Slow Down

“I confess that I should be the busiest boy/girl in Africa.”

“I rarely go to bed on the same day I woke up.”

“My days are more filled up than they are freed out.”

“I am almost always exhausted!”

If you can relate with any of the above statements, just as I do, then this post is for you...

In the recent few years, so much has been happening in my life. So much so that I cannot not hold it all together to show you just how much. I tend to be more and more involved in tight schedules and random activities. My to-do-list is always overflowing, always over-flooded with things to be done. I am striving to become better at so many things in so little a time. I want to be here. I want to be there. I want to be in so many places touching so many lives in so little time. I am needed here. I am needed there. I am needed in so many places all at the same time. I am always dividing myself into little pieces of myself in order to meet various demands at varied times. I am always diving into deeper waters of service. My life is always on the run. I am in urgent need of a slow down.

Life is in a rush today. A very big rush. I have not met many people who don't rush through life today. Not even my own self manages doing that quite well. People are becoming less creative, less intuitive, less thoughtful but more noisy and more presumptive. Everything seems to be in a waterfall: studies, service to people (both work and church), family, friends... Everything is a waterfall. Everything demands for our attention:

Drivers are driving faster. Preachers are preaching quicker, and their messages are becoming shorter. Young people need things done kinda yesterday. Twitter is faster, more definite, precise and more to the point than ever before. Facebook is crazier, bumper and more spontaneous today than it was 5 years ago. WhatsApp is crazier, nastier and catchier. More and more relationships are budding from social networks than they are in real life. Divorces are on the rise due to lost hope - married partners are losing trust in each other at a rapid speed than you can ever imagine. Trust is like the wind - swings and sways without ever settling. People are preferring get-quick-get-out paradigms to anything that demands commitment (no wonder so many relationships are falling apart, and if they DO exist, they are only but ghost relationships...). People want quick things and they don’t care that these things attained in a rush will disappear just as fast as they came...

Christians want to deal with their God in the same way: more demanding, more impulsive and edgier than ever before. I am not talking about charisma because charisma can be good; I am talking about ambition, because ambition is always dangerous. THE WORD OF FAITH DOCTRINE is on the rise. And it is sweeping all of us away. All of us. True story. (Get time to read about THE WORD-FAITH DOCTRINE/MOVEMENT here.) More and more Christians now believe that they can literally “manufacture” their own blessings so long as they do a few predetermined things or follow a certain predetermined way of doing things - and always minus obedience or adherence to the Word of God. We are believing more in the lie that we don’t need God to make things work. We are having puppetry for Christianity: a people who believe in (and are mostly controlled by) systems than they are controlled by the Word of God. (I bet you have heard that somewhere in Matthew 15:9, right?)

Life is in a rush - a very unhealthy rush. And we need to redirect traffic and stop life from rushing this fast and ending us all in a place called nowhere. We need to stop life before we lose our friendships that have been nurtured over time, before we lose our health (both spiritually, physically and morally), before we throw away our relationships due to emotional drain and/or absence, before we lose our God and our faith; and before we get burnt out or ultimately depressed. We need to slow down.

But how do we slow down in this internet age where everything is in a rush?

Somewhere at the beginning of this week, Mashable.com had an article titled “How to Spend Only 10 Minutes Per Day on Twitter”. It didn't help us at all (we twitter addicts). (Oh I just had to confess that!) It is because it suggests the very things we avoid to do: creating lists and streamable #hashtags. We hate that. So we won’t be doing it. Not anytime soon.

But after running over a  few possibilities about the best way to slow down, I created a list that I think may help. Read it below and consider yourself helped:-

