i am an offering

One of the roles that we neglect as worship leaders is that of a teacher. So often, we get wrapped up in emotional moments of worship, technicalities of music and crafting of services. However, we forget that the songbook of the Bible, the Psalms, has all sorts of teaching in it. King David (who happened to be a great musician) and many others used their experiences and times with God to proclaim great truths about who God is, how He acts, who we are, how our sin affects our relationship with God and many other things.

We have an opportunity to help teach the local church about those same things, both on Sunday mornings by what we say and what songs we pick, as well as during rehearsals, mentoring times, and possibly times that we teach Bible study.

By becoming a teacher, we can help ease the pastor’s load of teaching everything, or help bring Biblical knowledge of what “worship” really is to people.

Don’t just sing, teach!

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.