A Large Church Worship Leader’s Desire to Help Smaller Churches

Hey everyone, sorry about not posting in over a week. We changed ISPs and inadvertently knocked out our internet service for several days!

Below is a video interview with my dear friend, Rhon Carter, worship pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, GA. (Click on the words Read on… below to view the video.)

Last weekend, I had the privilege to lead a Next Level Worship Retreat with 80+ choir members from Emmanuel Baptist. Rhon had me in to kick off their study through our worship study, Praise More Powerful. Their church averages some 1100 in worship each week. They are the largest church in their 64-church association, and they were the 4th fastest growing Southern Baptist church in Georgia in 2006.

After the Friday night teaching service, Rhon and I were sitting in my hotel room chatting about music and worship and choirs and other such items. Then Rhon said a most incredible thing. He began to share his heartbeat about wanting to help smaller congregations in any way he and his music ministry can. For example, he attends as many music minister meetings in the area as he possibly can. Why? It’s not so much because he needs the materials or advice being offered (although he said he still needs to learn); rather, he goes because he wants to support the other worship leaders and get to know them. How cool is that?

For most of my ministry, I have served in small churches as a bi-vocational music minister. Over the years, I have noticed how many of the large church worship guys rarely ever came to any meetings we “small-time” guys had. I understood that they were no doubt extremely busy, so I never held it against them in the least. However, to see a guy like Rhon, in a large, successful ministry, want to reach out and be a resource – well, frankly, that was like a breath of fresh air blowing across my hotel room there in south GA!

I stopped Rhon in mid-sentence of his heart-sharing moment and asked if we could video-tape him talking about his convictions and determination to encourage smaller church worship leaders. Although he had to be tired at the end of a long day, he graciously agreed.

To watch the 6-minute video interview click the play button in the big black box below. This is good stuff. Enjoy! – Dwayne

http://praisemorepowerful.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/rhoninterview.flv