Here is a bit of some Eugene Peterson I found in Christianity Today…

Life in a Country of Death

Experiencing Christ’s resurrection comes in ordinary moments, like sitting down to a meal.

The psalmist’s phrase “I walk before the Lord in the land of the living” comes out of a context marked by a death: “the snares of death” and “the cords of death.” There are, in fact, 13 references to life-threatening elements in this fairly brief Psalm 116: snares of death, pangs of Sheol, distress, anguish, save my life, brought low, death, tears, stumbling, greatly afflicted, consternation, death of his saints, my bonds. That adds up to a lot of trouble. This is our context. The land of the living is dangerous country. A lot goes wrong. There is a lot of trouble brewing out there and in here. Resurrection takes place in the country of death.

The land of the living is obviously not a vacation paradise. It’s more like a war zone. And that’s where we Christians are stationed to affirm the primacy of life over death, to give a witness to the connectedness and preciousness of all life, to engage in the practice of resurrection.

We do this by gathering in congregations and regular worship before our life-giving God and our death-defeating Christ and our life-abounding Holy Spirit. We do it by reading, pondering, teaching, and preaching the Word of Life as it is revealed in our Scriptures. We do it by baptizing men, women, and children in the name of the Trinity, nurturing them into a resurrection life. We do it by eating the life of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We do it by visiting prisoners, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick, working for justice, loving our enemies, raising our children, doing our everyday work to the glory of God.

When I go through a list like that, the first thing that strikes me—and I hope you—is that it’s all pretty ordinary. It doesn’t take a great deal of training or talent to do any of it. Not the training of a brain surgeon, let’s say, or the talent of a concert pianist. Except for the preaching and sacraments part, children can do much of it as well or nearly as well as any of us. But—and here’s the thing—all of it is life-witnessing and life-affirming work. And if the life drains out of it, there is nothing left: It’s just Godtalk.

I tend to be on the leading edge of new worship music and so I introduce a lot of new songs to my church.  I have added 47 songs to our repertoire since may of 2007.  One of the main reasons I have introduced so many is because when I was hired there was really only 3 or 4 songs that were under 10 years old.

Q: How often is too often to introduce new songs?

A: That depends of your church, some congregations pick up on new songs really easily.  And if your congregation stays up on current christian music you will find it even easier.  The congregation at my church does neither of these things well as a group. (I’ll explain more in a later question)

Q: Where do you find your music?

A: I have a handful of artists that I follow, Hillsong, Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Chris Tomlin, Lincoln Brewster, Israel Houghton.  I watch for new recordings, I follow many of their blogs and just general poking around on worship sites I visit frequently.

Q: Is the radio a good place to get new song?

A: In general…no.  In the music industry there are certain traits that make a song “radio friendly” and sadly for worship leaders these traits rarely translate to “worship (congregational) friendly.”  Some of the great worship song writers never see radio play: Hillsong, Tim Hughes, Paul Baloche, anything Maranatha, Soverign Grace Ministries.  I once saw a quote from Reuben Morgan where he basically said that his song I Give You My Heart he originally wrote as a ballad but to get it radio play he changed it. (Here is the original way he wrote it)

Q: How do you introduce new songs to your congregation?

A: When I am going to introduce a new song I will usually do it 3 weeks in a row so that the congregation really gets used to it.  On the first week I will teach it by playing a verse and the chorus (sometimes the bridge) with just my voice and the acoustic guitar.  This way the congregation really hears the melody and it doesn’t get lost in the harmonies of the other vocalists and the music.  On the second week we’ll just sing it normal in the service.  On the third week you can introduce another new song if you are trying to infuse a lot of new music into you repertoire.  After you have done it 3 weeks in a row you can shelve it for about a month or more so that it doesn’t get old.  Then just do it like you would do any other song.

Ask your questions in the comment area.

This is an article Tim Hughes wrote on a subject I already whole heartedly believe in.

Tim Hughes
Recently we had a training night with our worship team where we looked at the role of the Worship Leader. We explored the idea that actually the WL isn’t just the person leading from the front – it’s the whole band. This changes everything.
For too long I believe in the Church we’ve undervalued the role of musicians in leading us in worship. Often there is high expectations that the ‘WL’ i.e. the person leading the singing, will be a leader of integrity, humility and authenticity – and rightly so. But sometimes we turn a blind eye to the rest of the band; perhaps we think that they are only there to provide the sound and make up the numbers and therefore it doesn’t matter how they live their lives.
In the bible we read about the Levites – a people set apart to minister before the Lord. For ALL the musicians and priests involved it was a holy calling, a great responsibility. We’ve been discovering and trying to work out how as a big team we can all take hold of this call and use our gifts to lead worship effectively. In one sense we’re building a greater commitment to team. We’re all involved in encouraging one another to love and good works. We’re all trying to live a life of worship that overflows in the expression of song every Sunday. We’re all preparing our hearts to lead, praying that God would awaken people’s to worship as we gather on a Sunday or whenever it is we lead. We become aware that as a drummer I need to be listening and alert to what God is doing – sensitive to the lead of the Spirit. A change in drum pattern or a build here and there can affect where the song goes – impacting the worship. A keyboardist playing a riff at a certain moment might open up a bit of space for people to soak in God’s presence and respond to His great love. A singer passionately responding in worship can set the tone and draw others in – encouraging people to participate rather than spectate.

