Ranjo Clements–Calling, Discipleship and Worship

Subscribe
on iTunes

Overview

Ranjo Clements, associate pastor and worship leader at Great Commission Fellowship in Wilmore, Ky., joins the Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast today. Ranjo is from Mumbai, India, is an Asbury Seminary alum and is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the Seminary. In today’s conversation, we talk about Ranjo’s story of calling, his heart for discipleship and worship, and his Ph.D. program.

Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

Ranjo Clements, Associate pastor & worship leader at Great Commission Fellowship in Wilmore, Ky.

Ranjo Clements is a husband, father, worship leader, and pastor in Wilmore Ky. He received an M.Div. with an emphasis on worship studies from Asbury Theological Seminary in 2012 and for the past nine years has served as the associate pastor of GCF: A Vineyard Community Church, overseeing worship and discipleship. His passion in ministry is to create environments where people expect to meet God and are empowered to use their gifts. He enjoys working with worship leaders and musicians. He was born in Mumbai, India, and as a third-culture kid, has spent extensive time both in India and the United States. He is committed to sharing his cross-cultural experience and believes diversity should be celebrated, not deliberated. Ranjo is currently a Ph.D. student in the Intercultural Studies Program at Asbury Seminary and plans to use his education to equip the church with tools to build flourishing, Christ-centered, multi-ethnic communities. He loves Kentucky basketball, making music with friends, leading worship with his wife, movie nights with the kids and good food! 

Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Thrive With Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you, who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need. Ranjo Clements, associate pastor and worship leader at Great Commission Fellowship in Wilmore, Kentucky joins the Thrive With Asbury Seminary podcast today.

Heidi Wilcox:
Ranjo is from Mumbai, India, is an Asbury Seminary alum and is currently enrolled in a PhD program at the seminary. In today’s conversation, we talk about Ranjo’s story of calling his heart for discipleship and worship, and his PhD program. Let’s listen.

Heidi Wilcox:
Hello, Ranjo. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the Thrive With Asbury Seminary podcast today. I’m really looking forward to our conversation.

Ranjo Clements:
Heidi, thanks for having me. This is going to be fun.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. It is going to be fun because we got to know each other, it feels a couple years ago, but I feel like it may be a little bit longer. So I’m excited that we kind of get to reconnect today.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. I really enjoyed the stuff we’ve done in the past, and so this will be fun.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, it will be. So I want to just jump right in if that’s okay and talk a little bit about how you experienced your calling to be a pastor because I was looking on your Facebook page, doing a little bit of research on you and I saw that you studied economics and commerce at Xavier’s College in Mumbai, India. So I was just curious how that all came about.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. That’s a really good question. When I think about calling, I’m not entirely sure that I’m called to be a pastor. I mean, that’s not true. I love being a pastor. But when I think about a calling, I think about it more in terms of an invitation and that’s how it’s played out in my life so far. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been called to be a pastor, I’ve just been called to different things. I’ve rather just been invited to different things. I studied business and economics. And just to do a quick background, I was born in Mumbai, India, moved to the states when I was five. My parents came and were called into missions.

Ranjo Clements:
So they came to Asbury, they studied here, then we moved back to India. When I was 12, we planted a church. So I grew up in the church. I grew up in that lifestyle of following Jesus. There was never a question in my family who we followed. There was never really, I would say a question in my mind about whether there was a God. I know at 12, I had this moment where I realized, “Oh, I want to I want to follow him.” It was right before he moved back to India. As I look back now, I think that I realized the gravity of what was about to happen. I realized I needed him.

Ranjo Clements:
Probably for the first time, I needed something, I needed an anchor. So that was kind of my first step and then moving back we experienced awesome things. Planning our church was so much fun. We experienced God move awesome ministry, healing, that kind of stuff. I grew up with this awareness of who God was. When I went to college, I really just wanted to make some money.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s a great reason.

Ranjo Clements:
Business and economics just felt like the right move. I look back now, it was just pride, but I wanted to not be a burden to the church. My lifestyle was one where I knew I would always want to serve God, but I thought let me make some money and then just do something on the side or maybe just not… What I would say back then was I don’t want to be a burden to the church.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
Then by my second… I think this was after my second year after my sophomore year, I was at home during the summer and our worship pastor had just… He had just left. He was planning a church with us and my mom who was leading worship to fill in, she was going to be traveling. She and my dad were coming back to the states for a month. So they said, “Hey, Ranjo, why did you lead worship for this month?” I had really stayed away from leadership roles or anything on stage. I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt like I needed my life to be… Well, I needed to have it together a little more than I do.

Heidi Wilcox:
No, I get it. Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
Desperate times my parents were just like, “Just do this.” So I said, “Fine, I’ll do it.” It was just this experience where God moved in me in powerful ways through that time. I think I stepped into my gifting. I had loved music. My parents before we moved to the States to study, they were musicians. My dad conducted a choir that toured. Music had just been in our family. It was a big part of our culture in our church. That’s how I really connected with God. It took things out of my mind and allowed me to just express myself and feel things.

Ranjo Clements:
That’s what music does. That’s why we use it in church. It allows us to express ourselves and to feel things and moves us in ways that we otherwise may not open ourselves up to. And all of that, when I was leading, I kind of brought all of that into just submission to God. And God moved in really powerful ways. Obviously in me, but I think for the whole church we all realized like there was a shift happening. I was doing something that was new and different. To just be clear, it wasn’t me. It was just that I happened to be there.

