get to walk alongside 30 years down the road gets to turn around and look and see a few things. One, the fruit of their ministry, that their marriages are intact, that they have relationships with their kids. And most importantly, that they love Jesus more at the end of their ministry than they did when they first started. And there's just, because we have an enemy who's alive and well, there's a lot of barriers to worship leaders for that, and a lot of them get festered in isolation. So that's kind of the big answer to how we are designed to help worship leaders avoid burnout. Wow, I love it. It's a big answer, and it's a beautiful answer. I want to make one comment and then ask a question. The comment is about the stat you shared. I think you said about a third of worship leaders don't feel like they could confidently articulate the gospel, right? I'm still so struck by that, but I'm connecting what you said to an earlier comment you made about why you started Likewise Worship and the need you saw in soul care and in discipleship, right? I think that once someone gets the title worship leader or ministry leader, sometimes we wear that label and forget about the label that we all also have, which is disciple, right? No matter where you are in your journey. And so I love that that is a huge part of what you're doing at Likewise Worship. Now here's a question for you. So the questions that you're asking worship leaders in this questionnaire, they're not questions that anyone else is asking them, right? These are really, really vulnerable questions. How do you think about creating spaces where they feel safe to share with you? What are some of the guidelines that you give to city leaders about creating environments where people feel safe and encouraged and supported to be able to be vulnerable with those things? Great question, because if you're going to provide that, you're kind of opening a can of worms. You don't know what a leader is going to come with. And so we've actually had to really work on this the last couple of years, trying to determine, okay, when a worship leader shares this or anything, what is within our ability to what we'll call biblical counseling? So the term counseling is hard, because if you're not licensed to be a counselor, there are things within our ministry that we're not able, if it's a deeper work. So we would kind of treat ourselves as triage, almost. A worship leader will come in with a wound or something like that. And the first question is, what kind of care do you think you need? Do we think the worship leader needs? And then are we qualified to give that care? And if both of those, the answer to the question is yes, then we're in our sweet spot. However, if the answer to that second question is this feels something that's beyond our training for area directors, if this is something that might need some, there's an addiction or something that probably needs the help of somebody who has been trained in more of the counseling type of work, we're actually building networks of counselors that we trust that we can refer leaders to. So that's always been the challenge too, is trying to understand, okay, I mean, we've heard it all from worship leaders over the last nine years. And there are things that are discipleship issues, right? There are things that, hey, I can sit across from you. I can encourage you. I can challenge you as a brother in Christ or for our female staff as a sister in Christ. Here's what God's word says about this. I can hold you accountable to this. And a lot of the stuff we do is within that realm. And what we've trained our area directors to do is to discern what falls in that category, but what falls outside of that category and what to do with the leader at that point. Going back to your question about creating the safe environment, what's blown us away the most is the moment that you give a worship leader an opportunity to be vulnerable, for the most part, they take it. If you are sitting across the table from a worship leader, and we hear this all the time from area directors, the first meeting, they're willing to put a lot of it out on the table. And I think part of that is they've been desperate to share with somebody, but they didn't know who. So all of a sudden you have a third party who's disconnected from your church, who's disconnected from your inner circle of friendships. So there's a little bit of trust there. But also what I think worship leaders appreciate about Likewise is there's no catch. (31:08 - 31:24) It takes them a while to, okay, well, what do you want from me? And that's the beauty of being a nonprofit and being donor supported is the answer is nothing. We raise support to be a resource for you, period. And there are things within our ministry that you can pay for. (31:24 - 32:56) Our retreats and things like that. But we've made a commitment to where we're never going to charge a worship leader money to get the essential care that they need. And I think when people realize that, there's no catch. They're not going to ask them for something that creates that trust and relational equity of like, oh, wait, no, they actually just exist to do this very thing for me. And so I think worship leaders are ready to be vulnerable. I don't think it's as much of a pride thing. I think it's fear. And I think it's who do I trust with this? And so being a third party of people who have been there, who've been in the trenches for years and years, who have seen a lot, to at least just be able to listen, is a huge, a huge blessing for leaders. I love it. Okay, we haven't talked at all about like, sort of the musical or creative resources that worship leaders need. Do you provide resources or guidance or help with any of that aspect of their calling? Yeah, so you're talking about the actual like musicianship. Yeah, that's right. Obviously, you're talking to a non-worship leader, so I'm like struggling for the vocabulary. So yeah, a couple of things. One of them is, I would say, one of the most fruitful parts of our ministry is actually our vocal coaching ministry. So we have a full-time vocal coach. Her name is Martha. She's amazing. And she is highly qualified. She's amazing at what she does. And she'll have coached, oh man, I should have had this number before I came in. (32:56 - 33:12) I think she has coached over 400 worship leaders, different worship leaders this year, whether that's been through a small workshop or individual voice coaching. Wow. And she does a lot of like rehab work, so rehabilitation for vocal injury. (33:12 - 34:06) She works with leaders on stamina, range, because your voice is a vulnerable thing, right? And you're watching these videos of these