Worship Leader Training

Worship Leader Training – Session 2

Reflection

This session isn’t so much about the product of worship leading as much as the process. It’s important that our hearts and minds are in line with what God is doing and how He is cultivating us, as followers of Christ.

How we are spending our time, money, and energy – moving beyond the Sunday morning worship set and looking at the other 167 hours of the week – is a key question to answer. As I stated in the last session, it is not so much about what we’re doing but about what He’s doing.

What He has done

 

Now, I am going to be completely honest here: I don’t think I pray as much as I should and I don’t think I read the Bible as much as I should. I know I fall short from God’s standard. However, I so greatly desire to demonstrate God’s glory through how I interact with others: to be a support, to encourage others, and to use the gifts that I have to reflect Him in all ways. I know God well enough to understand that His grace covers my deficiencies, inadequacies, hang ups, and goofs. He accomplished that 2,000 years ago on the cross.

Don't forget Him

It sounds silly that we'd forget the God we serve but so often we leave Him out of the equation. When things go wrong, as I stated before, you can trust God and what He’s doing. It’s not ours to worry about. Worship leaders, pastors, and people in positions of authority can lose that. People look to them to lead; they look to them for answers and to understand certain events and circumstances. It is their job to be at their best - however, all pastors and leadership are subservient to our God; while everyone knows this, we can be so quick to forget. While I’m not saying that we can’t plan or execute or work hard to improve and equip, I also am saying that God is sovereign.

God told us to seek Him first – the vertical relationship is most important to Him. Nurture that relationship first. Then He said all the other things – conditions, relationships with others, belongings, comfort – will be given to us. There is nothing about our relationship to God that’s “set it and forget it.” It has to be a self-sustaining movement towards transformation, which is why the Bible tells us that God makes all things new. That statement includes Christians as we go in life; if my faith looks the same now as it did a year ago, I’ve overlooked something of great importance.

Looking Ahead

I apologize that this session has much of the same themes as the previous session. The first was an overview; Worship Matters discusses the similar themes in the first couple chapters, as well. In the next session, I’ll be looking at chapters 3 and 4 in Worship Matters and talking about how having a grasp on theology and musicianship are indispensable parts of worship leadership. Next week, we will begin to hone in on our responsibilities and how to apply ourselves rightly to the God we serve.

Some ideas have been inspired by the book Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin.