How to Edify the Church Through Creating Music

Tony Fernandez (00:00):
I think it actually has to do with does the original worship contribute to the culture? What we're trying to paint is a sense of a permission-giving structure, the freedom to go into creative endeavors, while also realizing that we hold the Scriptures in really high esteem. We're trying to balance what we call intellectual young church. We want to be deep and meaningful and profound in the way we think about things, but at the same time we want to be relevant and current.

Narrator (00:38):
Welcome to the Modern Church Leader, where you'll hear executive pastors share practical tactics and strategies that churches are using right now to thrive in our digital world and advance the Kingdom of God. Here's your host, Frank Barry.

Frank Barry (00:52):
Hey, guys. Frank Barry here with another episode of Modern Church Leader. I'm here with Tony again, for the second time, Mr. Tony Fernandez. Okay, just remind everybody in case ... I'm sure this actual episode will get a lot of new viewers just because of the topic, but remind everybody what church you're the leader at and how long you've been doing it and [crosstalk 00:01:13]?

Tony Fernandez (01:13):
Yeah, I've been in a church called the Broward Church in Broward County, Florida, for the last 11 years, on staff in all different areas but been the lead pastor guy, lead minister here for the last now four and a half years or five years.

Frank Barry (01:30):
Come on. Crushing it out there.

Tony Fernandez (01:33):
Thanks, yeah. We're really excited.

Frank Barry (01:35):
Hopefully people watch the first episode, which was a blast talking about all kinds of things, work structure and leadership and team design and all this kind of stuff. It was a ton of fun. But today we're going to talk about launching your first worship album.

Tony Fernandez (01:52):
Yeah, we're super excited.

Frank Barry (01:53):
I think you're more excited about this topic than all the other stuff.

Tony Fernandez (01:56):
I don't know. I'm a musician through and through. I love the art side of it. Every time I get a chance to blend the artistic with the spiritual, which really, they're one and the same, but to me I love being in that world. When those two concentric circles meet and I'm right there in the middle of it, that's when I feel most alive. So yeah, I certainly love talking about the quote, unquote business side of the church, but I really, really love this discussion.

Frank Barry (02:27):
That's awesome. Well, give us some of your background. I mean, you mentioned just in our own chats that you used to lead worship, but when did you start getting into music?

Tony Fernandez (02:39):
Yeah, when I was younger, like the story of everybody else, my dad had a guitar in the garage or whatever and I picked it up. A buddy of mine was playing guitar, and at the time I was trying to learn what it really meant to be all things to all people in my Christian context. And so, I grew up in New York City, raised more urban than suburban, and so didn't really think about playing the guitar as something that a Puerto Rican guy from the city would do.

Tony Fernandez (03:08):
But I related to this guy who was ... I was just trying to help him understand Christianity. He was a friend of mine and I saw he played guitar so I picked up the guitar from the garage and I started playing it myself and learning it. He showed me how to play a little bit and I played like Green Day like everyone else and American Pie and whatever. And basically that got me to start thinking about music more and how do we think about music and Christ and music and our relationship with God?

Tony Fernandez (03:37):
And so from pretty much the beginning of my Christianity, I've always been one of the worship guys, I guess ever since that point. I come from a really traditional church, so there have been times when our church was voices only, which was kind of strange and trying to navigate that. And so it's cool to see an elevation from those roots to launching a brand new worship album. I'm really excited to see the way that God-

Frank Barry (04:14):
That's about as opposite as you can get.

Tony Fernandez (04:16):
Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Frank Barry (04:18):
Like it's a worship album with actual instruments.

Tony Fernandez (04:21):
Oh, I didn't mention this. It's all acapella. I'm just kidding.

Frank Barry (04:26):
Oh wait.

Tony Fernandez (04:27):
Oh wait.

Frank Barry (04:28):
We're going to have to cut this show short. So from that moment though, you went on that journey. So you became a worship leader whether paid or whatever, but you started leading worship and was guitar your instrument? Or did you branch out and learn to play other instruments?

