After a discussion with one of my drummers I decided to come up with the top six ways for drummers to get kicked off the worship team. Enjoy

6. Play a 6/8 drum beat no matter what meter the song is in.
5. Play the beat from We Will Rock You on every song. No matter what!
4. Show up with a beer in hand and a cigarette in you mouth and yell at the sound man the whole rehearsal.
3. Go off on a 6 min. drum solo at the end of a really worshipful song. When asked why you did it tell them God told you to rock!!
2. Yell at the worship leader that his singing is drowning out your drums.
1. Show up wearing tube socks, cutoff jean shorts and a fish net shirt.

A few weeks ago we took our first crack at free worship at a church.  What is free worship?  I’m calling it this but I heard it called ad lib, Hillsong titles them Selah on their CD’s.  Whatever you want to call it, I love it.  Basically what it is, is a instrumental section where the congregation (and worship team) sings, prays, shouts unplanned words.  The idea here is that the congregation express their hearts to God.  The songs that we are singing on any given sunday may not be what is in someone’s heart.  We might be singing the chorus to Trading My Sorrows (Yes Lord, yes Lord, yes, yes Lord) but someone may not be there.  Their heart may be screaming NO!  God may be sifting them (pruning, a popular term at FCOV)  they may need to cry out to God that they don’t like what he is doing and it may be through that expression that God show them His will and comfort them.

I want to give our congregation the opportunity to express their heart to God.  Not just Matt Redman’s, Tim Hughes, Chris Tomlin’s, or Darlene Zschech’s heart.

Now that I’ve explained what we are trying to do this is how it went.

We chose to play the instrumental after Hosanna on Hillsong United’s All of the Above CD.  I chose to sing the part Brooke Fraser sings because I am not too comfortable lead this kind of thing yet.  I ask our sound man to pump a lot of the congregation into my monitor so I could hear how they were responding.  During Hosanna they were singing strong but (expectedly) it kind of petered out when we got into the instrumental but I did hear a few singing I heard someone praying out loud.  It definitely felt a little awkward but whenever you try something and you’re trying to figure it out there is bound to be an awkward stage.  I think this is important enough of a thing to do that we will continue, even if a little awkward right now.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about our values in worship; asking myself questions like, why is it that I lead in a certain way? What is it that I am passionate about? What is it we are trying to achieve in a corporate time of sung worship? To me it seems the values behind what we do are absolutely essential. The style and practice may vary, but the values need to be clear and considered. With some help from Tim Hughes and Richard Foster this is what I’ve got. The worship that God desires is:

1. Christ Centred

In Revelation 4 and 5 we see the worship that surrounds the throne; the 4 living creatures, the 24 elders, and thousands upon thousands of angels. What is the object of their worship? Who is it that lies at the centre of their worship?

‘Then I saw a Lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing in the centre of the throne.’ Rev 5:6

Speaking of the supremacy of Christ Paul writes in Colossians, ‘He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.’ Col 1:15-20
Our worship must be centred around the person of Jesus Christ!

2. Holy Spirit Led

When we worship we must seek to be led by the Holy Spirit. He is the chief worship leader. It is the Holy Spirit that reveals Jesus, and through Jesus we can worship the Father.

As Richard Foster says of worship:

“It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshipped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.”

As worship leaders we are left with 2 choices in the way in which we lead – initiation or response. Initiation is often how we lead, trying to force people into worship and making things happen in our own strength. Far the better way is to lead by responding to what the Spirit is doing. There lies the blessing. Bob Sorge helpfully comments,

“He [God] is honouring those leaders who are coming carefully into his presence, waiting upon Him to initiate toward us, and then helping the people to respond back to the Lord with their reciprocating initiative. In this model there is much less of a tendency toward hype because the Holy Spirit is seen as the one responsible for moving the people to worship – not the worship leader or musician.”

So when leading worship seek to be led by the Spirit. That involves asking questions – what are you doing today? Where are you moving? What response do you require of us?

3. Real

People often attend church tired, weary and broken. We must allow people space and freedom to be real and honest in their worship. God doesn’t want us to pretend. In the midst of a suffering world, we must be up front that life at times is tough, but God is always good. An important aspect of worship is our honest and genuine response to God. Only then will we be able to find true hope and strength.

4. Intimate

John 15:15 says it all,

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his masters business. Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you.”

We are called into an intimate friendship with God. We don’t just love and respect Him from afar; we can enter close and draw near. What an amazing truth. This is an essential part of our worship, allowing people to receive and respond to the incredible love and mercy God has lavished upon us. That is why we don’t just sing about God, we sing to Him.

5. Sensitive

As worship leaders we need to be sensitive to those we lead. Not leading them aggressively or out of frustration, but out of love and gentleness. I think we need to lead with a ‘gentle authority.’ Sometimes this is hard when people seem slow to engage – if you’re anything like me you get more and more angry with people. But actually I need to learn to be sensitive to where people are at, to pray that God gives me a love for them. Only then will I really be able to lead them into an engaged encounter of worship.

6. Transforming

Again Richard Foster comments in his book, ‘Celebration of Discipline,’ “Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends with holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship.”

Genuine encounters with God will leave us sharing in His heart for a broken world. We have to care for those around us – the last, the least and the lost. Worship can’t just be songs – it has to radically transform us and consequently impact society around us. As we see in Amos 5, songs without actions are a meaningless sound to God

“Worship without mission is self-indulgent. Mission without worship is self-defeating.”

So there you have it, our values in worship.

Christ Centred

Holy Spirit Led

Real

Intimate

Sensitive

Transforming

Well it’s been over two months since I last posted and feel it is time to start things back up.

Today was…well…interesting?  during the services my mind was all over the place.  Musically we were not very together today, actually it was really rough.  We had tempo issues (RUSHING!!!), missed chords, some interesting harmonies.  I hope that it was not so bad that others were unable to engage completely with God.  I had a lot of trouble.  I’m trying a new thing here and putting up excerpts of the songs we did this morning.

I also had the opportunity to lead worship for our junior high youth group this morning.  TOUGH CROWD!!!  I say that because I was shocked at the lack of engagement with these kids.  Now I have lead this group before when they were younger in our Kids program, Holy Order of the Lion.  I want to know what happened between grade school and junior high that caused them to go from passionate worshippers who weren’t afraid to raise their hands and jump around.  Some might say that I am being a little harsh and I am aware that some of them may read this post.  The fact is I plan to ask them these questions.  I really want to know!!!  I’m just baffled.

GOOD NEWS!!!!! Our church finances are back in the black for the first time in a while (a long while)  God is gooooooood!  Only God could do the impossible task of funding a church during a recession like we are seeing.  All Glory to God!!  Numbers have also been up pretty consistently over the last few weeks.  I really feel like we are seeing people take intentional steps in their christian growth!!! Again…Only God!!

On a sad note.  Yesterday Peter, a good friend left for Washington.  Thank the Lord he arrived safely.  He graduated from ASU in December and is beginning his next stage of life at Microsoft, in redmond WA on March 2nd.  I am going to miss his harmonies most of all.  I am going to miss his friendship (although we will probably communicate more now than before).  I am praying and would ask anyone reading this to pray for peter to find a great church where he can serve.  He says he is going to keep me updated on his progress:)

Keep checking back as I am going to be updating the blog more often or just subscribe to my RSS feed.  Don’t know how?  E-mail me  jeremy@fcov.org