You have to watch this…

Worship

I regularly read a couple of blogs written by friends of mine who are worship leaders – David Gate and Neil Bennetts. I greatly respect both of them and find myself regularly agreeing with what they write and say. I’m also an occasional worship leader both with the young people and adults at Holy Trinity and want to do the best that I can firstly before God, and secondly in leading others into His presence so I have a great interest in this subject. Rather than bringing my thoughts about the worship leading debate (which I haven’t got anything to add to what others have written). I want to look at the whole thing of worship leading from the perspective of wanting to train up young worship leaders, which I’ve tried to do over the past few years, and develop a community of young worshippers within a church context.

So for what its worth here’s my thinking…

Worship is the number one reason that we exist and therefore it IS important. It isn’t an optional extra and needs taking seriously. There are so many “definitions” of worship so I just stick to simplicity – “The greatest command is… to love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” When we talk about worship we HAVE GOT to focus on what it means to love God. There doesn’t need to be a divide between the “I love God with all my life” and “I love God with my songs” because it is just about loving God. So as a leader/pastor/whatever I am, I am looking to see people expressing their love for God.

The leaders of the community play a huge part in setting the tone/ethos of the worship that takes place when the community gathers. We are the ones that set values and vision for where the community is going, and that will shape to a greater or lesser degree the style of worship. I try to set a few values for worship with the young people that I serve (totally pinched from others):

Intimacy – love involves intimacy and we MUST be intimate in our contact with God. In response to the cry for more “masculine” worship I say that if this means an avoidance of intimacy – i.e. telling Jesus that we love Him, that we bow down to Him, that He is the centre of the universe etc – then we’ve got to keep intimacy.

Involvement – I want to see the young people who are part of the church/youth congregation engaging and participating in worship. Therefore, the music needs to be accessible and singable for young people. The liturgy that we might use needs to be creative, deep, rich, but memorable and appropriate. The “active” side to worship (usually known as “alternative which is a crap term) needs to be meaningful and creative.

Also, I am not a perfectionist and if I’m honest I will always lean towards participation with mistakes rather than performance.

Creativity – I want to see the young people coming up with their own songs, activities, ideas, thoughts, dreams etc. I want to encourage young people to lead worship so that this comes through naturally. I want to keep the idea of God’s creativity uppermost in the minds of the young people and encourage art, dance, drama, music, silence etc to play a part in worship.

Holy Spirit – I am a firm believer that God gives gifts to His church in worship – 1 Corinthians 12 is the classic passage to reference. Therefore I want to make space and time for God’s Spirit to dance amongst us. And I want to help the young people begin to learn to operate in these gifts. I don’t think that I can overdo the importance of the Holy Spirit in our worship… He reveals Jesus to us, He speaks to us etc etc etc etc etc. This is what being a charismatic Christian is – receptive of the grace gifts of God.

Glorifying God – to be honest, I’m not sure how to measure this, other than doing our best, being real before God and living a holy (set apart) life. I’m wanting all of our worship clearly to be like this, but we come into His presence because of His grace and not our perfect worship.

I’m sure I’ve missed out really important stuff off, but I’ve got to go and set off big fireworks…