This is still Tim Hughes but I feel exactly the same way about my team.

I know for me, working with musicians who think like this is so important. It’s a joy to lead alongside others who are also sharing in the responsibility. It’s amazing to look around in a time of worship to see other musicians/worship leaders passionately engaging with God and leading the congregation.
I believe we need to build the sense of team and set the bar high. What we are involved in is so much more than playing through a few songs. We are responding to the Almighty God and leading His people in praise and worship. To do this we need gifted musicians who love God whole-heartedly and love their neighbour as themselves. We need to grow teams full of worship leaders, rather than leaving that responsibility to one person alone.

I also just read that he is about to release a live CD with about half new songs and half old songs.  You better believe I’ll be picking that one up:)

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

I’ve been listening to a workshop taught by Bruce Ware titled, “Worshiping the Triune God.”  Basically it first gives a foundation of the trinity, the specific roles each part of the trinity plays.  Then he goes into how it affects our worship.  I was talking with Mark Koglmeier, one of our pastors, about some of the things I was learning and he pointed something out that I have never noticed.

He says, “have you ever noticed people refer to the Holy Spirit as an it?”  They rarely if ever refer to the Holy Spirit as Him.  This is new age thinking that has crept it’s way into the christian church.  Referring to the Holy Spirit as “it” relegates Him to a mysterious, mystical force.  The Holy Spirit is just as much a “Him” as the Father or the son,  the Holy Spirit is one of the three persons that make up the trinity.  Here is a example

The Holy Spirit reveals a new truth.  When you go a share about your experience with a friend what would you normally say…

“The Holy Spirit spoke to me during the service.  It said…”

or

“The Holy Spirit spoke to me during the service.  He said…”

In staff meeting yesterday we were discussing the Mormon church and how their under investigation as it pertains to their tax exempt status.  Normally I’d be cool with it except that we (the christian church) will probably be next.  

We then got onto the subject of the overuse of prescription medication (anti-depressants, anti-anxiety) in the state of Utah. (Burks used to work for a pharmaceutical company)  Then my mom chimed in “well of course they are stressed, can you imagine trying to live a righteous life with out the Holy spirit?”  Then someone else said “I have enough trouble WITH the help of the holy spirit.”

That is so true.  Our flesh is so strong that even with the holy spirit living inside us we still struggle.  We still sin.  Thank you God for the blood of the lamb.  Without that we would be up a creek.  That being said, how should it affect the way we worship.

Two things:

1-We ought to come to worship with such an attitude of gratitude that thanksgiving pours from our hearts as we reflect on the price Jesus paid so that we might stand before the Father, holy.

2-We ought to be on the lookout for God and how he wants to work in our lives.  Nobodies perfect we simply strive towards a more Christlike life and with open hearts listen to what work God wants to do in our hearts.  He always wants you to grow so pay attention:)

I found this in some of my notes I have on my computer.  Not sure who originally wrote it but I’ve benefitted from it, I think you will too.

I once heard someone say that “the size of your worship is determined by the size of your God.” In other words, if my view of God is teeny-tiny, my response in worship to Him will correspondingly be teeny-tiny. On the other hand, if my view of God is HUGE – as it should be – then my worship response will naturally be huge as well! I’ve thought about this concept a lot, and have determined that I far too often live as if I have a very small God – my life-response, not just what I sing, but how I live, often reflects that I don’t have an accurate picture of the BIGness – the absolute greatness of God. 

There are many scriptural passages that talk about the greatness of God, but I think our psalmist worship leader, David, was onto something when he wrote Psalm 8. In verses 3-4, he says “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, the son of man that You care for him?” David had a lot of time to consider the “bigness” of God. Think about it – he was a shepherd. What do shepherds do? Well…they feed sheep, lead sheep, protect sheep, move sheep, carry sheep, sheer sheep… Twenty-four/seven, David is catering to all-things-sheep. But in his off-time when the sheep are either out of trouble or sleeping, what is David doing? I picture him kicking back on a hillside outside Jerusalem at night (keep in mind, there are no big city lights to distract) looking up into the dark midnight sky “considering” the stars and the moon – but more importantly, considering the God who hung them in the sky!

