The Turning Point

As I shared before, I served in the worship ministry before I had ever encountered God in worship. Or maybe I did, but thought that it was just the effect of really cool music. So coming from that perspective, I ended up assuming worship=music.

And that meant that getting better worship required getting better music. Whatever “better” means…

When I believed that, and didn’t have any conclusive encounter with God through worship, it led to two problems:

1. My own personal worship life was very weak. Why invest time in it if I believed I had to be in a large congregation with a hyper-cool band for it to work? Worship in your own personal prayer time does not always feel good immediately. If you don’t believe in it you will give up easily.
2. I became frustrated with small group worship sessions. I didn’t encounter God in worship there, so I didn’t believe it was possible. Looking back, I realize that it was because most of the worship leaders in the small groups I attended didn’t have enough understanding to stay on a good song long enough for the singing to be unified. A technical issue. And also, they would shy away from the presence of God and choke down everything before things got really intense. Probably a sin-consciousness issue.

But one day…

The leader of my worship team sat us down and said “We’re a worship band, so we’re going to worship God!” And he proceeded to lead us in a worship session that honestly felt like being brought to heaven and back. This session shattered all my wrong ideas just like that. It was a small group (5-6 people) and had simple music (one acoustic guitar). And I KNEW, deep in my heart, that I had just met God in worship.

And I was hooked. Totally hooked!

Not only that, I also wanted to share that same experience, encountering God in worship, with every believer I could. I became totally obsessed with worship and worship ministry; I kept bugging the band leader for his ideas, concepts and opinions.

Now he wasn’t that much of a teacher; he just kind of stumbled across what works, but he couldn’t really explain to me how or why it worked.  So I continued with the smartest thing I ever did: I copied him wholesale. He led worship on solo guitar and it worked, so I started learning how to play the guitar. He would use certain songs and lead them in a certain way, so I would work on the same songs and do them the same way.

And it worked for me too!

Of course there were refinements I needed to make along the way. Things like what key to pitch songs in, how to use music to properly support what I was doing, and nitty-gritty things like that. But I had already achieved what many other worship leaders I knew could only pray and dream about – consistent success in leading worship. I would be able to bring the worship as deep and as intense as it could go that session, and the worshippers would encounter God, be blessed by him and want to seek him in worship more and more.

So, is that it? Was that all? Did I live happily ever after, end of story? Not quite. There still remained one more important step to reach and milestone to achieve. But it’s getting really late for me now, so I’ll share with you the story next time. In the meantime, be blessed!