Ranjo Clements:
I felt like in that moment God said, “All right. Now, Ranjo. You need to choose. You can do this. You can have this experience, or you can go back to your old life and kind of meddle around in the middle. For me, it wasn’t even a choice. I needed that moment where all of us were just broken before God. He could do anything with his people. I’ve been chasing that ever since and that’s led me… I finished school and thought I’d go into business, and had this-

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, but you came… I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Ranjo Clements:
So that’s where I was going with that. I thought I was applying to business schools and other programs. At the same time, I’m leading worship and I felt we were getting to a point in our church where… I joke about this, but it’s kind of true. Indians, we love to party. We love to have a good time. We love to sing, we love to dance. In our worship, we could get it going. We could get the crowd going and have a good time, but it felt like we were hitting this wall where there was more. There was more that we could have. There was more that we wanted to say and express. It was corporate.

Ranjo Clements:
I was feeling it on behalf of our church. I think other people too are just like, “Oh, we don’t know how to get to the next level.” And there are people who did like my dad knew other pastors in church. I just didn’t know in my media like how do I go further. And I felt like God said, “You need to know me more before you can lead people to me.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. So was that when you came to Asbury Seminary the first time then?

Ranjo Clements:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.

Ranjo Clements:
I kind of said, “Okay, well, I guess…” And that’s why I joke and say, “I don’t know that I’m called to be a pastor. I didn’t go to seminary to be a pastor. I went for the knowledge. I went for the learning.” And I just assumed I’d come back after and maybe work, probably. Work with my dad, work with our church. So I came to the seminary. The first year I felt like God asked me, “Well, would you go out anywhere for me?” And I said, “No. I will go home to India.”

Heidi Wilcox:
I love the honesty though.

Ranjo Clements:
Well, it took a long time to re-learn how to be Indian after being in the states as a kid.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I was going to ask that because you are from India, but you spent a lot of your formative years in the states. Then going back to India and then coming back, were all those transitions… I mean, how were they? Was it weird?

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. It was really weird. That I think solidified my calling more than anything else. When I came to the states, I was aware that I was different. This is in the ’90s. I wouldn’t say Kentucky was as diverse a place as it is now.

Heidi Wilcox:
No, probably not.

Ranjo Clements:
They’re regularly the only colored person in my class. I looked different. I acted different. The way I treated my parents. We had different food. I smelled different. All of it was different. I would say the church was probably the place that I felt safest. I just felt like this is a place where I felt normal. But I also knew I’m different because I’m not from here. We are all preparing to go back to India. There was never a question about that. I was aware and it was okay. Then when we moved back, that was probably harder because I went back to this place. I thought I’m going back to where I belong.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You were home.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah, where I’m going to fit in. When I came to the States, I spoke three languages. When I went home, I barely spoke English. It was just a different environment. Academics, they were so hard. I mean, it’s incredibly competitive. It’s the British system. I mean, I remember having… My parents were always on me to have good grades in the states. And they would say, “When we go back, it’s going to be really hard if you don’t work here.” I mean, they were great. But I had mostly A’s and I went back. My first year I failed everything and failed the grade.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, that had to be disheartening.

Ranjo Clements:
It was not great, but it was, I mean built on the culture shock, built on the trend like everything, the school years, a different time period. So like summers earlier, I was already late. The whole thing was just one big crazy transition. That happened, but another thing that happened was that just culturally, I looked Indian. Typically, missionaries would go into a space where they’re around other missionaries, other expats or foreigners. We were Indian, so I we moved back to India, into a suburb of Mumbai. All my friends or my family’s friends, my cousins, they were all Indian. So it was just like complete immersion, which was beautiful. It really moved me along quicker. But it was also, I would say harder to relearn the language and all that.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, sure.

Ranjo Clements:
People would qualify me as a coconut or that’s, I think what people thought about me there. It’s like you may look Indian, but you’re not. That’s how you think. That’s not how you talk.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I-

Ranjo Clements:
And so… Go ahead.

Heidi Wilcox:
I was just going to say in not quite the same way, but I grew up a little bit. I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, but my parents are not native to Eastern Kentucky. They’re from Ohio and Indiana and then moved down there to work at a school down there, which is great. But I kind of struggle with, I’m from Eastern Kentucky, but real Eastern Kentuckians, I don’t feel like I am through Eastern Kentucky. I’ve always felt like I kind of don’t have a place to belong.

Ranjo Clements:
Like you’re third culture a little bit?

Heidi Wilcox:
A little bit, but in a completely… Not really to the extent that you’re talking about, but a small way.

Ranjo Clements:
I mean, having lived now in Kentucky for the longest period of my life, I totally understand the difference in mentality, even in Wilmore who we consider townies and who we consider people who belong and people who are visiting. You could be here for 15 years and still be visiting because you’re parents are not from here. So that was similar in India. Again, the church just became a safe space for me. It was the only place where I was normal where I knew what to do, and I knew how to act and I think it’s because we had a culture or we had values, and what we were doing was we shared that, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ranjo Clements:
We knew why we were here. We were here because of God and we had that in common.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
So that kind of formed the foundation for me since church was a safe place for me and a place I could flourish. I’ve just always wanted to make that the same for everybody else.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That’s really cool. It makes a lot of sense. So when you came back to the seminary, you said you had every intention of staying, of going back, not staying. You ended up staying, but you had every intention of going back to India. How did you know that was the right step?

