i am an offering

Over the last several weeks and months I’ve had the privlege of “meeting” several folks who lead worship throughout the country.  These people range from staffed positions like “director of worship” or “worship pastor” to volunteer worship leaders in local churches or church plants throughout the world.  One thing I’ve yet to see though, is what inspired all of you to begin to lead worship in the first place.  I (and probably others) would absoultely love to hear your story. Ultimately God is the one that puts the spark in us, but he uses people, places and experiences to do it.

So come out of the woodwork - don’t be shy, and share your story with us.  Was it encouragement from a family member or friend?  Were you surprised to end up leading worship somewhere but ended up loving it?  Even if you are “just a piano player” or “just the screen operator (you lead worship too!!),” please let us know!

For me it was rather interesting.  I was in my first year of Bible School at the Association Free Lutheran Bible School in Plymouth, MN. I was excited to possibly begin a career in youth ministry.  One weekend, while counseling at a camp, there was no one to “lead music.”  I had sort of done something like this before, but didn’t really know what it looked like.  I was just getting introduced to “leading worship” at the time.  Someone said, “Hey Ryan, you have your guitar here.  Maybe you could lead.”  So, I jumped in.  Let me tell you, it was amazing. To be able to be a part of helping those teenagers engage with God through music was unreal.  I never went back and have been pursuing leading worship ever since.  Granted, it’s not my job at the moment (hopefully someday it will be again) but it is my passion.

So what ignited your passion?

This Sunday at Living Word was fantastic.  I think even more so than usual for me.  It wasn’t because we had a Sunday almost full of music at the church, but more because God ordained everything to work out perfectly.

I was a bit concerned about the crammed schedule of having a group from our sister church sing three songs, plus having The Ambassadors, a  Summer Team from our Bible School being here as well, plus having our own worship team leading worship.  So we decided (I should say we were prompted by the Holy Spirit) to let the Summer Team lead worship and make the service a little more of a “concert” style service.  Boy, what a great decision the Spirit led us to!

Not only was it nice for our musicians to have a bit of break, it was so good to just listen to God’s Word being sung in music.  We also learned a great new worship song by Aaron Shust that we will be singing in days to come.  And, I was helping teach some of our youth how to run EasyWorship and get this, both of these youth actually sang during the service!  It was so cool to sit between two young people who were lifting their praises to God.  Here was the song list:

• The Name of Jesus (Aaron Shust)
• Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (updated arrangement)
• Be the Centre (Michael Frye)
• Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior (Hymn by Fanny Crosby)

And, oh yeah, the message was awesome.

And we celebrated our final night of The Truth Project by having pizza and worshiping together before watching the last session.

A great day.