A worship leader re-thinking worship
Jeff, at “Losing My Religion: Re-Thinking Church“, has an excellent two part (so far) series on worship. The first two posts in this series are called “Re-Thinking Worship (Part One of Many: ‘Weighter Things’)” and “Re-Thinking Worship (Part 2: The Overflow)“.
In Part 1, Jeff – who is a “worship leader” – shares two of his “thoughts” concerning the modern concept of worship:
First…I’m considering the fact that although worship has been at the heart of our faith for thousands of years, the particular corporate worship format we use nowadays–the worship leader planning a songlist and directing a group–is a fairly new concept…
Second…as much as I love the creative expressions of passionate love for Jesus in corporate worship, I have to face the fact that “loving God” in Scripture goes a whole lot deeper than just telling God we love Him, or singing to Him about it.
In Part 2, Jeff discusses the difference between “worship” in other religions, and “worship” for the Christian:
In virtually every religion on the planet in which a god is worshiped, that worship is given as an attempt to appease that god’s wrath, or to curry that god’s favor–to provoke that deity to act in a certain manner. (This is also true of the religion we’ve wrongly made of Christianity.)
But in true Christ-following, we do not worship Him to gain His favor or deflect His wrath, or to get Him to do something. We worship Him as a natural response to what He has already done.
There are very good thoughts on worship. I’m looking forward to more posts in this series.
We just talked about this in our four part series on Fellowship, Discipelship, Worship, and Leadership. A phrase was coined “From the Mountain to the Messiah”. reall good conversation
So when does it go out from conversation and become a change?
It’s a strange thing that happens to worship leaders when they read their Bibles and begin to interact with the God who inspired it. We find out that worship is not what the magazines, catalogs and conferences tell us it is.
I have been in the process over the past few months of retooling the music ministry of our church from a “worship” ministry into a “discipleship” ministry, based on Colossians 3. We are becoming able to teach and admonish one another with wisdom rather than simply “following the leader.”
Lionel,
“From the Mountain to the Messiah”? I’d love to hear more about that phrase and that discussion.
Lanny,
I can only answer for myself. For me, the conversation and the change continue together, day-by-day.
David,
I hope you decide to write about this process soon. It sounds very intriguing. I’m glad that you (another worship leader) decided to take part in this discussion.
-Alan