Ranjo Clements:
So, when I said no, when you’re in a relationship with God, the beautiful thing is that he doesn’t force us into anything, he always invites us, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
I would say that I’ve not I have not given up things just for God because it was always, I don’t know easy or just I love suffering. I just think that I just experienced his presence and his invitation into something new, which comes with his presence and his passion. Then you begin to long for that yourself. So in this case, God was just expanding my vision, my mind. And you don’t really say no to God, he just kind of waits you out, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Right.

Ranjo Clements:
Over the course the year, he just changed my heart. After a year, I was already saying, okay, God. I’ll go anywhere for you.

Heidi Wilcox:
So did you meet your wife here?

Ranjo Clements:
I did.

Heidi Wilcox:
Tell me that story.

Ranjo Clements:
So that was great. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. The church that I’m the associate pastor at is called GCF or a Vineyard church. It started in the ’90s in Wilmore. And our church in India planted out of it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really?

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really? That’s awesome! I didn’t know that.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah, they planted a number of churches in the ’90s and we were the second church plant. So we were really close to the original leadership. By the time I’d come back, it’d been 12 years later. We’re not really connected with GCF anymore, but I went and I was at that point really looking to explore. I wasn’t looking to plug in anywhere. Your first year in seminary, you want to see everything. What people do different. So I went to GCF. Well, let me back up. I had a friend who was leading worship at GCF. He was an Indian dude too. He would always say, “Hey, why don’t you come play bass. Why don’t you come just help out with with this.” I’d always say like, “Ah, I don’t know. I’m not really looking to get involved right now.” One Sunday I went and I saw the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen, singing.

Heidi Wilcox:
I love it.

Ranjo Clements:
She she was singing and it was… I mean, her voice was beautiful as the rest of her and I was just… We’re both Asians. We needed a reason to talk. I couldn’t just go up and say hi, so I thought maybe I should volunteer.

Heidi Wilcox:
Good call.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. That’s what I did. I started playing on the worship team. Two years later, and it really coincided with this submission to God where I was finally like, “God, I will go wherever you want. I had liked her for you know two years, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that we could be together because she was a vocal performance major at the college. She had a different trajectory than mine, which was going home to India. Then I realized, “Wait. If I can go anywhere, I’m just going wherever she’s going.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, I love that.

Ranjo Clements:
That’s right. I was going to make this happen. So that’s how we met. We went on our first date probably two years. It took two years after volunteering at GCF. It worked out really well. Ended up with a job, some kids, a life.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You have four kids now, is that right?

Ranjo Clements:
I have four beautiful girls.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow. Four girls. That’s awesome.

Ranjo Clements:
That’s right.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome. So after you and your wife met, you got married four kids later. You’re pastoring. You decided to return to Asbury for your PhD. Tell me about your PhD, and why you decided to come back for more education?

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. So again, I just felt like it was really an invitation from God. Being… Were you going to say something?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Because I’m curious about, I love the word, the invitation that God… I think of calling, and you changed it to invitation and I really love that. I want to go back to this question, but I want to explore that a little bit more.

Ranjo Clements:
Sure.

Heidi Wilcox:
How do you look at the invitation? Does it just come out of the desires of our hearts that are ultimately the desires that God puts there. How do we know when we’ve been given that invitation?

Ranjo Clements:
And this is my life. This is how it’s happened for me. God will just begin to put a passion in my heart for something and when it’s an invitation from him, it tends to… When you share God’s heart, you feel his passion for something. You feel his hope for the situation. You feel his desire for change. And you want that yourself. In my case, at least I’ve realized, “Well, this is not something I’ve wanted in the past. This is a change in my trajectory.” Even staying in Wilmore and pastoring all these years, when we graduated, we had every intention of still going overseas.

Ranjo Clements:
My wife grew up in China. She’s half Chinese. So we just assumed we’d go back to Asia somewhere. Her parents have a ministry in China. Of course mine are still pastoring in India. So we thought, “Let’s go to Thailand. Let’s go somewhere else, see what God’s doing in the world.” Eventually, we assumed we’d end up somewhere there. But that last year, I felt like God was just putting this passion on my heart for our church here in Wilmore GCF.

Ranjo Clements:
I was already a part-time worship pastor, but he was giving me dreams. I was like just kind of crying out to God for change. In every situation, you often know what the issues are, but then it’s different when you feel God’s passion for that situation. You just want to be part of it because you feel his grace for that situation. You feel his presence. In that situation, I think that’s where calling comes in. The reason I say invitation is because in my experience, it’s constantly changing and evolving. It’s never just one thing. I think God gives us this step because if he were to give us the whole picture, we probably wouldn’t take that step.

Ranjo Clements:
He gives us the step and that matures us into the person we have to be for the next thing he wants us to do. That’s how it was with that. So with the church, that was the same thing. We were like, “I think we need to stay for a minute. We need to stay and pastor here, and do what we feel like God’s doing here.” That turned into nine years, this year.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, yeah. I love how often sometimes people say, “I was only going to be somewhere temporarily,” and that temporarily turns into 10 years, sometimes a lifetime because you just feel like it’s not time to leave yet. So now we can talk about your PhD, sorry.

Ranjo Clements:
No, it was a great question, because that same evolution kind of happened in bringing me to the PhD where during my time here, I just became really passionate about multi-ethnic church and multicultural worship, and really multicultural community. I think just because of how I moved around and how I had to learn to fit in, I spent a lot of time in my 20s, in my teens, my 20s just trying to fit in. Just trying to learn the culture.