Tony Fernandez (04:48):
Yeah, like most people who do worship, I didn't know music a lot and so it led me to the place of going, "Okay, I'm going to study it." And so I took several classes in college, music theory and all that sort of stuff just to get my brain around it. Everybody in college knows how to play a little bit of piano so I know how to play piano. And if you're the guy who leads worship, you play everything. So you're a little bit of drums, I mean because someone might not show up so you fill in where you're needed. But yeah, right now ... well, not now but before I started leading the church, I was the main upfront worship leader, guitar in hand, singing, that whole thing.

Frank Barry (05:28):
Right, right, right. And I love that you mentioned in the last episode when you started leading the church as the lead pastor, you were leading worship too and you would just take the guitar, hand it to somebody and start preaching.

Tony Fernandez (05:41):
That's right, yeah.

Frank Barry (05:44):
Do your lesson.

Tony Fernandez (05:45):
Yeah, well someone took it off me. It'd be like ... because the microphone clip, they had to ... it was very bizarre. The whole thing was terrible. Yeah, every once in a while I'd put on a jacket and be like, "I'm a new person." But yeah, the feeling is ... Because for me, as I mentioned, it was really traditional. But I knew we needed to start ... when someone new comes into the picture, you can't blow things up. I mean, everyone's tendency, especially young people, is to be like, "Let's go in and blow everything up."

Tony Fernandez (06:17):
And I think, we were talking offline, but you only have a certain pool of trust. And so once that's gone, it's really hard to recover it. And so for me, I'm like, "I'm going to work within the system. I'm just going to ... Hey, if this church is just going to sing acapella music, I'm going to do it." And so I was up there like (singing). Like whatever you need me to do, I was going to do it. And then slowly begin to build trust. And as that happened, then I could go, "Okay, what if we added a guitar here? Would that increase and allow our worship to be more connective and would people be more encouraged by it and would a new generation get a sense of what it feels like to be close to God?"

Tony Fernandez (07:01):
And everyone loves the music of their youth. And so it's kind of like we needed some more music of youth. And so, I worked within that system and then eventually developed a band and put a group together. After I did that then, as I mentioned before, I had a leading worship while then preaching when I started leading the church. And then finally I was like, "I just need to hire somebody to really take it on and take this somewhere where it can never go before and never can go where I was."

Tony Fernandez (07:28):
The musician I have now is like, if I'm a five on the scale, he's a nine. He's fantastic as a musician. And so now I was able to broaden my horizons a little bit, not just think about Sunday morning but think about, "Okay, could we use our talents to really edify the church with giving new music to the church?" And so that's when the project of writing songs began.

Frank Barry (07:54):
Yeah. So you had that thought somewhere and I'm sure in collaboration with your worship pastor that you've got now. And how long have you had your worship pastor? When did you guys hire that role?

Tony Fernandez (08:07):
Man, I want to say 2018.

Frank Barry (08:10):
Okay. Okay. So yeah, was that three years, four years?

Tony Fernandez (08:15):
Yeah, three years. Yeah. Something like that.

Frank Barry (08:17):
And so along the way-

Tony Fernandez (08:17):
It's hard because of the pandemic, you know?

Frank Barry (08:19):
Yeah, yeah. Does that year count?

Tony Fernandez (08:21):
Yeah, it's like 2019, 2021.

Frank Barry (08:25):
Yeah. So then this idea of writing ... what's the journey? How did you go from wherever that point to you've now released your first worship album? Give us the journey of what sparked the idea and how did you get started on it and how did it go?

Tony Fernandez (08:44):
We worship a creator. One of the things that's important for my own Christianity is that true fact. I worship a creator. I'm born in his image and I was formed from the dust to be a creator. That's who I'm supposed to be. And all of us create things, whether you build a table or you start a business, you're a creator or you're a worship leader. You're a creator. And so I had this urge to create. And I think that comes by way of the Holy Spirit, and so I'm thinking, "How do we create in this?" And related to that is, okay, so I had this urge to create but I'm also thinking, "Look at our church."

