Being a part of music ministry during a worldwide pandemic has brought some difficult challenges. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Tyler Vanderwall and I am the drummer for Final Greetings. Today I want to share with you what the Lord has been teaching me these last couple of months.
First, a small background story. I joined Final Greetings in January of 2020 as an intern doing stuff like taking pictures, running slides, and wrapping cables. I thoroughly enjoyed it. When the lockdown order officially hit it kinda left the band in shock. We didn’t know how/when we would be able to bounce back. Instead of doing band ministry we all started to serve in Modesto at the AJM base with their house church ministry and helping with different service projects. As an intern I was kind of just told what to do, then I did it.
Flash forward to January of 2021, I’m no longer just an intern and Final Greetings decided to relocate to Longmont Colorado. I’m not going to lie the first month I was there was tough for me. Both of my bandmates had part-time jobs and many times I was just left in the basement. I often found myself sitting with a conviction that I should do more yet I didn’t feel the Lord call me into searching for a part-time job.
In February the ball started to roll again with a trip to Portland to record a single and another to California which allowed me to visit family. More trips started to open up but never did I find myself with a ton of doors open. Throughout the month of February, the majority of different opportunities to serve wasn’t because I was told to, like it when I was an intern. It was because I gathered such a hunger for serving, I knocked on doors in search for opportunities.
I think this lesson can be useful for not only people in the Music Ministry but also other believers too. Jesus never said that the world would come to us, he told us to go out into the world! If you are reading this I encourage you to go out in search of opportunities to demonstrate who Jesus is and what the gospel means to you!
“As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” John 9:4