Ranjo Clements:
In India, re-learn the language, learn the sports. Learn how to fit in and how to connect with people. I think in my 30s, I began to realize, “Well, I’m not just one thing. I’m made up of these different cultural experiences.” I think I began to see that in ministry where someone would think I’m good at a certain thing. I would think, well, that’s not really a skill. That’s just kind of how I was raised in India. Everybody does this over there. It’s just something simple like the way we have conversations.

Ranjo Clements:
This is just a cultural thing that I think is hilarious. So when I first came here, one of my first jobs, I was working with this team and I just… In India, when you’re brainstorming, when you’re having a group discussion there’s kind of an order to how it takes place. In eastern culture, I would say broadly, where the more seasoned the adults speak first, the elders speak first. And it kind of goes in an order. They make sure everybody has a voice. Everyone’s kind of heard. Also, when you talk, typically, if you’re younger especially, you have to make sure you have something worth saying.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
We don’t really spit ball. We kind of wait until we have a formulated thought and then we present it. What I found here in the west, in a lot of places, people just jump in. People just talk and they say what they think. And both systems are beautiful because what I realize is in the west, we’re actually creating together, whereas in these, sometimes it’s not as possible because we’re all kind of waiting to have a defined thought in our mind before we speak it. You can’t create in the same way. The flip side is that in these, typically, most people get heard whereas I realized these are broad, like these are general statements, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Ranjo Clements:
This is just something I’ve experienced. I wouldn’t say this is for every single situation, but in the west like in my experience, I would go like a month without saying anything in a meeting.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow.

Ranjo Clements:
Because no one would ever ask me what I thought.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow.

Ranjo Clements:
I was waiting to be asked. I was waiting to be invited into that. I mean, I was the youngest person on that team, I think and I thought everybody knew what they were talking about because they spoke in a way that implied that they really knew what they were talking about. So those kind of things, those cultural differences, I think they helped me as a pastor, to be a good listener, to help people find voice and bring that out.

Ranjo Clements:
I became really passionate working with college students and especially internationals who’d come in and try to help them understand like hey, you have a place here. Don’t just blend in, be distinct because your experiences, your culture, it’s going to help shape your campus. It’s going to help shape the lives of the people around you if you’re willing to give yourself.

Ranjo Clements:
And the same thing with church. I’ve just found that especially… I would say especially with immigrants, but this is all people. We want to be seen. We just don’t want to be exposed, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
I think it’s a really important distinction. Everybody wants to be seen. Everybody has got something that God’s put in them. We’re all image bearers, right? We’re reflections of his glory. God’s put something in us that’s worth sharing. We just wanted to do it on our terms. And it goes back to that question of like that idea of invitation. God invites us into those things. He doesn’t expose us. He doesn’t just tell us to go do something. He invites us. He walks with us. He births it in us, he journeys through it with us, and we are transformed through that process, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
That was kind of like all of those thoughts can be really passionate about just how different ethnicities, different people from different cultures come together and do community, real community. Not just, “Hey, we all show up and we do our thing.” It’s just the dominant culture that we all submit to, but where we make space for other cultures and make space for other people. What is multi-ethnic or multi-cultural. Because it’s more than just ethnicity, it’s age. It’s gender. It’s all these different levels of diversity. Right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
How do we create a culture that’s open to all of it because that’s what the church is supposed to be. That’s what the church is supposed to look like. And it comes back the idea of just safe space like it was that for me, and I want that for other people. So that’s where I started thinking about, “Well, I need to go to school to learn because this is just… These are all thoughts in my head. I need some tools. I need some skills to understand this better. What’s the anthropology? What are the systems that are taking place? What is the theological foundation for this? Is it really worth doing?”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
Then I’m looking at the US and looking at the immigration patterns and how the demographics of the country are changing. It’s in our movement at the Vineyard, which I love. And I love that we’re really focusing on diversity. I’m looking around at our churches and noticing, “Man, we just lack tools.” This is hard. For culturally competent people, this is hard. How can we just put this on pastors and say, “Okay. Now, go be diverse.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. Yeah. How do you do that?

Ranjo Clements:
Right. So that was kind of where all of that… And I will say the third part, and this is probably the closest to home is like I had daughters. As I see them grow up and I see them grow up in Kentucky, and they are beautiful, beautiful ladies. I want them to fully operate in their heritage. I want them to know that it’s beautiful, that it’s of value. I want them to appreciate their skin color. And they’re like that is something, like they are beautiful because they are brown.

Heidi Wilcox:
Absolutely.

Ranjo Clements:
We try to take them every so often every couple years with each kid really to India and China because they get immersion experiences and they like go live with their grandparents, and eat the food and play with kids who are Indian and Chinese. I want them to bring all that into their person and they’re like, “Whoa. I am diverse and I can share that with people. I can choose like the good parts of these cultures. I can have an open mind towards other people who are different.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
So all of that together, I was like, I need to go to school and just learn, again.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I love that. I love how like you were talking about each step of your invitation you just kept saying yes and doing the next right thing that was in front of you. God just kept leading you on to the next thing. And you’re really happy about it.

Ranjo Clements:
You know…I am. School is so much fun. Often, I feel so out of my depth. I’m surrounded by brilliant people like our professors are just incredible individuals. In the intercultural department, we just had Dr. Okesson come on and talk about public theology, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ranjo Clements:
There’s so much wisdom there. And even just the people. In my cohort, the group I came in with, we have maybe three, four different nationalities represented. It’s incredible just like learning from them and seeing how smart they are. I’m always like, “God, what am I doing here?”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. For sure. Well, we’re really glad you’re here, Ranjo on the podcast and as part of the PhD program too. That’s awesome.