Tony Fernandez (09:24):
When you look at the Scriptures, you see there are seasons where people wrote songs. Moses wrote songs and Miriam and Hannah, and these songs, they speak to the moment. And I looked around and I thought about the moment that we're in in the context of my church and my season, where I'm at. Do I have anything that tells the story of this time? That tells the heart or speaks to the church and goes, "Hey, this is what we need to remember and this is what we need to hold onto"? There's something beautiful about the memory of songs. You can listen to a song from 1994 and all of a sudden you're like, "Wait, I know every one of those words."

Frank Barry (09:57):
All the lyrics, yeah.

Tony Fernandez (09:59):
Yeah.

Frank Barry (09:59):
You're like, "How do I still remember this?"

Tony Fernandez (10:00):
It's crazy, right? But there's something that happens that's beautiful. And so I'm like, "God's a creator. We tell these stories in the Scriptures that lead to songs being written to remind the people of where they were." And then, what galvanizes the church to go, "I want to be part of the Broward Church"? What's uniquely Broward and what can ...

Tony Fernandez (10:25):
And so, for all those reasons, we were like, "All right, let's just get to work. Let's get to work. Let's just do it. Let's come together with all the ideas that we have; me, the worship leader and his fiance at the time, and let's just see if we can write. Let's see what we can do." And God basically produced some really, really cool music.

Frank Barry (10:45):
And so you got to writing original music?

Tony Fernandez (10:48):
Yeah.

Frank Barry (10:49):
From scratch?

Tony Fernandez (10:50):
Yeah, totally.

Frank Barry (10:52):
Had you ever written before? Had your worship leader ever written before?

Tony Fernandez (10:54):
Yeah, I mean, if you're a musician, you've written, right? It's just kind of what happens. I've written songs for conferences and stuff like that. But I don't think I ever wrote for the season. I wrote for something, but I didn't write with the thought, "Hey, what's happening right now?" And so, in this whole last set of songs that we just released, a lot of them speak to, "Hey, we're struggling. We're struggling and God takes difficult times and makes them beautiful." That's the spirit of a lot of the songs that we're singing because we're going through it. And I suspect-

Frank Barry (11:34):
As is everybody, right?

Tony Fernandez (11:35):
Exactly. Exactly.

Frank Barry (11:36):
The whole world is going through a struggle.

Tony Fernandez (11:40):
Exactly. And we're also dealing with a sense of postmodernism and like, "What do we think about truth and what do we think about the authority of Jesus?" And this is the world we're living in. We're all figuring that stuff out right now. And so, man, if we put pen to paper to start thinking about that, what would we come up with?

Tony Fernandez (11:59):
And so, yeah, the first song that we wrote, it's called The Words of Life and it comes from the passage in John, chapter six, where Jesus is looking at Peter after basically everyone's left him and he turns over to Peter and he goes, "Do you want to go also?" The whole crowd, 5000 people plus have left him, and he's by himself and just with his disciples and he's like, "Are you going to go?" And he says, "Where else would I go? You have the words of life."

Tony Fernandez (12:57):
And for us, it was like we're in the middle of a difficult time just like Peter was, just like the disciples were. It seems like people are abandoning the faith day in and day out. It seems like there's a global pandemic and people are leaving the planet, like literally dying. And there's so much pain and the question is posed to us, "Are you going to go too? Are you going to leave?" And for us, we were like, "We need to write something that says where else would I go? You have the words of life. I trust in you." That's where it was birthed. Things like that. And so, yeah, we're really excited about a lot of these tunes.

Frank Barry (13:06):
Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, the journey of it and then you're getting into writing and the why behind it is really cool to hear. I don't know, people listening may or may not have gone through this. We hear, right? We listen to worship music. We sing at church and we listen to the worship music on the radio or whatever, but going through producing it, where it comes from, is just cool to hear like that. And it wasn't commercial either, right? You're doing it for your church and for the people there. But you took it out and put it into the world too, right? Which has got to be a little scary.

