PODCAST | Transitioning From Performer to Pastor (Feat. Wade Joye)

Resources:

For more information or to enroll in the Performer To Pastor course, go to performertopastor.com.

To connect with Wade about preaching or working with your teams, visit wadejoye.com.

Follow Wade on Instagram and Facebook @Wadejoye

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to The Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, manager of marketing and business development here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, William Vanderbloemen talks with Wade Joy. Wade Joy spent 15 years building and leading worship at Elevation Church, and he now works as a speaker, ministry coach, and a host of Dreamers and Disciples, a weekly podcast on the Access More Network. In this conversation, Wade shares the heart behind his new course, Performers to Pastors. He shares the importance of how to be in the presence of God without having to be on the platform. And he also shares how worship leaders should embrace their calling of being a worship pastor. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Always a pleasure to get into your life a little bit. And I can't tell you how much fun it is to introduce you to my friends. And some of you may remember Wade Joy has been on our program before. He led one of the most phenomenal worship ministries in the world, honestly. I mean, some of the songs that Elevation has put out have been literally written on my heart, and I think that's probably true for a lot of you out there. And Wade, I can't thank you enough just for following Pastor Steven's vision, and then using the God given talents you have to really bless the world through that. Thank you so much. And thanks for being here today.

Wade Joy:
That's extremely kind of you, William. Thank you for saying that. And I'm honored to get to chat with you again.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, yeah. It's funny, guys. Christa, by now, you guys have figured out Christa's in charge. She's on the front end bumper. So I don't know when Christa's airing this, but it's kind of funny. Before the podcast started, we were talking about it's early January here. And it was, "How did Christmas go?" And I was telling Wade I always have a little bit of guilt on Christmas Eve because after being a senior pastor for a long time, and I was in a traditional church, so Christmas Eve is always super high holy day. It's where you see people the one time you see them all year. And we do nine, 10 services in a day, and it's all live preaching and no video casting. And I was sitting there, we had to get there probably 30 minutes early because it gets crowded.
So we're sitting in our seats and I'm just thinking, "I've still got PTSD from this." I know I'm supposed to be worshiping the baby Jesus and the light came into the world and all that, but just worried that you're going to mess up somebody's Christmas, worried it's not going to go right, worried about every little detail. I literally spent the 30 minutes texting pastors that I knew saying, "Hey, man. It's going to be all right. Doesn't matter if you mess up. Jesus is still born. It's okay."

Wade Joy:
Going to get through this.

William Vanderbloemen:
You're going to get through this. Don't call me for a new job next week. We don't need to talk yet. Just live for a while. It's going to be okay. And a funny thing is, I told that to Wade. And I guess, Wade, you had somewhat of a congruent experience coming up. Right?

Wade Joy:
Yeah. Well, as we record this, tonight I'm going to a night of worship and live recording for Elevation. And this'll be the first one that I've experienced on this side of things where I'm not behind the scenes and I'm not helping facilitate it and lead aspects of it. And so yeah, it feels kind of weird to go. It's probably going to be a little awkward, but I'm excited to cheer on my friends and support them and worship with our church. But yeah, this might be the first one that I really get to take in and enjoy from a different way because I'm not-

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah.

Wade Joy:
I'm not so stressed.

William Vanderbloemen:
This sounds bad because the people that get to do that service, I mean, what an honor. Right?

Wade Joy:
Oh, yeah. Totally.

William Vanderbloemen:
But at the same time, I'm going to predict you're going to feel a little bit guilty that you get to just enjoy it and not have to worry.

Wade Joy:
Yeah. I feel a little bit guilty, but way less stressed.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. And the reason I bring this conversation up is, as you heard in the bumper for the show today, Wade has been spending the last year really studying how ... And hey, you correct me, Wade, if I get it wrong. But how do we do the thing where we're supposed to lead people up the hill of the Lord and into presence of God? How do we do that and not fall into the trap of performance? How do we do spiritual disciplines? How do we do spiritual maturity? How do we become a pastor to the pastor that's preaching, or the people in the chairs? That whole balancing act of performer versus pastor is just fascinating. You don't want me to be your worship leader, but I can hold my own preaching.

