i am an offering

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.