A Team Of Worship Leaders

What does the title worship leader bring to mind?

One individual?

Someone who can play an instrument and sing at the same time?

The person building a set list, leading a rehearsal, and giving the congregation verbal cues for the next lyric being sung?

While there may be some overlap in the functional role of a worship leader with what I have listed above, today I want to make the case that every member of a worship team is actually a worship leader.

Let’s start by removing the word ‘just,’ from each role within our teams. There is no such thing as ‘just.’

I am just a musician,

just a vocalist,

just a sound engineer,

just running lyrics.

No.

You are a worship leader.

It takes each one of those roles functioning together to serve the people of God in their response to His revelation of Himself in sung corporate worship.

We do not just sing songs, we lead people in worship.

Musicians and vocalists, you are not just singing songs, you are going first, leading with your lives, leading with your instruments, leading with your hearts as you are led by the Spirit of God, to lead people in worship to Him. You are a worship leader.

Sound engineer, you are not just moving faders, you are mixing melodies and production, enabling the team to hear one another and the congregation to sing out in response to who God is and what He has done. You are a worship leader.

Lyric runner, you are not just clicking slides at a computer, you are helping to put words in people’s mouths, truths in the hearts and minds so that we can sing with one voice as one people to the glory of God and the building up and edification of His people. You are a worship leader.

And for a host of other roles that are a part of the corporate gathering of God’s people - there is no just - there are only worship leaders. No true encounter with Christ ever leaves us the same, it will naturally flow from our lives like the woman at the well, like the disciples, like Mary at the empty tomb - ‘come and see…’

We are worship leaders when we encounter Christ, and use our skills and gifts to point people to Him. Yes, you are a worship leader.

Well Done

New beginnings are often accompanied by anticipation, excitement, and anxiety. We welcome 2021 from a different place than we did in 2020. Looking back a year ago, no one could have imagined what the new year would hold. Many of our most earnest plans, our prayed over desires, spirit-led goals, and personal resolutions had to be adjusted, or completely abandoned. Maybe 2021 finds you unsure of how to lead and cast vision for the team you serve. What I hope and pray for you, and for me, is that we are people who live what we have known to be true all along:

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man,

    but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” - Proverbs 19:21

‘Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”’ - James 4:13-15

Set goals, make plans, or dream of what could be, but live surrendered to the Lord. Open-handed, and attentive to what He wants to do in you and through you. Because our value and worth are not measured by what we accomplish, but by the ‘well done,’ already spoken to us in Christ. As Keith Green reminds us:

'The only music ministers to whom the Lord will say, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant,' are the ones whose lives prove what their lyrics are saying and the ones to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One should be most important!'

Walk with God in this new year, wherever He may lead.

August 11: Tuesday Refocus

‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’ - Isaiah 43:2

Maybe these months have felt like being thrown into a fire, or plunged into a flood.  Right here is where the Savior says, ‘I will be with you.’  The One who saves is the One who is with us (Matt 1:21-23).

As Elisabeth Elliot reminds us, ‘Out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.’  Even hindsight may not provide the kind of clarity and validation of excruciating circumstance, but I believe that even in the middle of the pain we can know the withness of God.

We are never abandoned, forsaken or left as orphans (Ps 16:10, Ps 138:8, Jn 14:18).  Hear the words of the Savior and believe: ‘And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’  Matt 28:20

Lord, ‘I call to You from the ends of the earth when my heart is without strength.  Lead me to the rock that is high above me…’ (Ps 61:2, HCSB), in the name of the One who is always with me, amen.

Learning, 

AB