Wade Joy:
I think that same thing. The people want you to lead worship, I think.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, yeah, theologically, you're probably right. But you haven't heard me sing. But I do know from preaching, even with preaching, where you're trying to divide the word, you are thinking about: What's my eye contact like? How long do I pause, all those little things? So tell me a little bit about what you're learning on this journey from not being a performer, but becoming a pastor?

Wade Joy:
Well, even going off of what we were just talking about, we were kind of joking around, but I mean, yes, there were a lot of things when I would have to be on the other side of live recordings that I was stressed about it, or I was nervous about. But that was my job. That's how I was fulfilling the act of ministry because there's nothing wrong with what happens on stage, obviously.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's right.

Wade Joy:
From a stage, the word of God is preached. From a stage, people are led in worship. Powerful ministry happens there. And so that's why I'm excited about times like tonight. But I think in the church today, we think the stage is the only metric of success. And this whole last year as I've been working with worship leaders and worship teams, a lot of times the question is: Well, how do I do what Elevation has done? How do I write these songs? How do we release these albums? How do we have this Instagram following? And that is an anointing that not every church has. Not every church is meant to be a global or national worship platform. And so I think I see so many worship leaders and pastors too, getting so discouraged that they don't have a certain platform, or they're not seeing a certain level of success from a stage. And to me, we have taken what we think is great in the eyes of the world and we're ignoring what is actually greater, which is the calling to shepherd people, to pastor people, to walk with them in their spiritual rhythms and disciplines.
And so what I've tried to do over the last year, and it's come from these own struggles of my heart of realizing that, number one, I've got to hold my heart before the Lord and make sure that I'm rooted in the right identity, that I'm rooted in what success really looks like in the kingdom of God of just serving people. And so when I'm not in alignment there, everything else is out of alignment.

William Vanderbloemen:
Sure.

Wade Joy:
And so we start there, but then realizing that whether you're a small church, or a big church, whether you're releasing albums, or not releasing albums, you can have an amazingly successful ministry in the kingdom of God if you're being faithful to actually loving and serving people well, teaching them to love Jesus, to love God, to serve their gifts. And so really, I want worship leaders to see that, yes, those other things are great, and it's awesome to write songs. It's awesome to share your gift on a stage. But the real win is to embrace your calling as a pastor. I think the church has a lot of worship leaders. It needs more worship pastors.

William Vanderbloemen:
That is really good. The church has a lot of worship leaders. It needs more worship pastors. I think, I'm seeing this with preaching, I'd be interested to hear if there's a worship equivalent. But in preaching, I'm predicting that in the next five years or so, the pandemic sort of accelerated people's acceptance of online church. Right?

Wade Joy:
Right.

William Vanderbloemen:
My mother, at a wonderful old First Presbyterian Church does online church now. I would never have believed that. Right? So I think one of the byproducts of that is now people realize, I've got all these pastors who are afraid to do their sermon prep because they're like, "I am not as good as Steven Furtick. And my people can dial him up any time, and now they know how to. Or I'm not as good as Matt Chandler, or I'm not as good as Craig Groeschel, or I'm not as good as ... " And what I'm finding is, the advice I'm getting, I think there will be ... Here's how old I am, Wade, Casey Kasem and the top 40, or whoever does top 40.

Wade Joy:
I'm with you.

William Vanderbloemen:
Okay. All right, right. So I think there'll be top 40 preachers online. Right? And I think the way God's going to use preachers in the local context is who will be right in and among the sheep.

Wade Joy:
Exactly.

William Vanderbloemen:
Who's going to preach to the six city blocks around your church? And who's going to be in the lives of the people? It's the old school pastoral gifts are really going to separate the best from the rest going forward. That's what I sense in preaching. I don't know if that's kind of what you're driving at in the worship world as well.

Wade Joy:
Yeah. I think in the same way, there is no shortage of great worship music today, or great worship songs. And so I see so many worship leaders feeling like they have to get on the map with that, rather than saying, "No, where I can win is walking with people."

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes.

Wade Joy:
When their sister dies, I can be the one who's with them in the hospital.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's so good.