Tony Fernandez (13:47):
Yeah, totally.

Frank Barry (13:50):
"My church right here that knows me and we put the song here but I put it out into the universe", like talk to us about that? So you went from first song, how many songs did you create? How did you put the music together?

Tony Fernandez (14:02):
So we now have one, two, three, four, five ... we now have 10 songs that are Broward Church originals or Broward Worship originals. The process is, there's really like three levels of it. There's the original writing. Actually there's like four levels; the original writing, the production. So you write these words, you write these melodies, and then you have to put some music to them so that they speak to what you're writing. So that's the second level.

Tony Fernandez (14:31):
So after you've finished that part of it then you pass it off to someone who can really what we call produce it, who can think it all the way through and make it like, "Okay, I want this sound here and that crash of the cymblal there and that guitar lick there." And so someone builds it that way and that's our worship leader and a friend of ours named Fernando who's also part of the church in Broward. He's a professional musician and has been in the music industry for quite a long time. He's actually on tour right now with Maverick City Music-

Frank Barry (15:01):
Nice.

Tony Fernandez (15:01):
... he's kind of in that world. We take it to the production level. After we finish the production, then we have to actually do the vocal recording, and in today's day and age you need a video because if you don't have a video there's-

Frank Barry (15:16):
Absolutely.

Tony Fernandez (15:17):
... it dies. And so, then it goes to the next level of multimedia production. And at that point we have a great team here so they're able to put together look and feel and design and flavors of how we wish to do it. And then it goes to releasing, branding, like releasing, promotion and all that sort of stuff. And that's why I'm here, to promote the album. Go to Broward Worship on all your streaming platforms and you'll find it. Broward Worship. But yes-

Frank Barry (15:49):
Is it just Broward Worship, you'll find it?

Tony Fernandez (15:51):
Yeah, just type Broward Worship in YouTube and you'll find the music.

Frank Barry (15:53):
Yeah. I mean, clearly we want to promote it so everyone go check out Broward Music.

Tony Fernandez (15:58):
Yeah, everyone right now check it out. Yeah.

Frank Barry (16:00):
And you guys put it on YouTube too, right?

Tony Fernandez (16:02):
Yeah, it's on YouTube. We're getting many more views. And we're a relatively small church. Before the pandemic there'd be 750 in attendance, give or take. So even that's kind of like how do we get this going? We think we have something to show the world but we don't have any mass promotion.

Frank Barry (16:26):
It's not a 10,000 person megachurch with that kind of audience and like yeah. It's a different-

Tony Fernandez (16:31):
Exactly.

Frank Barry (16:33):
I mean, I wonder how many seven, eight hundred member churches produce original worship, like an album?

Tony Fernandez (16:40):
Yeah, I don't know.

Frank Barry (16:41):
I don't know enough about that world. But doing it out of a ... Which is common as churches get bigger. Maybe not common but you definitely see it, especially in more modern churches. They get to a certain size and then they've got great worship and then they produce an album and it's like a thing. It's like this engine that churches have. But usually it's larger churches, like you see-

Tony Fernandez (17:11):
Totally. And part of it is like in addition to being a blessing to churches or a blessing to ourselves, we hope that it's a blessing to the people who listen to it. And the thing that poetry is really good for is it gives you words for things you couldn't think of. You know that feeling but you just couldn't put the words to it. And so that's what we're hoping to do is just basically give some people some words.

Tony Fernandez (17:35):
And so the production has been challenging and the timeline is challenging and thinking about how best to release them and what platform to release them on and how to do all that. And all that stuff requires a lot of marketing and strategy for marketing. And again, as a 700-member church, give or take, we don't have all the money for professional marketing and so we're doing it like an indie band. There's no big industry behind us or big company behind us supporting us. It's just those of us who know what we're doing at least a little bit trying to put it all together.

Frank Barry (18:09):
I mean, that's cool though, right? You get to ...