I’ve found a place in the middle of nowhere – away from the lights of the city and noise of cars – where I can look up into the sky and consider God. And honestly, as I look up into the sky and think about what is out there beyond the stars that my little eyes can see, it hurts my brain to think about how big God is. I thought the earth was big, but did you know that you could fit over a million earths in our sun? And I thought the sun was big, but did you know that the sun is just an average sized star in the Milky Way galaxy which holds over a BILLION stars?!? I recently did a little reading and found out that the galaxy nearest to ours (the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy for those astronomy buffs out there) is about 80,000 light years away. Can you imagine how far even the nearest galaxy is? Its even harder to fathom when you realize that a single light year equals about 6 TRILLION miles. That means that the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way is about 480,000,000,000,000,000 miles from earth!! Now…think about how big the universe is when scientists have estimated that there may be over 100 BILLION galaxies in the universe. Is your brain experiencing that sensation that occurs when you drink a Slurpie too fast like mine is right now?

Well, all of this astronomy trivia is great, but our point is that we’re trying to fathom the size of God, which will in turn enlarge our response to Him, which will in turn completely transform our lives. Isaiah helps us put everything into perspective with what he writes about God in chapter 40. In verse 12 he asks about God “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, or with the breadth of His hand marked off the heavens?” Do you remember how big the universe is? (We were just trying to comprehend that, remember?) Well, this is how big God is – He is able to hold out His hand, spread His fingers, and mark off the distance from one side of the universe to the other from the tip of His pinky finger to the tip of His thumb. Of course Isaiah writes in poetic language and certainly God is much bigger than this, but do you see what I’m getting at? God is HUGE! And far more often than I’d like to admit, I act as if this incredible universe revolves around ME! 

Obviously, its impossible to quantify “the size of God” – God is limitless and infinite… but, if our response to God should correspond with how big and mighty and transcendent and awesome and loving and merciful and powerful He truly is, shouldn’t our worship be MUCH bigger than it is? My prayer is that as we open our eyes and our hearts to see more of who God is, our lives will be radically transformed to express a life-response that matches His size.

I learned quite early in my ministry to stop trying to please people.

The first church I was at thought their style was contemporary…until I showed up.  There were many who loved the new music I was introducing, and there were many who loved the hymns.  I would get complaints fairly consistently that there were either too many hymns or not enough.  I spent so much of my time trying to ride the fence.  Yet no matter how hard I tried to make people happy there was always someone who was not happy.  Then one day as I was planning a service and it dawned on me (thanks Holy Spirit) I don’t work for these people, what we do on sunday mornings isn’t even for them it’s for God.  From that moment on my main goal was to orchestrate a service that would please God.  Once I made that decision I began to see fewer and fewer complaints.  Partially because people found out that their complaints weren’t affecting my decisions, but mostly because our worship to God became great in his eyes because the focus was on pleasing Him.

1You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. 2We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. 3For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. 4On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. 5You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. 6We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.

I Thessalonians 2

Please God not man.  You can never please all men, but you can please God.

This post is in no way a reaction from Sunday it’s just something I think about when the Holy Spirit changes our plans.

We have two services at my church and they are very different from each other.  The age make-up of the congregation, the expressiveness of the groups as a whole, and also in their responsiveness.  With that in mind, when the Holy Spirit moves me or someone else to speak or change something in the first service should we automatically make that change for the second service?  Sometimes yes but keep in mind that the Holy Spirit may have something entirely different for the second service.

One situation that I can remember was my “official” audition for the worship leader job.  In the first service during the first two songs a couple of people “whooed.”  A weak shout so I tried to encourage them to shout…that fell completely flat.  So while John was preaching I felt God saying to me, “they didn’t shout because no one has taught them how.”

During the songs after the sermon we were getting to the end of a slow song and for whatever reason that week I planned poorly and didn’t have a good transition to the next song, a faster song.  So I started asking God what to say or pray.  That’s when he said “Teach them how to shout to me.”  And in my head I said “Are you nuts?  I’m trying to get a job here.”  After a little more arguing I said fine but told him if this went bad it was His fault.  (I know, real intelligent thing to say to God)  Well I proceeded to share that I had asked them earlier to shout and apologized for not teaching them how.  What followed was some of the craziest worship I have ever been a part of.  The sound from the congregation was so loud I couldn’t hear my in-ear monitor.  I turned around to the band and all of their eyes were about the size of dinner plates.  This was a completely new experience for our church.  My keyboardist at the time was just going on and on about how awesome it was.

So along comes second service.  I probably shouldn’t have done the same thing but I did, thinking the result would be the same.  It was good but nothing like the first service.  God was specifically doing something in the first service and if I hadn’t been caught up in the excitement I might have seen what God wanted to do differently in the second service.

Anytime God moves you should always pray to see if this was just for that one service or for both.

Any other thought on the Holy Spirit changing our plans?