A Family Of Worshipers
What’s your worship team like? And by “worship team,” I mean the musicians and techs together.
Are you like a Worship Family? A Worship Indie Band? A Worship Elevator? Let me describe each one.
A Worship Elevator
You get on. Strangers join the tight space. You may get off together or on different floors. (translation: only some of you are there at rehearsal) There’s an unspoken hierarchy. There’s not much interaction and a lot of awkwardness if you do interact. And don’t even think about facing each other. Just stick to the protocol, man! You’re hesitant to ask for help... “um, can you, um, please push number 5?” You’re definitely self-conscious. That’s a worship elevator. Yuck.
A Worship Indie Band
Most of you work hard. You’re trying to get the fans to like you and buy your merch, after all. (translation: our goal is pleasing people and having the church board pick one of you to be the part-time staff) But everyone’s in it for slightly different reasons...the love of music, escape from family responsibilities, “self-actualization,” friendship, and generally, our fulfillment. And stick around long enough, and you know what you’ll find: Drama. And then, breakups. Sad.
A Worship Family
You have a shared, inseparable bond - you have the same Father, after all, and you’re all about pleasing Him. You joyfully serve and work hard together. You share the same identity, the same last name: Worshiper. There’s no competition, only collaboration, and completion...maybe you even finish each other’s musical sentences. Glory! (You may need God’s redemptive perspective when you think of your own family of origin. But really, the same redemptive work is required in the best of Worship Families.)
I created this phrase as a target reality at a church I was serving:
We are a family of worshipers full of faith to walk in freedom.
A helpful video from Jeremy Riddle inspired me. (he’s the guy who wrote This Is Amazing Grace, Furious, and Sweetly Broken) In the video (which is available at www.WorshipU.com, he shares that you need at least four things to create a culture of worship:
Worshipers
Family
Faith
Freedom
Let me unpack each of those.
Worshipers
Musicians, yes. Servants (read: volunteers), sure. Artists, yep. But first. Please, first, we must be worshipers. This identity drives us. There must be growing evidence that we primarily are worshipers who spend time before the Lord in private, where no man can see us, praise us, or thank us for our gift. Like David, we sit for hours on the hillside, playing and singing to a Singular audience. We can’t have a culture of worship without worshipers. This is probably why so many churches have a culture of entertainment, rock-n-roll, four-part harmony, high-theology, or relevant music... rather than a culture of worship. You’ll know you have a culture of worship when, regardless of what’s happening at the front, the congregation is worshiping. (wouldn’t that be beautiful?)
Family
I love this one because it takes a couple of things out that kill a great worship ministry: Isolation, competition, politics, bureaucracy, and corporation/business. Replace those with these: home, trust, relationships, commitment, laughter, working together, being together. (And God, for those of us who have never experienced this in our own families, please renew our minds with Your design and intent for family.)
We get to know each other. We support each other outside of our rehearsals and services. We pray for each other. We eat together... I mean, for Christ’s sake, eat together! Even research outside the church is clear: the family that eats together is healthier.
Faith
Jeremy pointed out that “Without faith, it is impossible to...what? Please God. And pleasing God is the heart of worship.” (Hebrews 11:6) Stop the tape right there! What if our worshiping community’s foremost intent was to “please God.” I don’t mean we should ignore people and negate our role of leading people. But there’s certainly a lot of people-pleasing in worship ministry. (Galatians 1:10 reminds “If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”) We are to love and serve folks while we please the Lord. So, we need to be full of faith. And faith always, by definition, leads to action. What kind of action?
Freedom
God-Action. You can always tell when the Spirit of the Lord is present and at work. That’s right. There’s freedom. Freedom doesn’t mean “casting off restraint.” (that’s one of the translations of what visionless people do: perish - Proverbs 29:18) I think of freedom as the liberty to engage in activity against which there is no law. (Galatians 5:22) You know...walk in love, joy, peace, patience...the fruit the Spirit. Or as The Message reads: “...things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”
What would it take for our worship ministries to become more of a family of worshipers full of faith to walk in freedom? By God’s grace, may we walk that way more and more!
-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)
A Family Of Worshipers (Nº 71)