Wade Joy:
I can be the one texting them and sending them a voice memo saying, "Hey, God put you on my heart. I just wanted to let you know I was praying for you and thinking about you." That's something that the big names that you hear about and that you follow, they can't do that, but you can.

William Vanderbloemen:
And they're not called to it.

Wade Joy:
Right.

William Vanderbloemen:
It's a different calling. And working with nearly every one of those guys, it's not all together bless, it can be really lonely. They don't get to enjoy some of the things that are the really sacred parts of pastoring.

Wade Joy:
Yeah, exactly. It's a different weight and a different mantle to carry because it's what they're anointed and called to do. And there are challenges with that, just like there are blessings with it. And for every worship leader at a church, whether small or large, you have your own unique challenges. You have your own unique struggles. But you also have your own unique blessings that you get to experience, that nobody else will. And I'm afraid we aren't present in what God actually wants to do among us because we're wishing we were somewhere else all the time.

William Vanderbloemen:
So I've sat with a lot of people as they've died over the years. And I can't tell you how many times people said, "I'm just now realizing what the important parts of the life were," the moments. They're not just talking about I should've spent more time at church. When you see that highlight reel before you die, I bet you're going to be surprised what the highlights were. And I think back, last year I did the One-Year Bible again for however many times in a row. My 12-year-old said, "You're reading that thing again?" Yeah. And she said, "Do you ever learn anything new?" No. So I made my prayer for the year. It's good. Today, Lord, show me something new in this passage, something I've never seen. And I got to Leviticus, which is usually where people quit the One-Year Bible. And sacrifice this, sacrifice that, it's like first nine chapters is kill this, kill that, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.
Well, that's all done with Easter. Right? So what's the first task after all the different sacrifices is in the 10th chapter of Leviticus, and God showed me this. And I thought, "Oh, William, here's your life challenge." And it's the 10th verse or the 10th chapter, somewhere in there. I don't know street addresses. But it's like, "Okay, now you priests." [inaudible 00:12:29] paraphrase. You are to discern between what is sacred and what is common. In other words, what's the holy moment and what's the waste of time? So as you're thinking through this journey from just on stage to how do I be pastor, what are some keys for discern, oh, here's a moment? I need to drop what I'm doing and latch onto this.

Wade Joy:
I think it starts with the holy moments that you have just between you and the Lord because I think in ministry, and this isn't just for worship leaders, this is for pastors, this is for a youth pastor, it's for anybody, we can put all of our focus on creating atmospheres for other people to experience God, and neglect to be just as intentional about creating the same spaces for ourselves to experience the Lord. So I think it's realizing that God wants to speak to me and to you in the ordinary moments of our day, and actually creating, not waiting for those to happen by accident, but creating time and being just as passionate about I need Jesus, and I need to worship Jesus privately before I ever step on that stage publicly to do it.
And I think when you start there, then the Holy Spirit gives you eyes to see moments throughout your day, on the weekend, where you can actually be a pastor to somebody. I think the other component of that is I think the more prepared you are at the basic competencies of your job, the more present you can be for those interruptions. So if you're going into a weekend, and you're stressed about, I don't know my lyrics, I forgot to tell my production director this, I forgot to communicate this, then you're not going to be in the head-space to realize that your bass player is struggling, and something's going on with them. But if you can come in, and I have a three part checklist that I walk through with people in this course I released, but it's going into every weekend. Have I prepared my heart for what God wants to do in me? Do I have a personal word that He's spoken to me going into the weekend? Am I prepared to impart something to the team I lead and to the church if I'm standing on stage?
And then have I adequately prepared everybody with any communication that relies on me? And I feel like when you've actually prepared, you've learned your stuff, you've communicated, you've been with the Lord, I think then you can go onto a weekend confidently, ready for whatever God brings your way. And yes, there are still ... You have to let your team know too. There are parts of my job where I'm not going to be able to do a one-hour counseling session with you. But at least you can be aware enough to say, "Hey, let's get together on Tuesday and talk about it, or let's stay after today." And so I think the more ... One of the things I talked about is better planning leads to greater presence, and so I think sometimes we think we can't be present because of the demands of our job. And it's really because of our undisciplined preparation and communication.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's good. That's good. So what's the kind of equivalent? The old saying, luck favors the prepared.