Ranjo Clements:
Thank you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Because you’re the associate pastor at GCF. And then are you also the worship leader? Am I understanding that right?

Ranjo Clements:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. So those two roles, I don’t know a whole lot of people who have those two roles. Most people I know are either associate pastor or worship leader. How do those two roles work together?

Ranjo Clements:
Well, that’s kind of how when I felt invited to stay here. I felt like God was saying, “You need to help pastor these people.” I was already leading worship and everything about in my MDiv, I did the academic track in worship and everything was the theology and understanding how we do this and how we do it corporately, and all of that. I realized a big part of that, if we want to have the experience in our worship gatherings that we had in seminary that where we expect the Holy Spirit to move in our gatherings, where we expect to encounter God, which is why we gather because God calls us as a people, because he wants to fill us, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ranjo Clements:
I love the imagery in 2 Corinthians 3:16 where it’s talking about Moses and the veil and then it’s this passage everyone has probably heard before. When anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is removed, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ranjo Clements:
Now, with the spirit of the Lord is there’s freedom. And we all with unveiled faces, contemplating God’s glory of being transformed into his image from one glory to the next. This idea like as we come before God, we are transformed. He’s making us individually and corporately into His image. It’s this incredible thing that can only happen through the Holy Spirit. However, as I began processing that and thinking about that, it really does… The spiritual maturity of the body really does inform worship. In some sense, our gatherings, our corporate gatherings are barometers for how connected we are to God.

Heidi Wilcox:
Interesting.

Ranjo Clements:
Because if you get a group of people and the last time they thought of God was last week, well, they come in at a certain level fully distracted. The whole goal is just to move them to this point of intimacy with God. If you have a group of people who are walking with the Lord daily, growing and experiencing his presence and his leading, his guiding in their own lives participating in his works through the week, when they come together to worship, there’s a completely different environment.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure.

Ranjo Clements:
We’re all carrying his presence anyway. They bring that together and it’s like, “Oh, we are here and we are aware, and we are ready for this, right?” So that’s where like discipleship became a passion for me. It’s just like, “How do we get our people to this point where we… I mean, it really is serving the purpose of worship because in my heart that’s what I love most of all. It’s just those moments where an entire body is just humbled in the presence of God. It’s open space.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
And so… Go ahead.

Heidi Wilcox:
What does worship mean to you personally and as a worship leader?

Ranjo Clements:
Well, so there’s…

Heidi Wilcox:
Because I guess I’m thinking like… And sometimes in my head… I’ve talked to you about this before. So my perspective has changed, but I think prior to that conversation, I thought of worship as the singing part of the service. So that’s what I’m kind of getting at, because I think it’s more than that.

Ranjo Clements:
100%. So I think there’s so many definitions for worship. And I think the reason for that is it’s really all-encompassing. It takes your mind, your body, your spirit, your soul. It takes everything. So people express it in different ways. To make a simple definition or simple idea even, I would say worship is our natural response to who God is.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow. Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
If he is God in the truest sense, if he is the infinite being, the infinite spirit that is, creator of all things, the one who creates out of nothing, the only one who creates out of nothing. Just think about that. Everything else is manipulated in some sense that creates out of nothing. He speaks into existence with what doesn’t exist. If that is the God we are coming before, what should be our response? It’s worship.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
Right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely.

Ranjo Clements:
So four things happen in worship. And you find this in different passages in scripture. The Isaiah 6 model or passage where it’s like clearly articulated. There are these motions where worship is the praise of God. It starts with acknowledging who he is. Worship is the surrender to God. In the knowledge of who he is, we have nothing to give but ourselves, because he’s God. It’s the transformation in God, because when we surrender, the Holy Spirit changes us. He fills us.

Ranjo Clements:
The word is Wesleyan’s sanctification. We are being transformed into his image and then finally it’s the participation with God. Because from that, and that’s where the invitation comes in. God invites us to participate in what he’s doing. His mission to the world, the missio dei. It’s his mission to the world that we participate in His kingdom lifestyle where things are in right relationship with Him. That kingdom that He’s birthing on earth is what we get to participate in and extend with Him. Not just for Him. It’s with him because it’s empowered by His Holy Spirit.

Ranjo Clements:
So worship is all of that. It’s both deeply personal, but also 100% corporate. Both have to happen? These rhythms have to happen simultaneously of like we have to be living a life of worship, a life of surrender to God. Just to ground it in scripture, Isaiah 6 does such a great job of showing how these motions go. Isaiah coming to the presence of God, he sees the seraphim singing Holy, Holy is the Lord. The whole earth is full of his glory. It’s that first, like it’s got to start with acknowledging who God is.

Ranjo Clements:
We cannot worship or ascribe worth to something if we don’t acknowledge who he is. Then it moves, like his immediate response is, “Oh, gosh. Woe to me. I am a man of unclean lips. I’m ruined,” is what he says. “And my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty.” And the next step the seraphim come and take a coal and touch his lips. It’s a symbol of purification.

Ranjo Clements:
So it’s like this surrender leads to transformation. And then he’s free to be in the presence of God, but in the presence of God, God says, “Whom shall I send?” And he says, “Send me.” It’s like that idea of invitation. He’s not saying go, he’s saying, “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah now is like, “Send me. I am in. I am in what you’re doing.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
So that’s the participation, when we gather. First of all, you see this in a number of different accounts like for example the Lord’s prayer is the same way, “Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” is acknowledgement, right? It’s praise, acknowledgement of who God is. “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” This idea of surrender, transformation God is feeding us. God is providing for us as we participate. And then lead us not to temptation. Forgive… Lead us not to temptation… What is the-

Heidi Wilcox:
And deliver us from evil.

