EQUIPPINGTHESAINTS
BANNING LIEBSCHER
BY DOUG DOPPLER
Our mission at Worship Musician is to provide practical help for Worship teams. With Chris McClarney on the cover, we decided to launch this new column by interviewing Banning Liebscher, Jesus Culture founder and Pastor. True to form, Banning’ s words are inspirational, practical, and applicable. I’ ll be sharing them with my team and I invite you to do the same. If you wish to tap deeper into Banning’ s wisdom I encourage you to pick up his latest book“ Rooted” at www. jesusculture. com / store.
WORSHIP MUSICIAN: I loved seeing that you guys are doing Church in a High School auditorium. What are some of the best takeaways in doing Church like this?
BANNING LIEBSCHER: We love doing church in a High School theater. It has been fun to build there. I wouldn’ t want to be here forever, but I have loved and am loving the experience. You have to get creative in these environments. You narrow it down to what is really needed to fulfill the vision and create the environment you want. We have a huge value for excellence in all areas and doing children’ s ministry well. It is always a stretching area to try and figure out how you can keep the level of excellence up in a temporary space, as well as continue to up our level of taking care of families. One amazing thing that comes from setting up and tearing down each week is that you have to get good at building a volunteer culture. Some of the best community we built in the early days of our Church has been on the teams that show up early and set up. It’ s been special to see the level of connection on those teams.
WM: What are some suggested best practices for Churches that set up and tear down each week?
BANNING: Create a culture of volunteers. Refuse to settle when it comes to excellence. Pay attention to the details. Things begin to fall apart quicker when they are constantly being moved, so you have to stay on top of that stuff. Be really intentional with what you are trying to create with the environment to best serve guests, families, and the elderly. You also have to be intentional about creating an environment where people can encounter God.
photo: jesusculture. com
WM: Banning, you were the Youth Pastor for Jesus Culture. What things were you most missional about as you poured into the team?
BANNING: First and foremost, we pushed hard that our job is simply to bring people into an encounter with Jesus. At the end of the day that’ s what we are all about. If our team leads worship anywhere in the world and people walk away talking about the band or the lights we haven’ t done our job. We want them walking away talking about Jesus, more in love with Jesus. We realize that what we do is pointing people to something greater, which is God and His cause in the earth.
WM: I remember being floored by the presence of God I experienced as I heard Kim Walker-Smtih sing“ All I Need Is You” for the first time. Can you talk about how she became the voice of the Jesus Culture movement?
BANNING: It was just a natural outflow of what we were doing at our conferences and youth group. There were three worship leaders when we started, Kim, Chris Quilala and Melissa How. I knew that God had put something special on the worship and that’ s why we even decided to record albums. You could always tell with Kim, even in the early days, that there was something special on her. And then How He Loves blew up on YoutTube and the world was able to hear her. It’ s been fun to journey with her and Chris from the beginning and see what God has done with them.
WM: Can you share some of the things you did as a leader to shape the worship team in the early days that you feel were most fruitful?
BANNING: I answered some of this earlier with what our main goal is. We go after making sure that you are the same on the stage as off the stage. Your internal world needs to be bigger than any stage you are ever on. You can only give from your secret history with God. That we want to serve and lay our lives down for others. That this isn’ t about getting a name for ourselves but making the name of Jesus famous. It’ s not about Twitter followers it’ s about being obedient to what God has asked of us.
WM: The mantle that is on the music Jesus Culture creates is huge- what things as a leader did you do to keep growing and prepare yourself to lead the team and the Jesus Culture movement?
BANNING: Just learn to love the cave, establish a secret history with the Lord, make sure you have a correct definition of success, and understand that everything we do is simply a gift we give to God, what He does with it is up to Him.
WM: You suggested to my Pastor that we
50 Jul � Aug 2016 WorshipMusician. com