music :: worship :: life
Check out this article at Integrity.com. It identifies three crucial components of an effective worship leader.
American Idol: Three Lessons for Worship Leaders
They are:
It’s all about keeping it real. Leading worship is not about getting all the production values right. Being a worshipper comes first, everything else is secondary. Worship leaders are called to model worship before the congregation and lead them to a closer connection with God.
Character is integrity. And integrity is being who you say you are. Integrity is living the values you say you believe. Our character is revealed in our humility, and our willingness to stand for the things we know to be right even when it would be easier to compromise our principles.
Quality means never being satisfied with “good enough.” It takes preparation. Worship is not a spectator sport, and it takes constant vigilance to keep the congregation involved in the worship experience. And it takes diligent and disciplined practice to maintain a level of excellence, so that the congregation is not distracted from worship by sloppy performance.
Throughout the Lenten season, I’ve been using John 15:13 to introduce our Lent theme song, Above All—
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
I have focused on the magnitude of his love—the awesome amazing love. And I have focused on the magnitude of the sacrifice. Just to give up the bliss of eternity, the perfection of paradise to descend into this darkness, this fallen world—is that not sacrifice enough? But to suffer the agony, the ignominy of the cross! What kind of love is this? What kind of sacrifice?
But somehow when I said the words again on Easter Morning, the final word leapt into focus: the word friends. He said, “lay down his life for his friends.�?
The arithmetic of the crucifixion fools us. Jesus died thousands of years ago, thousands of miles away. He died to save all humankind—all the teeming billions of souls strewn across the globe and stretching down the centuries and millennia, for all time. The math defeats us. We are single blades of grass lost in a prairie as seen from outer space. And Jesus—that far away, long ago Christ—who are we to him? Yet here he plainly says he died for his friends. That’s us—you and me. He calls us his friends!
On a clear day, have you ever stepped outside and looked up into the air and seen that vast expanse of blue, and it looks so far away? But this is mere illusion. For in reality it’s right here, all around us. We breathe it in without knowing, every moment of our lives.
The same is true of Christ. Let’s not be fooled by the math. He is no long ago, far away, guy in the sky. He is closer to us than the very air we breathe.
For in him we live and move and have our being.
—Acts 17:28
He is right here. Right now. Always. Forever.
From our first cry to our final breath, Christ is with us.
We are his friends, and he will never, ever leave us alone.
Only You fill me.
The things of earth leave me
thirsty.
Though I drown—
drench myself in the waters
of the world—
Though I stuff myself with
earthly fare—
I hunger still
wanting more
Only You can satisfy
Only You fulfill my desire.
God has chased us all the way from Eden. We’ve come a long way from Eden, running all the way. He never tires, never flags, never wavers in his pursuit of us: relentless, unbent, undeterred. Still we run. Eventually he catches us. We were well hid, or so we thought. But suddenly he was there! Right there! Where we least expected him. And we shout: We are found!
But soon we run again, and again he chases. Always. All our lives. What is it we fear? His love is overpowering. His love is fierce. When he catches us, it changes everything. Look at Paul. God pounced on Paul like a mountain lion on a kid, and tore him up. Paul never recovered. An authentic encounter with the living God will ruin your life. We run scared.
His love could burn us up from the inside out. His love is hot. His love is sticky. We can’t get free of it. No matter how we try.
We don’t want to be caught by God. It changes us. If God tags us, we’re “it.” And then what will we have to do? What does he want from us? Where will he send us? What will become of our comfortable lives?
How it hurts! — How it tingles! — When our foot’s been asleep and the blood starts flowing again. And how, when God enters our lives, pounces upon us from behind some rock beside the road we travel, how it hurts! When feeling starts coming back to our lives, where we’ve been shambling, numb, asleep. When the grace starts circulating again through our unfeeling hearts and minds and sets us tingling. Hot, burning, we jump and shout. We cry out: I’m alive, I’m alive! God has found me and I’m alive!
When you arrive at the Pearly Gates, how many people will be waiting to greet you, eagerly expecting your arrival, because you were the one who brought them to Christ?
The readings in the Stewardship books have turned out to be very powerful. I thought I would go through the motions of reading the stuff because it was the correct thing to do. Little did I know what an impact it would have. The first few readings were dull, but the readings recently have become profoundly meaningful, directly addressing the warfare I have been waging in my life for the last few months.
Today (yesterday as I write this), the reading asked the question, “When you arrive at the Pearly Gates, how many people will be waiting to greet you, eagerly expecting your arrival, because you were the one who brought them to Christ?” Will it be a large crowd? A small group of good friends? Or no one at all?
I thought the corollary of this is: “When you look around your new heavenly home, how many people will you miss? How many people will not be there because of something you could have said or done but didn’t?”
In a recent issue of Worship Leader magazine, a man wrote about a workshop he’d attended. His church was going through the same kinds of conflicts as ours, struggling over the changes between traditional and contemporary worship. One of the seminars offered was on just this subject. So, along with many others dealing with the same issues, he attended this seminar. The leaders opened with a question. They said before you can make those choices, you need to answer for yourself one question, and you need to ask it of everyone in you congregations. “What things are you determined to hang onto even if they prevent someone from knowing Christ?” A very hard question.
This penetrates to the heart of the central issue I’m struggling with: trying to gain control of my life. The war I’ve been waging with myself over the things I really believe are important, versus the things that fill so much of my time. Until I began reading this book, I’d never realized this was a stewardship issue. But that is exactly what it is.
Twenty-six years ago I was told I had at most two to three years to live. And in May of 1978, I gave my life to God to do with as He would for however long He gave me to live. Every day is a gift—every hour, every breath a gift I have done nothing to deserve. I know this to be true. It would be nice if I could say that I have lived every minute since in full knowledge that I was living on God’s Time. But the truth is that I lose whole days, whole years to living for myself & not for God. It is God’s Time I am wasting, and not my own.
So standing out in sharp relief is the answer—or rather the question—to sort out the chaos in my life. “Does this activity serve to further God’s plan?”
The reading asked us to pray for willingness, and so I did. I got down to my knees on the concrete floor of my shop and asked God for the willingness to let go of everything in my life that does not serve to further His plan.
I feel a change already.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
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