Ranjo Clements:
Thank you. Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. That’s participation, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
If we see this model and just that’s what it looks like to walk with God. That’s what it looks like to worship. We view the whole worship service. When we come together from start to finish, we want to walk through those steps. So we acknowledge God with our singing. We begin with praise with moves to surrender. We always have space in our worship where we sing about the cross. We speak up. We read scripture about the cross, and have a point in the music where we’re just like, “We’re going to open this up for you to have a time to just respond to whatever the Holy Spirit is putting on your heart.”

Ranjo Clements:
Often what we’ll do is, or what a lot of people will do, and I think is something we get in trouble is we start with us. We start with songs like, “Oh, God. I’m doing this for you. God, I’m surrendering myself.” It’s like well, if we start by focusing on us, we’re never going to get past us, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
One of my favorite worship leaders is Matt… I want to say Redmond, but it’s not. Matt Maher. He’s great. and I was watching a video of him leading at this conference. It’s like midway through this. He’s like, “If you’re here, you’re sitting here, you’re unable to join in, you’re unable to connect. You feel like, I don’t know. You’re just dealing with your stuff.” He says, “My advice to you is build a bridge and get over yourself, and just focus on God.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow. That’s a good word.

Ranjo Clements:
Right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
He said it in a way that was so kind and inviting.

Heidi Wilcox:
Of course, of course.

Ranjo Clements:
But this idea like, “Hey, let’s get over ourselves for a minute. Focus on God and allow him to invite us into this.” Right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
Because it is leading to intimacy. When you talk about surrender, transformation, participation. That’s intimacy with God. And that’s where we’re going. But we can’t pretend like it happens without doing the work of acknowledgement. I mean, that’s for every relationship. So it starts with praise. We sing. We have open space for repentance for surrender. And that’s that idea of God forming us in his image individually.

Ranjo Clements:
I always see like the singing as setting the table for the corporate word. The preaching is God having this word for all of us that is shaping us corporately. And that’s why when we sing, when we preach, we’ve got to be preaching and singing the gospel. We’re preaching Christ over these people. When we’re singing, we are singing Christ, his story, his mission is like the fullness of who he is is available as we acknowledge it in the room.

Ranjo Clements:
The preaching is the same. It’s forming us corporately into his body. The song after that is a song to respond. In modern church, there’s often a trend of like try to create sermons that grab people’s attention. It’s like, “That was a good word. I’m going to go home and think about it.”

Ranjo Clements:
We try to push a little bit further than that and say there’s this one main point that this is what we feel like. God is saying to our body, “Let’s recognize it and let’s respond to it. Let’s deal with God in his presence.” Then we have benediction where it’s like, “Okay. Now, let’s go and participate.” It’s ascending. It’s not a closing of the service, but it’s ascending to go out into the world and be active participants in His kingdom.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
So there’s this cycle of praise, surrender, transformation, participation. And it’s a cycle because I mean, when you participate with God and you feel his presence, and you step out, and you take you know risks for Hm, but also just in daily living you commune with Him. It’ll lead you back into worship.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. How do you create a worship service that doesn’t target just one type of person, but reflects the global church?

Ranjo Clements:
That’s a great question.

Heidi Wilcox:
Thank you.

Ranjo Clements:
Great question. I think we that’s why models are helpful, because if you have a good model, you don’t cater to one type of person. There’s a structure and then you begin to incorporate elements from different culture. The model or the structure is scaffolding.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
Right?

Heidi Wilcox:
That makes sense.

Ranjo Clements:
Then when we’re talking about praise, then we look at how to praise a different context. You want something simple. I’d like to say I’m not from here, but I am. I’ve lived here longer than everyone else. Our mission at our church is inviting people’s life in the kingdom. A couple years ago, we’re like, “Well, if we’re in Kentucky, trying to invite locals, we need to put some country in our worship.” You know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
You put some banjo. Put some banjo in our worship, some violin. Start singing songs that are a little… Of course, you cannot be all things to all people. So that’s why I love to empower people. That is my passion. I think it’s my gift as a pastor to help people use their gifts. Can you sing gospel? Please come. Let’s get you on the team and let’s have you lead gospel because I’ll sing it, but I won’t. But I can’t sing it like you. It’s moving in you. And that’s what we have to share. As worship leaders, we are sharing something that already exists in us.

Ranjo Clements:
It’s that’s not the first time we’re doing it. We’re taking people into intimate moments we’ve already had with God. Otherwise how would you lead? You can’t lead someone into a place you’ve never been. When you see a worship leader who steps in and creates an intimate moment and they invite you into it, you know it’s because they’ve been there before.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. Because your spiritual journey gets reflected in the work that you’re doing.

Ranjo Clements:
100%. That’s a such a great way of saying it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Well, I can’t take credit for it. I was talking about it with a podcast that’s going to release a couple of weeks before yours with Sandra McCracken and we were talking about that same thing. I was like, “Oh, yeah. That applies too. That’s awesome.”