Tony Fernandez (18:13):
Yeah, yeah.

Frank Barry (18:13):
It's hard from the way it's hard work and it's probably a lot of extra hours and it's not anybody's day job per se, all these things, but it's a labor of love and you get to really learn the craft through all of this. And you'll probably learn a bunch of amazing things by having to do the hard work of pulling it all off on your own. And then hopefully you'll do another one, right, and you'll have learned a bunch of things and you'll keep building from there. What's been the most challenging part of all this? Is it just the fact that it's a lot of work?

Tony Fernandez (18:49):
Yeah, we're not really shy on the idea that this is just a ton of work. I think the most difficult thing is when you feel like you have something really precious and you're trying to figure out the best way to send it out to world. And it's not a fear. Like if people don't like it then amen. There's 900 other people you can listen to. And nowadays, the production level between a Hillsong and a Broward Church doesn't need to be all that different. The amount of money and the amount of resources it takes to ... and the amount of people power it takes to produce great things is, but you often just don't have the marketing arm to do it.

Tony Fernandez (19:25):
And so I've been telling our people, we have to be okay with no views, with 100 views on a video, because it's not for ... Remember, the goal isn't to become famous here. The goal isn't to chase cool. The goal is to build something because we are made in the image of our creator, to show the world ... I mean, to show our church what it was like in this season, to tell the story. That's really what we're after and anything else is a cherry on the top.

Frank Barry (19:54):
Right, right. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, talk to me about you've produced 10 songs I think you said. Did you produce them all at once and bundle them and release it, or did you just one by one as you [inaudible 00:20:08] it put it out into the world?

Tony Fernandez (20:10):
So we're calling it an album even though it's not an album. It's, in fact, 10 singles. The reason we're doing it that way is because we don't have ... like I mentioned before, we don't have the clout of a big ... Like when Kanye drops Donda, everyone's like, "Let's listen to this three hours of Donda." If we were to drop nine songs in a row, who knows? What we're trying to do is just trickle.

Tony Fernandez (20:36):
And we also don't have the manpower to produce all that same music at the same time. And so we're kind of doing it like if you've ever been to one of those restaurants, it's like they give you food as you order it. That's what we are. The second one is done, we release it and we just let it go.

Frank Barry (20:53):
And how have you released it? How do you do the ... Where do you release it? How do you promote it? What have you learned from that process?

Tony Fernandez (21:03):
So we hop on every platform that we have a relationship with. So, like, Frank, I love you, but I'm using you in some ways. Every opportunity that I have to get on it, I just hop on it. I know a couple of worship leaders who have a larger following than I do, so I use it there. Obviously all the people in our band are putting it on their IG. The church is promoting it. The church has a larger IG than Broward Worship does. The church has a larger YouTube channel than the Broward Worship page does. We promote it there.

Tony Fernandez (21:37):
But we're starting from scratch, and so it's like, I don't know, we're just trying to slowly develop this. We know that it's only been a couple of months and so we know the traction comes as we continue to release and we continue to release and hopefully-

Frank Barry (21:54):
Like longevity?

Tony Fernandez (21:55):
Exactly. Exactly. And we're in it for the long-haul because our goal isn't become let this music penetrate the Christian market tomorrow. That's not our goal. And if that was our goal then we would be very discouraged. And so because I think we have a good why, we're able to navigate through some of the difficulties. But yeah, promotion-wise, we just use all the platforms. And I think that's really the ... If you're a minister or if you're a worship leader, you have to realize that people stand above you and my goal is to try to get on their shoulders so I can use what they have to be able to bring the message I'm trying to bring to the world. And if I can do that, then maybe someone will hear it who needed it.

Frank Barry (22:39):
Yeah. I mean, you've got to get your buddy in the church that's out with Maverick to send some shout-outs or something.