amazing, you know, the elevations, these people who are, I mean, and you start to feel, I got to be that or I'm not hitting the bar. And so Martha is such a gift because she helps worship leaders love what God's given them in their voice. And instead of trying to be something else, like how do I just care for what God's given me and improve what God's already given me? But she'll tell you that most of her vocal coaching sessions turn into care naturally. We hear that all the time for her, and we're hearing such great impact from that. So when it comes to actual musicianship and gifting, vocal coaching is a huge part of what we do. We're actually a couple of different part-time vocal coaches in the near future just to help with some demand and the need for that, because a lot of worship leaders need it. (34:07 - 34:26) Do they know that they need it? Like, do they come in saying, oh, I love that this is part of your offering, or is it something they discover? And they're like, wow, yeah, let me take you up on it. So they know that they need it. And that's actually refreshing because a lot of this work, like sometimes when it comes to soul care or discipleship, that's not something that everybody automatically like. (34:26 - 34:53) Oh, we all think we're okay. We all think we're fine. Exactly. But I would say worship leaders are always aware how they wish their voice would sound on a Sunday morning. So that actually is one of the parts of our ministry where, I mean, and it's been cool because people will Google, you know, worship voice coaching or whatever, and they'll come to Likewise's site, and they'll sign up with Martha. And then all of a sudden, then they're introduced to all the other things that we get to do. (34:53 - 35:12) But I would say that's the one piece of our ministry where you don't have to convince worship leaders that there's a need for that. Amazing. So, Josh, you mentioned elevation, and there's obviously lots of, you know, really well-known worship groups and, you know, labels and such that are out there. (35:12 - 37:58) I would imagine that some of the worship leaders you talk to sort of have this sense that they should be, like, reaching for that kind of sort of knownness. I'm just curious, like, what is your guys's, like, how do you talk to that? How do you speak to each individual's calling? Yeah. So, especially for younger worship leaders, there is this, like, that's what you're trying to attain, right? That look, that sound, that quality, and there's nothing wrong with that, right? But what people bump into is most churches don't have the resources of, you know, an elevation, or you're working with volunteers that are local to your congregation, right? And so, I think for us, it's helping worship leaders. It's really an identity thing when it comes down to it, because at the heart of that pursuit is, I need to measure up. I have a reputation to manage. You know, I need to, and not just elevation, but even to the church down the street. A lot of people will choose, you know, where they end up at church because of their experience with the worship. So, whether that's a direct or an indirect pressure on the worship leader, we feel that. We feel that pressure to be excellent, and the call to be excellent is a good thing, right? We don't want to, a lot of people swing to the other end of the pendulum and say, well, as long as you have a good heart and a, you know, and there's a lot of different philosophies. So, wherever you land on the spectrum, the goal is to help worship leaders detach themselves and their identity from the outcome of a Sunday morning. If you can teach a worship leader to do that, it actually gives them the freedom to accurately lean into what exists in their congregation, what exists in themselves. Where are my limits? I had to learn that as a worship leader. Like, my voice, I'm not going to go on The Voice and win The Voice, you know? I don't even know if I'd make the next round of auditions, you know? So, but I think people associate that with being a skilled worship leader. And if that's the case, then their whole pursuit is, how do I achieve success in that way? And so, helping people redefine success with their identity in Christ being the foundation of who they are and how they do ministry actually provides them a freedom they hadn't had. I just think a lot of people just need somebody to give them the permission to stop feeling like they need to do that in order to walk out their calling, because their calling is very different than in elevations or even somebody at the church down the street. (37:58 - 38:22) Yeah, that's good. That's good. Do you serve any worship leaders who are, say, bivocational or volunteer only? Lots. Lots. And yeah, that's been part of it. Even we talk about timings of gatherings, right? Trying to figure out, because if you do a gathering during the week, you're going to get all the full-time worship leaders, but all the bivocational worship leaders, they're working. (38:23 - 42:41) And so, that's been a challenge for us to figure out, how do we provide regular opportunities for bivocational worship leaders? But there are so many involved in all of our cities. And so, how we've really worked with that is we started to do what are called table gatherings. So, these are kind of outside work hours, and it's like eight to ten worship leaders at a time pursuing those who don't have an hour of their church staff workday to come for lunch. So, we've done a lot of that kind of grassroots stuff with some of the bivocational leaders. But there's a whole different set of challenges when it comes to making Sunday morning happen, and then, you know, your job. And burnout, when you go back to burnout, there are a lot of people who are just tired, understandably tired, bivocational worship leaders. But yeah, so we do do a lot of work with them. It just looks a little bit different, just because their access to some of our in-person programs is different than a full-time worship leaders would be. Yeah, interesting. So, let me ask you a couple questions about your experience with Likewise. So, it's clear to me that you are not scaling a ministry. You're serving in a ministry, and yet you've scaled the ministry. And so, I guess my question for you is, what's one thing that's surprised you? Like, what's been a challenge for you in doing that? So, there's been a lot of surprises. And I think on the personal level, and I think Justin would say the same, is you don't really know what's going to be required of you. So, this has felt like a faith journey on multiple levels, like from just the organization itself, learning how to start an organization, learning how to follow