Ranjo Clements:
100%. We’re looking at being global. We’re looking at being multi-ethnic, multicultural even. We have a rule. We try to have… And this is not mine. It’s a great worship leader named, Kerry Durrell, he told me this. He was like, “I have a rule of thirds. You do six songs. Two songs are new. Two songs are modern like in the last five years. And then two songs have to be stuff that people have like if they grew up in church, they know like Amazing Grace.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
I’ve kind of fashioned it, our set construction in a similar way and said, “All right. We need one song in a set that like it’s a hymn. Just for all the people who love hymns.” Or if it’s not of hymn, it’s something old enough to be a hymn like Purify My Heart. Holy, Holy. People will put up with 20 minutes of rock, if they know they’re going to get one hymn.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right.

Ranjo Clements:
Okay. That’s the generational side. Then we look at like the ethic. Can we do a gospel song? Can we do a country song? Can we do a modern worship? Modern worship is the overarching theme. Everybody knows that especially in this last decade where it’s so freely available. I remember growing up in India, my dad would bring back a WOW cd. Do you remember those?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Ranjo Clements:
He had the WOW Christian singles and the WOW worship cd. So he’d bring back one of each and that’s all like basically what worship I got for a number of years growing up. So now like Hillsong, you have these major churches that are producing albums every year. And I think it’s awesome because it’s an original sound coming from them, from what God’s doing in those communities. But you have so much indie stuff going on. Everybody’s doing their own thing and we can share all that. There’s so much of it available. So there’s a baseline from which everybody can connect with. But then we try to add these different elements, languages is something we did, which I just really enjoyed. We sang a song, the chorus God is so good. Everybody knows it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Ranjo Clements:
So we just kind of tagged it on to a song. I mean, this is insider baseball here.

Heidi Wilcox:
I love it.

Ranjo Clements:
But it’s like you pick a song and when you’re trying to do something different, you tag it onto something that you know works. So we sing a song we know everybody loves, we know everyone’s going to be 100% into. If you’re pastoring, if you’re not just like leading, but actually trying to lead a specific group of people, you know what works for those people. So you pick something that does and then we just added this chorus on and everybody’s saying it because everybody has heard it.

Ranjo Clements:
Then I said, “There’s some truths about God that are so special, so important to us that it makes its way around the world.” This is a song that has made its way across the globe. So we are going to recognize and celebrate our diversity that the kingdom of God is diverse by singing it in different languages. And I just quoted the revelation passage. Every tribe and tongue before the Lord singing, it doesn’t say singing in English, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
No, it doesn’t.

Ranjo Clements:
It says what they’re saying and everybody knows and everybody is singing the same thing, but if they’re going out of their way to recognize that it’s every tribe and tongue, it’s probably happening in different tongues.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely.

Ranjo Clements:
So we’re like we’re just going to celebrate that. So I’m going to sing it in Hindi. We had someone who’s saying it in Portuguese and someone who’s sang it in Spanish.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, that’s beautiful.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. And I just said, “Listen, while we sing it in these different languages, the words will be on the screen in those languages. You are welcome to try to sing along. If you don’t want to, you’re welcome to sing it in English.” The words are God is so good, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Right.

Ranjo Clements:
Or you’re welcome just to bask in the glory that is God’s beauty and diversity. So we sang it, and then it came to me in the moment. I was like, “Hey, maybe you know a language where you could sing this. We’re going to do it one more time and you can sing in whatever language you want.” I didn’t even realize the diversity in our congregation. But we have people from Africa, people from China and Korea. We sang it in so many different languages and it kind of revealed to us, “Wow, we have this diversity in the body.” People are coming up afterwards saying, “It was so amazing to hear it in this language.” Even people from the states who had been on a missions trip and learned some African language or Norwegian. It was just, “Wow. God is moving across the globe and we were just suddenly made aware of it by this simple act.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Don’t you love that?

Ranjo Clements:
Oh, it was the best. It was just incredible. That’s when I think about how to build something that represents the kingdom. That’s what we do. You don’t force it, but you slowly open yourself up to it. Acknowledge that it’s there.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, you invite it.

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
As you’re you’re inviting the congregation into this experience, you’re also leading the band at the same time. I would imagine it’s could be pretty easy to get focused on getting the right notes, which are super important and getting stained on rhythm. There is an element of performance to it all, but how do make it an offering of praise even as you lead so that it doesn’t totally become about y’all?

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah. That’s a great question. So for us, we have a mission statement that we reiterate all the time.

Heidi Wilcox:
Cool.

Ranjo Clements:
And it’s helping people encounter God. And people, when they join our worship team, we have a mission statement, principles, and values that I share with them and just say, “Hey, this is what you’re signing up for.” It’s kind of like the army. You can come for any reason you want.

Heidi Wilcox:
This is what you’re going to do when you get here.

Ranjo Clements:
Right. And people understand. We lead by worshiping. If you’re out on stage, you’ve got to be worshiping. It doesn’t mean you have to be super expressive because people worship in different ways. I want to acknowledge all of them, so I’m very cool with a somber bass player who’s like… We’re notorious for… I’m a bass player, so I can make fun of us. But we’re notorious for like the only thing moving is our fingers. Our face is-

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s what you do.

Ranjo Clements:
That’s right. Our face is not aware that we’re playing anything. We lead by worshiping. We worship together because we’re a team representing the body. Our bands, and different churches of different sizes have different visions of this, and I’m fully aware of that. But for us, we want our band to represent the body because this is just an offering, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ranjo Clements:
What we’re doing here when we gather is not performing for people, we are using our gifts of which there are many, but in our gathering music helps us come together. So we’re using our gift to help us all be a corporate offering. So it’s not something we’re doing for the church, it’s something we’re doing with them. So we lead together and then we lead with excellence. If we are messing up, it’s going to be distracting problem, and I find it’s more distracting for the artists and the musicians than the people in the congregation, because a lot of times they don’t hear it, but we hear it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. You all have a trained ear for it.