1. Learn to say “no!” Yes, I am writing this in bold red so that you get it. Saying ‘no’ does not mean that you are narcissistic, or that you are  mean, but that you know when your limits are catching up, and that you can never be God: you can’t satisfy everyone at all times by doing everything they "need" you to do! You will burn out and nobody will care. Yeah dearie, nobody will care. So why not take care of your body by simply saying ‘No! Not now.’ That is why people take sabbaticals.
2. If you are a leader, learn to delegate duties. There are people around you that can perform that task just as well as you can. Please allow them to trim their expertise. Step in an mentor someone to take over you. Leave a permanent legacy in your area of specialization.
3. Learn to know that time is no one’s possession. You can’t control time, but you can master it. Use this knowledge to your advantage.
4. Pray that you don’t get carried away by the cloggy unimportant stuff you meet in the course of every day you spend. It is the devil’s trap to make you depressed and discontented all the time. Take time and have your devotions. Read your Bible. Pray. Don’t just skim through the Bible and mutter/stutter words and call them prayer, no. Become intimate with God. Meditate on what you read. Seek to know Him. Make Jesus your friend and the Holy Spirit your daily guide. Spiritual strength is able to muster enough strength to keep you going for days. So the more you make it a habit, the more refined you will be on a daily basis!
5. Schedule your to-do-list. Have priorities. Learn to work on one thing at a time, starting with the 2 minutes activities, then the 10 minutes tasks, then the 30 minutes ones, and so forth and so on. Don’t postpone a call or a text message unless it is sooooo necessary for you to do so. Smartphones can help you work around this. Get an SMS app that schedules texts and a Contacts app that persistently pops up a notification to remind you to call someone. Log out of WhatsApp or any other IM service you are using; or to save yourself from "IM starvation" (it is some sort of modern malnutrition), respond to a few WhatsApps then mark yourself “away” - that is if WhatsApp has such a thing (I have never used it, so I have no idea if it has such stuff)... As for me, I cannot stand unanswered pings and messages on WhatsApp, so I refused to join.
6. Schedule your Email, Twitter and/or Facebook updates/respond times so that you only appear on social media at certain times of the day and not all the time... (This is actually for me.) Or again, blot out all the unnecessary pings from those many apps you have on your phone or laptop. Uninstall them. (I just did that to some today! :-) Hah!)
7. Do what you can today. Leave the rest for tomorrow. It is that simple. Not all things fit in one day. But don't again fall trap to worshiping a god called procrastination. No, don't. 
8. Have a time off. Chill. Relax your brain. Go out for a walk. Take out someone for a meal. Watch a movie. Play a game. Read a book. Listen to music. Laugh. Go for a holiday. Exercise. Join a gym club - or just do your gym thang. Make yoursefl happy. That is what the money you are running after is for, right? Just do something that calms you down - something that pulls you away from the world and unto yourself.
9. Take at least ten minutes daily to reflect on how the day was without worrying about the bad parts. Please remember to congratulate yourself for the good parts. During this time, put off your phone, shut down your laptop, the internet and that TV... Just allow your mind to go on recess - unoccupied and “breathing.” This will put you back on track.
10. Start working on the above points - one at a time until you feel slowed down.

Then slow down.

Good luck with that.


Bonface Morris.

Valentine's With My Crush

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ahem! Guys, this is a singles’ edition of Valentine’s Day.

It will act as a breathing spot for us, so let all ye people who are in relationships and all that bla bla bla stop reading this or, eeeeh, you may as well just read it for your painful merriment. I don’t really care. But to the single guys, it may just give you a leeway on how to deal with the Valentinemania.

This is how it it is likely to go;

The day is Thursday, 13th February, 2014. It is just one day (or just a few hours really) from the whacky Valentine’s Day. Everyone is already quoting empty love quotes all over the place - TV, radio, social media, blogs (where guys are heightening the madness of writing ‘letters’ to husbands or wives-to-be) are filled with all these empty quotes. Everything is just so sickening.
Well, but Morris, the lad with guts to challenge status quo has something in mind...

The following conversation (and scenes that follow) are happenings between him (*sic*) and his good friend Annabelle (a single lady actually).
These events occur in real time, in an undisclosed place, but in his mind...

Annabelle: Hi Morris, niajez za Valentines? Najua uko single, so hakuna haja ya kuanza ku.pretend ati ooh ooh nini... Hebu nishow your Valentine’s ideas this year kama msee ako single...

Morris: *Clears voice and feigns oblivion* Huh? Ati unasemaa?

Annabelle: Okay, I gerr it. I have to dig deeper. Tell me, you have a crush, right?

Morris: Yeah, let’s say so - that is if what a crush is to you is what a crush is to me.

Annabelle: Mhhhhh, that’s interesting... So what is a crush to you?

Morris: A crush is just that: a crush. They crush you. You gerr it? They convert you into some sort of plummy-pudding. They melt you. Yet they either don’t exist and/or if they do, you have neither met nor talked to them. Yeah, it is like that. It is like that with crushes.

Annabelle: Oh! We are on the same page now-o.

