i am an offering

Sunday Recap

Yesterday was a great day - full of family times, which I really loved.  It was also a good, albeit, slightly stressful day at Living Word.

Our service starts at 9:20.  I had the day off from leading worship yesterday but of course, like most of you out there, I was still keeping an eye out for anything that might be amiss.  Well, 9:20 comes and I realize that no one is sitting at the projection computer.  I quick find Pastor Wade and ask if the person who usually sends the file for projection had sent it or if she was coming.  Minimal panic ensues.  When I say minimal, though, I really mean it - it was quite amazing how much peace I ended up feeling, even knowing that we might not have any words for the screen.

So, after a phone call and a few minutes we realize we have the words on Pastor’s laptop, but no jump drive.  He makes a transition into announcements and calmy asks if anyone has a jump drive.  Someone does and we’re able to get up and running with all of the lyrics with a few, but not many hiccups.  The worship service goes well and God was glorified.  However, He could be glorified even more with a little bit better planning and communication.  Moral of the story - always, ALWAYS have many people in the communication loop when you’re all at different locations.  I’m really looking forward to being in our building early next year so some of these problems will hopefully go away - but at the same time, we need to work harder to make them go away now, so that we don’t face the same problems in the building.

But God was good, and blessed us anyway with great music and great teaching on “You shall not Murder.”  We sang:

• We are Called to Be God’s People
• Bless That Wonderful Name
• Knowing You
• Thou Art Worthy,  CCLI  14789
• The Wonder of it All

And Pastor Wade led us in two choruses of “I Have Decided” after hearing the pianist playing it as a music bed under the prayer time.

Subscribing to This Blog

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I’ve been realizing lately just how amazing it is to actually get paid to be on staff as a worship leader - because I don’t anymore.  After four and a half years of being paid to lead worship, organize volunteers, plan services, pick music and live and breathe all things music and worship and after working a new job and volunteering to do many of those things now, I’ve come to realize just how much I took my last job for granted.

I never realized the time and effort and dedication that volunteer worship leaders who oversee an entire ministry put in.  As I’ve begun to balance planning and vision in the local church with working a job and making sure I honor and put my family first, I’ve come to realize how amazing volunteer worship leaders really are.  So the purpose of this post is two-fold.

First - Thank You Volunteers

Thank you for working an entire day at your “real” job and still giving the energy to pick music and lead a rehearsal all night long for church.

Thank you for having vision to see what needs to be done in two places (both at work and in the church.)

Thank you for supporting your pastor and your team members even though you are probably running out of energy.

Thank you for your selflessness in deciding to make time available to the church instead of your own pursuits.

Thank you Jordan Volk, for your tireless passion at Abiding Savior.  Thank you Paul Stigge, for the time and effort you spent developing a worship and music ministry at Lord of Life.  If you know a volunteer worship leader that you’ve never thanked for their time, stop right now and figure out a way to do so.

One word of caution - however, as someone just mentioned to me the other day - it’s easy to burnout if you are working full time and leading a worship ministry as a volunteer.  Be careful, prayerful and intentional about keeping yourself healthy and epsecially keeping your family healthy.  I need to remember to heed those words as well.

Second - An Encouragement to Paid Staff

Those of you who are privileged to be on a staff as worship leaders - don’t ever forget that is what it is - a privilege and an honor.  You are given the privilege to:

• Plan services so that there will be minimal distraction so that God will be exalted
• Pick and suggest music for the local church
• Love on, encourage and recruit volunteers for the team
• Serve God completely as your profession
• Help others live lives that glorify Jesus Christ

The best privilege of all is that we, staff and volunteer alike, get to honor and glorify our Lord Jesus Christ - together.

Yesterday’s service was great.  Really great.  For the first time in a long time, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the Holy Spirit was guiding the service.  I know this all of the time, but yesterday I was completely certain.

There were a few reasons:

First, I thought I had everything ready to go by loading the EasyWorship service onto a flash card to bring to church (our church is a church plant and currently runs off of a laptop that is in different hands from week to week).  The only problem was, I forgot my flash card reader.  Whoops!

Thankfully, the volunteer that was going to run EasyWorship was willing to run home and grab her copy of the file since she didn’t live too far away.  And, thankfully, she seemed to forgive my ridiculous lack of preparation.  Hence, she wins volunteer of the month award.  Thank you so much, Lisa!

So, Rock Star Volunteer Lisa runs home and grabs the service.  We’re good to go.

Second, during our prayer time in the service I was feeling led that we should sing the last verse of the hymn we had just sung after the prayer time was finished.  When the prayer time was finished, Pastor Wade walks next to me and whispers, “Let’s sing that last verse again.”  God still moves, folks!

Third, Lisa again proved her rock-star-ness by following along perfectly even though some verses in songs ended up getting skipped and/or repeated.

God was in control yesterday, not anyone else, and it was awesome!

The most important thing that I learned from yesterday’s service was that God is above anything we can imagine, but even though He’s able to take care of all the details if we think we’ve messed them up, we still need to make sure we’re properly prepared and we properly prepare those we’re working with.