Ranjo Clements:
That’s right. It’s dissonant and that’s taken away. We make an effort to prepare spiritually, emotionally, and musically, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ranjo Clements:
What we do is we have a team night once a month. We haven’t since COVID because we can’t really gather.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That made everything harder.

Ranjo Clements:
Right. But it’s kind of like our catch-all. It’s our training area because we want youth on our team. We want multiple generations on our team. If you’re interested in worship, first you come to a team night and you just hang out with the band. We gather. We hang out, we eat. Then I’ll always say a little bit about worship, talk about one of our values. And then we’ll worship for probably 45 minutes. I print chord sheets for everybody. So you can show up and it doesn’t matter how good you are, and just play along.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.

Ranjo Clements:
It’s this opportunity, and I tell people like, “If you’re a singer, hey, you’ve got to sing all three parts because otherwise if you’re only able to sing melody, well, that means somebody else has to sing harmony all the time. You’re not able to share. So you’re going to learn harmony. Go stand next to this person who’s singing harmony and learn.” If you’re musical, it’ll come. And the same thing with guitarists or we have drummers who will bring a Cajon and just play sit next to that person and play what that person is playing. Don’t play what you want, play what that person is playing.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. But it’s like low pressure.

Ranjo Clements:
100%. The invitation is for everyone. So it’s kind of like what I say is we’re building community and culture here. We want people to get comfortable with themselves as musicians. We want them to get comfortable with themselves as worshipers, and that’s when they’re ready to be on stage and lead other people in that where they’re not trying to draw from the people. Because often, it’s so vulnerable to put yourself out there as a musician. As a preacher, as anyone doing anything on stage, it’s incredibly vulnerable. It’s very easy to try to get affirmation from the people you’re in front of.

Ranjo Clements:
The action is actually moving towards God. We’re not supposed to be trying to draw something from the people. We’re pointing the people to someone. So like this idea of just getting comfortable before you’re up there as much as you can be. It’s 100 a learning curve. So you’re never going to be comfortable until you do it. But as much as you can be, like you know what it should be and then you get in front of people and then you work on getting to that place of intimacy for you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely.

Ranjo Clements:
That’s how I think we prepare as a band for that to lead together.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s beautiful. I really love that. We’ve talked about a lot of things today, Ranjo and I’ve enjoyed all of it. We have one question we ask everyone. Before I ask it, is there anything else you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about already?

Ranjo Clements:
No. This has been so much fun. We’ve covered a lot of ground.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, we have. Haven’t we? I’ve loved this. So here’s the question that we ask everyone. Because the show is called the Thrive With Asbury Seminary podcast, what is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?

Ranjo Clements:
I like how that just assumes that the people you interview are thriving in their lives right now. I’m just joking. I’m sorry.

Heidi Wilcox:
I hope so. I hope we’re all thriving. I mean, I hope so. I mean, sometimes especially during this the season of COVID that we’re in, I haven’t always felt like I’m thriving, but I’m hoping that other people are.

Ranjo Clements:
Right. That’s a great word. Thanks for that. For me, I would say in this season where we’ve had so much transition, it’s been so busy for me, especially starting school and working full-time. Spending time with my family has been something that it’s just helped me thrive. It’s like fueled me. I try to study in the mornings and my kids got up early, so they’re all up at 6:30.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Bear with that.

Ranjo Clements:
I’m supposed to be studying right now. I thought there will be times when it’s going to be busy enough that I don’t have time for this. Today, I do and I’m going to take it. It’s been like make breakfast and do our devotions together. It’s been such a gift through COVID to just make time to spend with my family.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s a good word because even in this time… I mean, everybody’s time has been different than working from home and whatnot, but it’s still easy to fall into the… At least it has been for me to fall into the rut of, “Okay, I’m working from home. That means I’m super focused.” Which is what I’m supposed to be, but not necessarily… It can still be just as hectic as if we were pre-COVID in March of last year that you’re like, “I’m doing this, this, and this.”

Ranjo Clements:
And more. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
But giving yourself permission to pause. Yeah, and more. Because I think the expectations got higher, not lower.

Ranjo Clements:
Yes. I think we all realized we could be more productive.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right? Right, yes. And then we looked at Instagram. At least I did and I was like, “Oh, you’re baking bread? Oh, I have to do all this and figure out how to bake bread too? Okay.”

Ranjo Clements:
Right.

Heidi Wilcox:
Just stuff like that. So I really appreciate the word of like just pausing and being like, “Yes, I have time to do the things that actually matter.”

Ranjo Clements:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Thank you again, Ranjo. I have just enjoyed our conversation. I feel like we could keep talking for another hour and not even know. So I really appreciate your time.

Ranjo Clements:
Absolutely. You’re such a great interviewer. Thank you for leading me through that. That was just a blast. I hope it helps people.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah. I have no doubt. I feel like if I enjoyed it, and I thoroughly did, that there is no way that people listening could not. So thank you.

Ranjo Clements:
Sure thing.

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Ranjo. Isn’t he just the best, you guys? He truly has a pastor’s heart. And I left today’s conversation feeling so encouraged and uplifted. I hope you did the same. So if you see Ranjo or know him, or just like what you heard, be sure to tell him thanks for being on the show. As always, you can follow Asbury Seminary in all the places. On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @AsburySeminary. Until next time, go do something that helps you thrive.