Wade Joy:
Yes. Very true.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah.

Christa Neidig:
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William Vanderbloemen:
Part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast now is I heard that you've got this course coming out that is actually going to give some tangible steps for people to move from performer to pastor. And I'd love to just hear, if you can give us maybe a sneak preview. What's that all about?

Wade Joy:
Yeah. And even just to reiterate one more time, moving from performer to pastor doesn't mean you make the stage a villain, and you say, "I've got to abandon the stage." It's more about your heart posture. There are elements to performance and what you do as a worship leader, but we should never have the heart of a performer. We should have the heart of a pastor on that stage. So this course that I released, I released it in the fall, and we went through one semester. It's re-releasing here at the end of January. It's called Performer to Pastor: Level Up From Leading Songs to Serving People. And it's helping take worship leaders on a journey of, number one, answering the question: What am I pursuing?
So am I pursuing chasing a platform? Or am I carrying a purpose? And so what's the identity that God wants me to have as His child? And how do I need to look at what He's called me to do as a worship pastor? What's a win in that role? Then there's a whole set of videos answering the question: Who am I producing? And that's actually how to lead people well, to serve people well. And then finally, how is my proactivity is the final module, and that gets to: How do you actually have hard conversations?
And this is where every senior pastor I think should get this for their worship leader because there's a whole video lesson on: How do you have a great relationship with your senior pastor? What kind of things do they need from a worship leader? But the goal is to give people training in areas that I don't see a lot of training for worship leaders. I think there's a lot of great training on how to write songs, how to sing well, how to build a set list. There's a lot of great theological training out there. But I don't see a lot of worship specific training on how to actually lead your team spiritually, and more importantly, lead yourself.

William Vanderbloemen:
And so the course comes out when? Give us the deets.

Wade Joy:
So yeah, it opens for enrollment January 23rd. It closes January 28th. And then there's three different tiers. You can get just the video only tier, and then there's a tier that has group coaching for four months attached to it. And then there's another that has four month individual, one on one coaching, which is limited to 10 people. And so yeah, that comes out. It'll be available to enroll in for a week, and then it'll open again later in the year.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's great. That's great. Well, and the website is?

Wade Joy:
It's performertopastor.com.

William Vanderbloemen:
Performertopastor.com.

Wade Joy:
Or you can just go to wadejoy.com as well. There's a link to it.

William Vanderbloemen:
We'll send out all those notes. But I've got to ask you behind the scenes question. How many web domains do you own?

Wade Joy:
Well, those are my two main ones. But then I have a lot of other ones for all the different misspellings of everything.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, so the healing only comes when you tell the truth. How many domains? Because I'm in a recovery group for this, I have way too many. I have lifetime platinum status with Go Daddy.

Wade Joy:
I think I probably have around 10.

William Vanderbloemen:
Okay. That's not bad. You can quit anytime you want to. That's good.

Wade Joy:
You're calling me out.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, yeah. One interesting dude, that guy that did Go Daddy, Bob Parsons, if you're really old and you're listening, and you know what a floppy disk is, the very first searchable Bible software ever was Parson's Bible Software. And every pastor on the planet had it, same guy as Go Daddy. Isn't that funny?

Wade Joy:
Really.

William Vanderbloemen:
Okay. How about some rapid fire questions to close?

Wade Joy:
All right, go for it.

William Vanderbloemen:
All right. Give me maybe not the most common, but a really common mistake you wish worship leaders would quit making.

Wade Joy:
I wish they would stop avoiding the hard conversation they need to have because most ... I don't want to say this as a blanket statement, but I would say it's a trend that I see, and it was true of me, is a lot of worship leaders want everyone to like them on the team. And to truly lead and pastor, you have to have hard conversations and challenge people out of love. And that involves short-term messiness, but it leads to long-term health. And every major problem a worship leader has is a small thing they ignored at some point. And so I've seen that over and over and over again in my ministry, and then also this year in the people I've worked with.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. And it shouldn't be hard because in worship ministry, you're not dealing with people with fragile egos or diva personalities, so it should be a piece of cake.