*Silence*

Annabelle: Okay, have you ever fallen in love before? Or, eeehh, are you somewhat in love currently?

At this point, Morris is tempted to give her an answer close to the one in a certain advert: “Come on dearie, love is for the quails!”, but he gathers his utmost etiquette and good Christian manners and tells her...
Morris: Yeah, something close to that.

Annabelle: Who was/is it? I mean, the mam’selle?

Me: Oooh, you really wanna know? Okay, lemme talk about the now and not the then. I don't even know her - my crush - if that is what you need clarification on. She exists only in my imagination and prayers, but you know what? I wanna date her on Valentine's. She is real to me. *Sic*

Annabelle: Aaaaaaaaw! Tell me about it.

Morris: Okay my dear. But be ready for a grenade, tonsils, a soap opera and a Kenyan-styled digital migration - all combined. Get ready for awesomeness. This is what I am planning:

Morris goes into a hyperbolic frenzy but with minimal extroversion of the contents therein...
Morris: You know that I am a lover of adventure, right? (Annabelle nodes her head) You know it. And I just don't gerr it how I can be missing out on all the fun on Valentine's Day. Oh no, I won’t. So my dear, this is what I am going to do today and tomorrow as I await my crush to bombard my petty life;

1. Culture an obsession for the red color
Thank God that my Airtel is already red - that is well catered for. I am happy about that. Another good thing is that my blood is always celebrating Valentines - red all the way! I'll stay around relaxed and (maybe) develop a liking for red stuff. I know she'll like it - my crush. I hear that red has a sense of romance and passion in/about it, and that red can awaken failing embers of life. So in that line of things, I may need a red bow tie, (or a red shirt), red candles, a red heart, red flowers and a red mind... Aaaaah! Even red air flying high with crimson fireflies! After that has been put in place, and I'm satisfied with the days' arrangements, I shall comb myself into the next step...

2. Learn the art of giving gifts
This is the next step in my line of plans. 

Although there is a certain argument that I have been having in my mind about gifts, I am considering to keep it pending to allow Valentine's Day to flow in freely. This is the ultimate date my dear, and I am going to overrule those funny thoughts about gifts and embark on well-mannered gift-unleashing tendencies. I am going to learn to relentlessly give in to all weapons formed against my precious wallet by allowing them to prosper (I actually overheard this somewhere.) I am going to think #HighTech when unleashing my gift-sense on my crush: I am going to think Lillian, Mimi or Kung'ara. You know wharr um talking ‘bout!
Then I’ll sit down and pretend that it ain’t nothing and spoil her in the utmost sense of the word. Case closed.

3. Flowers
Oh my my my! Flowers! Damn fresh flowers! Red, velvety-soft, cute, and sweet-smelling things! O what I would do for their love! Maybe I should start the search now. Maybe tomorrow morning. Maybe. But I’ll need a strong flower sense in order to impress her.

Annabelle blushes...

This (the flower sense) will ensure that I am on top of my game come tomorrow. I am going to make my well rehearsed ninja moves on how I’ll present the gifts and flowers to her (to this non-existent lady), then smile and continue planning...

4. Get a next level music collection for the occasion
If you thought that we single guys don’t have a sense for romance attached to our core-most lives, baby you got it all wrong. You have it the other way round, buddy. You see, what I am going to do is this: You have heard of #SelfieOlympics, right? Oh yeah. I am gonna have my own selfie competition, right here in my diggs with the music playing in the background. Then I will take my best photo shoots (worthy of an Oscar actually) - the best you've ever seen as I DJ one playlist after another of this music and that... and, er, maybe take video selfies of my dance moves (again, do we have a name for that? For videos selfies?) Okay...

5. Prepare for whatever comes my way
Because I am still not sure if my crush will be here, I’ll need a few rehearsals on dealing with the “boom!” feeling that comes with her deciding to thin herself in the air. Ladies love surprises. I don’t. I don’t love surprises. And because of that, I am not going to tolerate being played dumb on such a beautiful day.
I want a beautiful and successful day, and if I am not going to have one, at least I can give it to myself. (That is actually law number two of singlehood.) So this is what I am going to do: if she won’t turn up (because this may just be but a dream), I’ll take all these stuff, make myself comfortable, keep dreaming (and praying if possible) and (at least) be happy that I did something for myself on Valentines.

*Silence.*

Annabelle: Oh, I now gerr it.


