Learn to listen to music as often as possible (all the time!!!). Having a mobile music player is ideal for this purpose.
Learn to listen to the kind of music that builds your spirit; keeps you spiritually sound. Music communicates spiritual influences so ensure you are being influenced by the right spirit through the music you listen to.
Learn to pay close attention to the words of any music you’re listening to. The spirit (message, power) of any music to minister to you or anyone else is in the words of the music so if the music (song) will minister to you, you must listen to the words carefully and get the message in it. You can only minister a song when it has ministered to you thoroughly.
Learn to challenge yourself to get better by trying to always sing out with the music you’re listening to. Also as you’re still working on improving your singing, do not sing unconsciously. Ensure that you listen to yourself as you sing. Record yourself while singing and listen back to it so you can assess yourself and know where your weaknesses are. This will help you focus on them and thus improve. You can only grow when you dare to try and fail over and over again while taking note of your weak points and endeavoring to improve on them. It would also help for you to seek the sincere and experienced opinion of someone better than you and knowledgeable in the field you are dealing with.
Learn to pronounce the words of a song clearly and crisply when you practice singing it. Practice pronouncing words as clearly as it is pronounced by the performer, so it will help build your diction and also so anyone listening to you can get the right message in the music from the clear words you pronounce.
Learn the basics of your musicianship. Music is an art form that has fundamental principles of how it works. If you will be most effective in your music ministry, you need to arm yourself with the knowledge of the workings of the music art. Study music theory as much as you can, take on voice/music/instrumental trainings, develop a disciplined practice regimen to help you grow consistently.
Learn to always believe that you can try to do better, don’t allow anyone or anything make you believe otherwise. It may take time but if you are really passionate about it, then you will achieve becoming an effective minister in time. Talk to yourself (out loud) encouraging and strengthening yourself; hype yourself, motivate yourself that you can do it even if you’re failing now. Continue trying because you’ll soon get it right!
Learn to set goals and give yourself targets to achieve in time. This makes you consciously committed on daily basis to your growth and improvement. It also makes you disciplined to the process of continuous growth which is a life-long process. Nobody ever gets to the point where he/she can’t better. Making a daily effort and attempt with courage to get better and achieve a greater goal will make you become most effective faster than you could imagine (and stay that way too!!)
Learn the essence and true meaning of commitment. If you get involved/committed to a music ministry, then you will be required to be faithful. It means you have vowed to be responsible for the success or failure of that ministry. Your actions/character/attitude of faithfulness or lack of commitment/unpreparedness will always affect the ministry whether you intend for it to or not. So learn to be committed and faithful/dependable in the right sense of it.
Learn to serve in a music ministry not because of how people will see you but because of how God will see you and also because of how much you love doing that service. Being a minister is primarily and solely for service both to God and to man. You serve God by the quality of your heart of service and you serve man by the quality of your service. Both are very important though the first is more, so always have a heart of service as a minister. This makes you most effective.
Learn to share your weaknesses with someone higher than you from whom you can learn and gain encouragement from and who you can trust to help you grow. This simply implies having a mentor who would always love to help you grow and be better than you are.
Learn also to share your experiences with God and trust him absolutely for the grace to grow. Your service is to Him and He alone can help you make it most effective.
Grace…!!
Wyzdom Nnamdi (Assisting Music Director/Lead Musician, House On The Rock, WordHouse)
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