Wade Joy:
Yeah. Everyone is extremely, extremely humble. There are a lot of great people that I've worked with and I've met, I just think it's a struggle because I think generally creative, artistic people are more sensitive, and it's harder for them to be direct.

William Vanderbloemen:
Totally. I'm convinced everyone's greatest weakness is a shadow side of their greatest strength. And you can't have one without the other, so you've just got to hope Jesus redeems it and have the conversation. Right?

Wade Joy:
Yeah.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. So what do you wish you would've known at 22 or 23 as a worship leader that you know now?

Wade Joy:
I wish I knew not to wear those deep V necks because those pictures are still around. You can't get them off the internet.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah.

Wade Joy:
No, but honestly though, I wish I knew that my greatest joy would be found less in the songs that I led and more in watching the people that I led succeed in walking their calling. I probably mentioned this the last time I was on because I feel like I say it anytime I talk to anybody. Something Pastor Steven taught that has always stuck with me is mature ministry is getting more excited about what God does through others than what he does through you. And I struggled with that for a while, but once I was able to see when I see Jonsal lead a song at Elevation and knowing that I had a small part in helping him do that, I found so much fulfillment in that. It's almost like you learn to diversify your satisfaction and invest it in others, rather than thinking that everything has to be about the songs that I lead or the moment that I have on stage.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's good. And I think I saw, I'm kind of a professional stalker, that's sort of what we do, I think I saw you preached at Elevation recently. Right?

Wade Joy:
That's right, in late November.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. So last question, what in the world is the secret sauce for having such a good relationship with your pastor that after you're on staff, you get asked to preach? Give us a couple of hacks for that because that's not the norm.

Wade Joy:
I mean, I'm very thankful that the Lord allowed that to happen and has given us grace over this last year because anytime you leave something that you've been a part of for a long time, it's difficult. It's messy. But Pastor Steven has been incredibly supportive and incredibly gracious this year. I feel like he has been in my corner every step of the way, and Chunks has too, who's the CFO and helps lead the staff there. And so I think they, just the maturity that they have in it, and I think us as a family, realizing that, hey, this is still our church. And yes, it might be awkward going to church on a weekend and realizing that when the sermon goes down at our Blakeney campus, I don't have to fix it. And people asking, "Hey, why aren't you on staff anymore?" Then they always say, "What's the real story?" Because everybody thinks there's a story beneath the story.

William Vanderbloemen:
Sure.

Wade Joy:
So there's always, you have to push through some awkwardness, but I think I've loved to see how you can build something new without having to burn down what you left.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's it right there. That's it right there. Say that again. That's the tweet.

Wade Joy:
You can build something new without having to burn down what you left. And so that applies to both, it applies to the person leaving and it applies to the people that are still there, and realizing that's a successful thing to see somebody that grew up in your ministry. It's like a kid who's grown up and you don't want them to stay in the house forever. You want to see them go out and do other things. I mean, some people will be there for a long time, but I just think there's always the potential for messiness, but I love our church. I love them. And I felt that they loved me too. And there was a commitment to work through that.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's good. I think it's that mindset of, when we do pastoral succession, the really healthy guys are the ones that really are cheering for a better future after they're gone. It's kind of like Jesus in the upper room that I still can't get my mind around. He said, "You're going to do greater things than I ever did." What is that? Right? But that's the dream, so I think it's a model to follow. I know some of you out there, maybe you're winding down what you think is your worship career. And am I going to be able to stay at my church?
I think you should just follow Wade at wadejoy.com or any number of websites that he owns, and take a lesson or two because he's led something that's a global reach, and been able to lead it and still have this fabulous relationship. And please do take a look at Performance to Pastor. Get in there in that course, if that's something that'd be helpful to you. And follow Wade on social, I think you'll find it nourishes the soul. Wade, thanks so much for making time for me on short notice. I appreciate it very, very much.

Wade Joy:
Thank you so much, William. I've enjoyed it.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, yeah. And God bless you for coming along and listening or watching today. Hope you'll tune in again. If you need show notes, or want to know what's coming up, just go to Vandecast.com. You can find everything you need. God bless you and we'll see you again soon.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to The Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, Vanderbloemen.com, to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.