through with the commitments you're making as an organization as quickly as they change, and then personally, learning new skills. God has been so kind in a million different ways. But I think the seats that Justin and I sit in now, so we have a about 22 people now. And I mean, it was just us at the beginning. So, we were doing everything, you know what I mean? Just kind of late night. Oh, I'm familiar. I bet you are. I bet you are. So, I mean, we lived and did that for a long time. And as we did that, we had to learn new skills. And some of those skills, actually, the Lord gave us passions for, which always made sense at the next step of the ministry. Like there are things that Justin would get really good and passionate about within the context of our ministry as it was. And a couple years later, we'd realize, thank goodness I'm passionate about this. Same with me in my role. And so God's been really kind with that. But I think, I don't know if this surprised us as much, but we're just always reminded of, and we talked about earlier, there's never going to be a moment in the history of Likewise Worship where we've got it all figured out. And I don't want to say that as like a cop out of the thing you're supposed to say, but we had this conversation actually this last summer of the moment we stop being dependent on the Lord, not just for provision at being a non-profit, but for direction, for what the next step is, is the moment this thing ceases to exist. And I think God's proven himself over and over again to where, hey, so our process for a new thing, a new program, a new hire, a risk we're going to take is first try to discern, okay, God, what are you doing? What are you saying? And then have the faith. Second would be to have the faith to believe that that is what you're leading us into. And the third one's always the hardest of the courage of taking that first step towards it, even when you can only see five feet ahead. So I think what's been surprising, and maybe this is embarrassing to say, but is the amount of attentiveness we need to have to the Lord at every juncture of our ministry. Because it's so easy to start doing something that I feel like maybe God didn't ask you to do, even if it's a good thing. And I think that's always one of the antennas we have up, is there's a lot, especially in the worship space with music and discipleship. And I mean, there's so many veins you could go down. So there's not a question of what could we do. (42:42 - 43:12) God, what are you asking us and calling us to do? And we only want to do those things, and we haven't always gotten it right. But I would say that's been the surprising piece of, it takes a lot more work than I thought to stay attentive to Him in those ways. AMT – I love that. That's so beautiful. And that takes me back to that word that we were talking about, discipleship, right? It's like remaining a disciple in your life and in what you're building by being so attentive to how He's calling you every step of the way. I love it. (43:13 - 46:56) Since we're coming up on time, Josh, I'd love to ask you one sort of big picture question, which is, what gives you hope for the future of the church based on everything that you're doing and seeing at Likewise Worship right now? Like, what makes you optimistic for the church? JG – That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it, because I think it's good for us to think about this. The first thing that comes to mind for me is that, especially, I'm just going to speak to the worship space. There seems to be this hunger for belonging and authenticity, especially in the younger generations. So we just launched a school of worship. I don't think I've mentioned that this whole call. We just launched a school of worship a few months ago in Southern California, and we did it on three months of lead time. It was a long story, but God kind of just dropped it in our lap. It was a plug-and-play type of deal, the only way it could have worked for our ministry to operate something like this. And the amount of stories coming out of just the first few months of that school of worship are showing us that there is this deep hunger for something that is, I want to say, less typical. And what I mean by that is, yeah, more attentive to what God's doing. There is this hunger to—I would say, you know, 10 years ago, it was, you're going to come be a worship leader so that you can eventually be on the big stage. I think that's a temptation for everybody. But with this next generation, you're starting to see, like, I actually just really love Jesus, and I have this gift, and what do I do with that? And there is this openness. So we're seeing that with the school. And so I think the hope that I'm seeing for the future of the church, especially in the context of worship, is there is this pure pursuit of the glory of God. And that's not an indictment on anything that's happening now or in the past, but I'm seeing it. We're seeing it, especially in our younger worship leaders, of a renewed sense of calling. I feel like worship leadership over the past 10 or 15 years, it has been much more difficult to discern whether or not you're called to it because of certain rewards that come with it. The stage comes with followers. It comes with the spotlight. So all of a sudden, it's actually attractive to go and do this. And I think we're coming back to this sweet place of, Lord, did you make me for this? Is this really what you've wired me to do? And if so, I want to follow that. So I hope that didn't sound cynical about what's happening now. I think it speaks to the reality of, like, being a worship leader for a lot of people, a lot of stories I've has really, at the beginning, just been a next step to what you really want to do in the future. You know, I'm going to get a touring musician or something, so I'm going to go get plugged in a huge church that'll get me connected. And it's a natural thing. But what we're seeing with the younger generation is there's people coming up and showing up who are sensing God doing something and just wanting to be a part of it. And that gives me hope for, I think, the future of the church, especially in the context of worship. Wow. That gives me a ton of hope, too. Thank you so much for sharing that with me and with the Faithly community. It is a great note to end this conversation on. I've learned a ton, and I've just been so encouraged by it, knowing what you and Justin have faithfully been doing for almost a decade. So thank you. Thank you for what you do. (46:56 - 47:01) Yeah, thanks, Alicia. Thanks for the opportunity to share it. I love what you're doing with Faithly, and yeah, just glad to be connected to you.