Tony Fernandez (22:46):
Yeah. I mean, here's the only thing is that even those things, you've got to be really cautious with because does it lose his ability ... We've even talked about that. Okay, so we have a buddy who's out with Maverick. If he drops them a CD, like those old school, whatever-

Frank Barry (23:05):
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Tony Fernandez (23:06):
... does that change his ability to minister, connect with them, love them? Does it seem like he's just using them? Or do we have to wait? And so even that, my advice for them was just like don't even bring it up. Just leave it alone. Don't even bring it up, and if God allows it to happen by way of conversation then share it, but we're not going to do that.

Frank Barry (23:32):
Yeah, you don't want to use relationships. You've got to be careful about that.

Tony Fernandez (23:39):
Exactly. Yeah, I mean, you want to use relationships but you've got to be careful how you use them.

Frank Barry (23:40):
When the opening is right and yeah, the [crosstalk 00:23:42] is right and all things.

Tony Fernandez (23:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Frank Barry (23:43):
Yeah, no, I ... You're 10 songs in, what have you learned? What have you enjoyed the most, learned about doing this when you go to the 11th song?

Tony Fernandez (23:59):
Our first Sunday, maybe it was two weeks ago, where we only played original music-

Frank Barry (24:04):
Wow.

Tony Fernandez (24:05):
... for the church was a pretty cool moment. Our goal is that 50% of all the songs we sing will be originals long-term. That's the goal.

Frank Barry (24:13):
How's the church responding to that?

Tony Fernandez (24:16):
So, to me, that's what keeps me going. You asked the question what gets me to 11, it's the fact that the church is like, "This is amazing."

Frank Barry (24:23):
They're eating it up? [crosstalk 00:24:25].

Tony Fernandez (24:26):
Yeah, these are our songs. These are our songs. They tell our story. And so, yeah, they love it. They love it. We had some people who were visiting on Sunday morning who just remarked just like, "I never heard any of these songs and they're all so beautiful. They're all just so beautiful." And the person who was bringing their friend to church was able to be like, "Yeah, they're from our church here. You're not going to hear them anywhere else until they go anywhere else, but they're from this church."

Frank Barry (24:53):
I mean, I'm going to need all of the ... I don't know what ... I need the lyrics and the sheet music and all the things-

Tony Fernandez (24:58):
Yeah, yeah.

Frank Barry (24:59):
... so that I can send them to our guys so we'll start singing them in San Diego too.

Tony Fernandez (25:03):
Come on, man. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love it.

Frank Barry (25:07):
That's amazing. Do you find that the church ... just as you're saying that, does it build confidence in the church, like in the members and, "I want to bring my friends to be a part of this, to hear this"? Is that a thing that you're starting to see?

Tony Fernandez (25:26):
Well, I think it actually has to do with does the worship, the original worship, contribute to the culture? And then the culture ultimately is what drives or pushes people away. I would say 100% without a doubt it contributes to the culture of the church. Our culture, what we're trying to paint, is a sense of a permission-giving structure, the freedom to go into creative endeavors while also realizing that we hold the Scriptures in really high esteem and God's sovereignty in really high esteem.

Tony Fernandez (26:05):
And so for us, we're trying to balance what we call intellectual young church. It's like we want to be deep and meaningful and profound in the way we think about things. But at the same time, we want to be relevant and current. And so yeah, I think the culture of the church has been what's been a source of evangelistic effort as opposed to just the worship. And I'm sure the worship has something to do with it but-

Frank Barry (26:33):
And the worship is part of it though.

Tony Fernandez (26:34):
Exactly.

Frank Barry (26:35):
Yeah, I hear what you're saying. And it's part of it in that it is relevant and it is new and current and those things and then it gives the people that go to church there something to talk about too, right? Like when somebody was like, "Wow, I love this stuff." And they were like, "Oh yeah, the guy singing right there wrote that song-"

Tony Fernandez (26:58):
Yeah, exactly.

Frank Barry (26:58):
... "It's original." And in that way, it's as relevant as you can get, right? It's as current as it can get and it's exciting for the ... I mean, I think, as you described it, the church members there got to be excited just about the fact that their church is doing something like this. It's cool and it's fun. It's like, "That's my church."

