x:Worship Preface…

Preface to Worship Text-fessional for 07/29/07 and 08/05/07

So, I guess i’ve got some catching up to do. This has been an interesting time in our Worship ministry at Fuel Student Ministry / Firewheel Bible Fellowship and one of the most challenging times for me personally in my 10 or so years “leading” worship. As I’ve talked about, this student ministry needs a culture change really all around, but for my specific purposes, especially in the worship ministry. I’ve approached this with various “proven” methods that are proving to be nothing but headaches. So, God started working on me about what needs to be done… Then I read this from Todd Wright ( I link this guy way too much )… here’s the gist of what spoke to me:

We need a desperate perspective modification around here, gang. We’ve got to start training up worship leaders that are planning their services with a Bible in hand and a pastor’s heart. We’ve got to stop picking just the stuff we like and start thinking about what our people need.

Here’s the thing… I could SEE what the group needed on the exterior, but I wasn’t looking to the heart of the issue. I was trying to use methods I had seen used or used myself to address an issue that is prevalent in a lot of ministries but is unique in each situation.

Then Los preached on worship and it gave me more food for thought. See, the thing is, in all of my other stops as a worship leader, i’ve also been heavily involved in the youth ministry… As an intern and as a youth pastor. So the spiritual needs of the youth were ingrained in me, i didn’t have to work at this… it just came naturally. Because of time restraints, I haven’t had a good pulse on the spiritual needs of the group and because i’m still learning all of this, i didn’t realize to what degree i needed to focus on this either.

So, after talking, praying, thinking and all of that… we’ve done a variation of what many churches have done… Nothing revolutionary, but exactly what the group needs. We’ve gone unplugged… like for real. No mics, no plugs in the guitars… me, josh, our two guitars and our shaky voices… good stuff. More importantly, we’ve also used part of our 20 minutes to talk about worship and look at biblical aspects of worship…

so there’s your preface.. i’ll throw down some info about the two weeks within the next day or so. I’ll say its gone well so far, and i’m looking forward to the rest of the x:perience.