Coming back to Life

I've been away for a while, mostly due to full time job search and working in my church part time. It's been a while but I would love to share some great places to go for some great information on worship:

1. Ron Man is a very knowledgeable guy when discussing worship. He is very heady but that is what I most appreciate about his writings. A lot of times we forget what we're doing, why we're doing it, and Ron is awesome at keeping someone like me honest. Always theological in his articles, this discussion explains a bit what Christ is and does in our worship.

I had read an awesome article a couple months ago in WorshipLeader magazine which was similar to Ron's thoughts here. We really can take the onus off ourselves in worship when we allow Christ to do HIS work in the hearts and minds of the people we are "leading." It is frustrating as a leader to not really sense others honestly praising God. These types of articles remind us that it's not really our job. God does the work. We simply want to allow God to do it, get out of the way, and ask Him to break hearts for His glory.

2. Lifeway's Research Blog has a GREAT article by Ed Stetzer. This really articulates well the "Worship Wars" going on in our churches across the country.

Some thoughts on this:
I have sensed some difficulty on this topic in my own position but God is working it out in His time. I believe that compromise can become our idol fairly often in our churches today. Instead of thinking about how to best serve God, we often decide to marginalize everyone by being people focused instead of God-focused. I constantly pray to God for direction as I am going about planning songs, preparing our worship folks, and discussing with them and others certain ideas I have moving forward. It is best to be open about things but, no matter what, you can never please everyone. I purposely am transparent when it comes to these things. It is upsetting that styles and genres can be SO divisive.

God says it Himself: Man looks at the outward appearnace but the Lord looks at the heart. It doesn't matter whether saved or unsaved: we look at the color of the carpets, the quality of the furnishings, the lighting, textures and music. I think that God has kind of hard-wired us this way for some good reasons: making sure we maintain progress during our lives and taking care of what we have (being good stewards).

I have recently discussed with a couple folks here that no matter what style we choose, we want to approach our music with excellence. God knows our heart and that shouldn't even be a question when it comes to music in our churches. This is not "American Idol," "Making the Band," or even "America's Got Talent." I don't think that should even be an issue. If it is, then we're not even CLOSE to what God intends for His ministry in our churches today. But we definitely want to make sure the people up there have both the heart of a servant and a voice that makes a "joyful noise" to everyone who hears. I'm not interested in "consumer worship." But I am interested in music that brings people to the throne of God with nothing standing in their way.