i am an offering

One of the functions of a worship leader that I have come across is that of a host in a home.  Somehow, God has priviledged us to be involved in His house.  We have the opportunity to welcome people into His house, get them comfortably situated, introduce them to new friends, and hopefully ultimately get them to ‘take their shoes off’ so to speak and be able to be at home enough to be open to knowing about their sin and the remedy of the Gospel.

With only a craving to become a nationally recognized worship leader, it can be very hard to cultivate the role of ‘host.’  Going from city to city, you have a new building, new stage, new crowd, new culture at times, and I’m sure it could be tricky to ever feel comfortable.  Sure, you can be the host of the worship session for the evening, but I’m sure that there never is a total comfort level to be a fantastic host.

At our local churches, we know the people, we know the building, we know the capabilities and possible distractions of the sound and video system.  We are fully equipped to welcome people completely into God’s house.

When it comes down to it, the church is all about relationships.  It began with humanity’s perfect relationship with God in the Garden.  That relationship was broken by sin, causing us to enter into a relationship of struggle with sin.  Because of God’s love for us, and His desire to restore relationship with us, Jesus did exactly that on the cross.  Now, God calls us to relationship with other people, both for the purpose of evangelism (intrudocing others to a relationship with Him) and fellowship (strengething others in their relationship to God.)

As local worship leaders, we have every oppourtunity to build relationships in both ways.  Here are some ways we can do that:

• Pray for your ministry participants by name.
• Meet with voluteers and encourage them.  Ask them how they are doing and if there is any thing they are struggling with, both personally or within the ministry.
• Teach volunteers to become leaders and them let them lead.
• Enjoy and respect your relationship with your pastor and other authority figures in the church.  Learn from them.
• Do some fun stuff with your volunteers every once in a while.  Forget about rehearsal.
• Befriend musicians in the community and share Jesus with them.
• Mentor those on your team that are from Middle or High School.

Enjoys these opportunities to build relationships.

Yesterday we talked about one of the purposes of a worship leader is to “equip the saints for works of service.”  This is so crucial within churches.

The majority of the time, worship leaders within the church are people with a higher level of musical talent than other people within the church.  Often they are people with a higher portion of leadership or charisma than other people within the church.  It is vital that they use this talent and leadership to help equip people in the church.

A worship leader on a national platform can write all the worship songs he wants and play concerts to thousands, but he’s not going to have time to equip the church.

We are called to come alongside those in the church, use our talent and leadership to help develop their gifts.  We are called to raise up new worship leaders and step out of the way.  We are called to teach volunteers how to play better, sing better, count better, lead better.  Nationally recognized worship leaders did not get as good as they are without the help and direction of a producer.  Our volunteers will not be able to do any better than what they are doing with the help and direction of us as “producers” as well.  (that’s a post for another time!).

Let’s help out those who are not as trained as us by offering our knowledge to them to help further God’s kingdom.

This past weekend I had a great comment from Rocky and I wanted to spend this week giving a response to it. This was part of the comment:

My freshman-in-college-Christ-following-want-to-do-something-bigger-than-the-church son is an excellent guitarist and has the potential to be an excellent worship leader. He has led worship a few times at our church youth. I try to encourage him by telling him that there is no difference between him and Chris Tomlin, Lincoln Brewster, etc, except the experience (and probably a manager/producer).

But I also tell him that even though a Texas-sized dream is good, there is nothing like the local church when it is running right. (view the rest here.)

Lee McDerment, worship leader of Newspring Church, just mentioned on Perry Noble’s blog an 8th thing that every worship leader should know. He said, “The church is God’s dream, not your worship album!” I have to wholeheartedly agree with this.

Ephesians 4:11-13 (and several other places in Scripture) talks about gifts given to believers. Music is not mentioned as a spirtual gift, but the purpose of spirtual gifts and (I believe) the purpose of using music to glorify God are the same, as it says in verse 12,

for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.

What really is the purpose of a worship leader?  Is it to write worship songs?  Is it to make people more aware of God’s presence?  I believe it is to equip “the saints for work of service,” and “the building up of the body of Christ.”