Tony Fernandez (27:21):
Yeah. And I think we need more poets. We need more artists in the church. We need more creators. We need more people who do things like that. I traveled through Europe a couple of years ago and you go to these cathedrals and they're spectacular. And you go, "Wow, they were ..." Whatever you believe about the doctrine on all these things is neither here nor there, but the point is that all these were built with God in mind. And you go, "Wow."

Tony Fernandez (27:53):
Church has created cathedrals and some of the most beautiful music ever written was written with God in mind. And today, we've kind of swung the pendulum in some ways and some of the stuff is just kind of hokey. And I love some of the stuff but it's just it's a little ... That's why I love things like The Chosen. The Chosen is awesome. It's like a movie. And like, wow, the Christian world is trying to produce things that are beautiful again.

Frank Barry (28:21):
Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm with you. Well, I mean, as we wrap it up, if someone's watching that's like, "Man, I want to do this kind of thing. I'm inspired. I've been thinking about it," what would you tell them? How do they get started? How do they take a step forward in doing something like this?

Tony Fernandez (28:39):
Yeah, I think the first question is what model are you going to use? If you're going to build it from your church, if you're going to build it as kind of like a Maverick, you're going to go away from the church and do it, that works too. How are you going to do it? Realize that if you have the church's backing, you have at least a little bit of a platform, which is very encouraging. But then you have the necessary element of working with the ministers to make sure that the words are right. And so if you have a good relationship with them, it might be a perfect balance.

Tony Fernandez (29:08):
So what I would recommend is decide which direction you're going to go. Are you going to be a solo artist, are you going to work with the church? Where are you going to go with that? And then after that, just start writing songs and then after you write songs, start sending them to people you trust who will tell you no or yes. They'll say, "This is great," or, "This is not so good." And be okay with the critical feedback, because sometimes you get feedback that it just seems critical in nature but in fact it'll help you become a better writer.

Frank Barry (29:38):
Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's it, just start writing.

Tony Fernandez (29:42):
Yeah.

Frank Barry (29:43):
And choose your lane where you're going to go, but start writing and put it out there for people to-

Tony Fernandez (29:48):
That's it.

Frank Barry (29:49):
... start giving you feedback. Massive. Well, Tony, this has been awesome, dude. So Broward-

Tony Fernandez (29:54):
Yeah, Broward Worship.

Frank Barry (29:55):
Broward Worship.

Tony Fernandez (29:55):
Broward Worship, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, the whole thing.

Frank Barry (29:59):
Which channel have you found to be the most active? Do you have any-

Tony Fernandez (30:03):
Oh gosh, I don't know. I'm actually not the analytic guy on the Broward Worship page. My assumption is ... I don't know. My assumption would be Spotify but it's probably YouTube. I don't know. I'm guessing.

Frank Barry (30:14):
Please go subscribe, Broward Worship on all of them.

Tony Fernandez (30:16):
Please.

Frank Barry (30:17):
Just go to all of them.

Tony Fernandez (30:18):
All of them. Just do everything.

Frank Barry (30:20):
[crosstalk 00:30:20]. Support the church and the work they're doing. Even if you don't like the music, be a fan.

Tony Fernandez (30:25):
Yeah. And if you don't like the music, you can send some feedback.

Frank Barry (30:28):
There you go, there you go. Tony, this has been awesome, man. Thanks for coming on again.

Tony Fernandez (30:33):
Awesome.

Frank Barry (30:34):
Yeah, thanks, guys, for watching. We'll be back next week with another episode of Modern Church Leader. See you, guys.

Narrator (30:40):
If you enjoyed this episode of the Modern Church Leader, consider sharing it with the pastor or minister you think would benefit the most from listening to this conversation. You can send them to modernchurchleader.com or share this episode directly from your podcast app. Be sure to subscribe for free on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode, and we'll see you again next week with another conversation here on the Modern Church Leader.