They both walk away in silence...

End of scene.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all ye clumsy single people. Take care.



Bonface Morris.

Leadership: Guidelines to Leading Worship & Worship Teams Today

It is already five Sundays into the new year, and I am glad that we've all been worshiping, worshiping the Lord Almighty.
It is amazing how days are going forth before us... January has vanished before I even took a deep breath, and February is already moving on rapidly.
The year is not new anymore. And if we have not yet embarked on doing something useful with ourselves, we are already failing.

As a worship leader (or as a worship team leader), you may have made a few resolutions in the course of last year or at the beginning of this new one - those you don't dare shout on any other mountain but on the mountain of God - about leading people in worship, about music, about your worship team and teamwork, about creativity and maybe about enthusiasm in ministry.
You may have called out on God in the secret place and whispered to Him (just as He does to you from time to time) about the congregation you lead, your fellow worship team members, the instruments you use, your pastor and so forth and so on...

But my question is: are you impressed so far with how things are going on?

There is this song by Casting Crowns, "Stained Glass Masquerade", where Mark Hall says this;

Is there anyone that fails? Is there anyone that falls? 

Am I the only one in church today feeling so small? 

Cause when I take a look around, everybody seems so strong 

I know they'll soon discover, that I don't belong 

So I tuck it all away, like everything's okay 

If I make them all believe it, maybe I'll believe it too 

So with a painted grin, I play the part again 

So everyone will see me the way that I see them 

Chorus: 

Are we happy plastic people, under shiny plastic steeples? 

With walls around our weakness, and smiles to hide our pain? 

But if the invitation's open, to every heart that has been broken 

Maybe then we close the curtain, on our stained glass masquerade... 

What Pastor Mark is trying to say to us is that once we are in our churches, we tend to pretend that everything is absolutely okay. We love making everyone else in our worship teams and congregations to believe that WE (as a whole) are okay. We stand before people every Sunday, look at them, smile, and pretend that as far as worship is concerned, our churches are doing well. Well, everything may not be okay.

The truth is that we face innumerable challenges but we prefer not to talk about them as worship leaders. We have gotten used to developing shock absorbers, learned how to work around these problems and move on.

But that doesn't mean that the issues we fail to attend to disappear, no. They still remain: the stings of insubordination in our teams, the lack of seriousness and charisma in fellow lead worshipers, the grating brought by self-ish-ness and the autonomous clunk of uncooperative members; and the lack of discipline (both in attendance of practice/rehearsal sessions and to authority)... These issues still grind us from time to time. They never stop glaring their teeth at us. And we feel inadequate and let down in one way or another. Mostly plastic. Because we fail to know how to deal with these challenges.

I have been in my church's Worship Team for about 8 years now. (Yes, I'm that old. :-)) I have seen, worked with and and heard from quite a number of worship leaders and members. We have struggled with so many issues - some of which have refused to disappear up to date. (We are a tiny and humble team anyway.) But regardless of the many challenges we are facing from week to week and season to season (because all worship team leaders will tell you that church worship moves along a certain trend of weeks and seasons), I am still convinced that God did not call us to this place for nothing. He did not ordain us to maintain a certain viewpoint and weakness and term it as "what we are". No, He did not.

I am [rightfully] convinced that effectiveness as a worship leader - even as challenges abound - is something I am going to talk about even ten years from now. I am convinced that I have had all these challenges right here where I am, with my small team of weird worshipers (me included), so that I may be able to wear the same shoes all lead worshipers all over the world wear every Sunday.

I need to remind us that victory has never been apart from a myriad of challenges, but their child. Challenges yield power to overcome even more challenges. So if I remind us that God has called us to a ministry that cuts across all the major offices of the church, a ministry that is not small but great - even though many of us may be tempted to think otherwise - a ministry that involves ushering people into God's presence, I know we will gain a conscience that overcomes what the devil is trying to do to our worship teams today.

The following points don't seek to solve our challenges but to better our standing (because Paul says in Ephesians 6:13 "...and having done all, to stand...")

