Naomi's Notes - 03/21/06
Worship leaders always experience a healthy tension between helping others worship and worshiping (God) themselves. For church musicians, there are so many details to attend to during Sunday worship (i.e., cueing who's next in the order of service, focusing on doing the music itself well, ) it's often difficult to focus on our own worship experience.
Every church musician's fear is in publicly "holding everyone hostage" due to our lack of skill or our loss of focus. Our desire is to offer our own musical gifts back to God as we help others worship, not to be a distraction during corporate worship.
Since seminary days my guiding mantra in planning music for services has been "a song well-chosen and well-sung is a worthy offering to the Lord." That is, the right song in the right style at the right spot in the service presented by the right person with the right skills and the right motive.
It follows that anything we use in worship (instrumental music, drama, banners, sermon, scripture reading, ) that is well-chosen and well-done is a worthy offering to the Lord.
But worthy music (or sermon, or drama, or ) doesn't just happen. A large part of our worship is done through preparation. It may sometimes look easy or automatic on Sundays, but in order for the service and the music to flow smoothly during worship, a lot of rehearsal and preparation must be done behind the scenes.
Last week I told one of our choirs that in a sense, choir rehearsal is worship. Worship happens for me as I try to pull together a meaningful order of service before the bulletin is printed. Others also worship through their preparation.
Certainly God can "break through" even during our stumbles on Sundays, and worship can happen anytime in our lives. But we are called to be intentional about worship, and trying our best to plan services that facilitate corporate worship is a part of that.
However, each worship participant must also be intentional about having a right heart. So, the only question that remains after a well-planned service is, "Did God show up?" And only individual worshipers can answer that for themselves.
See you in worship this Sunday -
Naomi