All of the major worship songs written by “major worship leaders” were written to “the building up of the body of Christ.”  So many of them come out of a need within their own church, or a response to something that was taught in their own church, or a response to something that God did in their heart while at their own church.

God desires to build up the church.  Not as a physical building, but as a congregation of believers who proclaim His name.  As local worship leaders, we have the incredible privilege of being involved in the nitty-gritty building of that church.  We see the good, the bad, and the ugly.  We see the need for a certain song to be written to address something going on within the church.  We see people’s hurts, joys, fears, concerns, and everything in betewen.  It’s very hard to see these things from a national platform.

Lee also said,

“When you place God’s dream in front of your dreams it’s amazing what can take place.”

Well said.  Every worship leader that I know of that is recognized on a national stage wasn’t necessarily looking for that recognition.  They honored God as local worship leaders, and God blessed their ministry beyond what they could imagine.  Let’s do the same.

The Annual LifeLight festival was held this past weekend in Sioux Falls, an event which I’m very fond of. It was estimated that about 320,000 people showed up over the course of the weekend, which is phenomenal, and God is using the festival to move mightily in our area. One thing got me thinking, though, and, in fact, may have bothered me just a little.

Several people made comments about how amazing or awesome or fantastic or [insert adjective here] it was to worship with Chris Tomlin on Saturday night. This got me thinking. I was there. Did I find it particularly different than any other worship experience that I’ve had? In ways, yes, but in other ways, not at all. Why did people seem to think it was elevated higher than other times of worship that they’ve experienced recently? I want to try to answer this question and maybe challenge us to think a little differently.

Why did people seem to think it was elevated higher than other times of worship?

• It was Chris Tomlin and he’s just this amazing worship leader.

Hmm…Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed how he led worship very much, and I think Chris Tomlin is one of the elite songwriters in the “worship world” today. But, to be honest, he wasn’t anything extraordinarily special as a worship leader. Yes, he was good, but not supremely better than others I know. Maybe it was the fact that he made a wise comment that the night wasn’t about entertainment but was about worship. But, another comment he made was, “I have an amazing band.” I wonder how much of the concert was enjoyed because the talent level of the band was on a scale way higher than most churches experience. They were so rehearsed and knew the songs so well that there were no distractions. Sure, Chris Tomlin is a great worship leader, but without his band, would the concert have been so amazing? Without his band, he’d be just like several very good worship leaders that I know personally who lead worship alone regularly, with no phenomenal band to back them up.

• We were worshiping with almost 100,000 people together.

Granted, that was pretty amazing, I must admit. But, aside from the awe that the numbers inspired, does it really matter how many people we have worshiping with us? Shouldn’t worship on Sunday morning with 1000, 800, 500, 100, even 50 people or at a small group with 2-10 people be just as amazing?  Shouldn’t worship be amazing because of the God we’re worshiping, not the atmosphere in which we worship?  I also admit that it was very impressive and moving to have so many different denominations represented. However, the people group that was dominant in the crowd was caucasions. Can you imagine how much more amazing it would be (and will be, someday) when every people group from every tribe and nation come together to worship God?

I want to challenge us to not get caught up in moments of worship that seem like God is “more present.” God is just as present in our Sunday morning worship as He was at LifeLight. God is just as present when we worship Him alone as He was with multitudes for the Chris Tomlin concert.

I want to challenge us that the God we worship does not change when the atmosphere changes. We can have just as exciting, just as intimate, just as fulfilling times of worship at our churches every week. We just need to remember who we worship, not the experience of worship. Granted, having good musicians and confident teachers and leaders to help eliminate our minds from being distracted from who we worship is very important, but we need to be sure we never place our expectations for worship on them, instead of the One we worship.

*Update -06/16/08 - While God is still “just as present” in our Sunday morning worship - His presence can be intensified while worshiping with more people.  I just listened to some wise comments from Bob Kauflin about this subject and understand a bit more what people meant when they said that “worship was amazing” that night.