1. Be Sure of Your Calling
Maybe as a start, the most important thing and what we need to be very sure about is our calling. Our calling is very critical to our commitment to the work of the One who called us.
A calling is nothing near passion and talent; it is deeper and greater than that. Being called is being called: you hear a voice, you follow that voice, you do what that voice is telling you; that is what we call being called. A worship leader needs to have a deep assurance that it is God who told them to do whatever they are doing, and that it is not their show.
If a worship leader is not sure that they have been called by God Himself, they will not survive the many challenges the devil will bring their way. Once we realize that we have been called by God Himself, and that He has chosen us to the Priestly service of helping people bring up their utmost offering to Him, we can conquer whatever comes our way with the Knowledge that He who called us is faithful and that He is always watching over us to the end. (Philippians 1:6)
If we are not sure about our calling, we can never be sure of our service.

2. Show Commitment
We may cry foul as many times as we want, but none of those we lead will believe in us as their leaders unless we are a notch higher in our commitment, intimacy with God and fervency than they are.
A team lead by a leader who is less serious about what he/she is doing will either fall apart or undermine their leadership.
People will take you for your word or ignore you according to how you manage your time (including theirs), how you follow after the words you say and how you do whatever you do.
As a worship team leader, (and/or as a worship leader), how much more than the rest of your team are you committed to the team and what you people do? How many new songs have you taught them as an individual? Do you pray more than any one of them? What about your own rehearsal sessions? do you practice on your own? Do you read your Bible often? Are you strongly founded in the Word of God? How much more creative than the rest of your team are you? Do you sing more than any one of them? Do they see intimacy in your relationship with God? Do you value teamwork?
These questions guide us in gauging our intimacy, commitment and fervency in leading worship.

3. Become Like a Pediatrician
God just whispered to me the other day that leading worship is like becoming a pediatrician. I fumbled with it for a while. I mean, I clearly knew that all pediatricians do is to treat children and offer guidance on child-care. I could not connect that with worship. I couldn't.
But wait, while in my fumbling, a congregation was brought to me: people seated with others standing, and a worship team full of newbies and oldies; and there I was taught the lesson of my life: "Morris, learn to treat all these people you are seeing before you like children. Pretend that none of them knows the right thing to do and how to do it. Tolerate them and make them learn from you... step by step..."
Then I understood. I hope you get it too: we need to treat everyone else around us as if they are children (not that they are children, but like they are children) and that they are waiting for guidance from us. Any wrong step they may make becomes our fault.
Why? Because we are their pediatricians, and they are our child patients...
A lead worshiper should never make assumptions about the congregation he/she is leading. Thus the faster we learn to deal with and handle our team members and congregations as we do children, the fewer the challenges we'll have to deal with.

4. Serve 
Everyone will tell you how well they know that "we are called to serve". Even politicians do so. But you will find very few people who actually serve. Very few people DO serve.
All the people in our congregations and worship teams exist at different spiritual levels. Each one of them wakes up every Sunday (or every other day of practice/rehearsal) from a family with all kinds of situations to deal with. We are not the same. We will never be. And we as worship leaders need to learn a way that will help us fully embrace this and deal with it in a constructively.
People have a wild array of distractions still clouding their minds even after stepping past that church gate. They may be standing before you in church, but their minds may be miles away.
In an article I was reading sometime back, the author indicated that every church or congregation - depending with where it is located and the nature of its members - needs to have a way of "capturing people's minds and bringing them to the same page and place" before worship or any other engagement in church is commenced.
The writer reiterated that the best way to enable people "switch" from their personal affairs to church affairs may be through story telling or a short skit, a poem or humor... Everyone needs to be on the same page before worship...
So considering that everyone else around us is like a child, how do we move them to the place where they can minister to God instead of waiting for God to minister to them?
It is through service. We need to learn to serve the congregations and teams we lead. Service is achieved through;

• Sharing a word of encouragement from Scripture 
• Smiling 
• Telling them a story about what God has been doing currently - with relation to the issues they already know 
• Encouraging them to sing because God is pleased when people worship and sing to Him. (Hebrews 13:15) 

That is all I have to say for today.

Remember that it is normal to be wondering (because I also do it often) "What has the church become today?" (in a twist of speech slightly similar to G.K. Chesterton's "What Is Wrong With the World?") and to stand before people on Sundays and get worried about what we have become: too green, without enthusiasm, fervency or emotion in our singing and without the good old loud prayer in our worship moments... but after you have wondered, know that God - the One who called us to His service - is still in FULL CONTROL. Yes, He is.

Keep doing what you are called to do. Your reward is greater than you can know or tell (1 Corinthians 15:58 and 1 Corinthians 2:9.)



Bonface Morris.