photo by Fundamentals on Flickr

We had a guest worship leader in church Sunday morning…

Well, he’s actually not a guest, he sings on the worship team all the time… He even leads a song or two here and there… The truth is, he and I have about the same role.

The point is that he doesn’t normally lead the entire worship set.

This week, our normal worship leader is on vacation… His name is Eddie… He has a really laid-back approach to leading worship. He welcomes everyone before we start playing and rarely speaks again until it’s time to take the offering. He’s exceptionally talented and we really miss him when he’s missing.

So our leader on Sunday was Dave… Dave is loquacious. Which means that he talks alot… for better or worse, Dave expresses himself verbally where Eddie would just play a really awesome riff.

Now, normally I am a fan of keeping the talking to a minimum during worship. Mainly, because worship leaders tend to be the artsy type and get off-task easily, but also because I think that too much specific direction can create an artificial sense of spirituality. In my mind, worship is primarily emotive and purposeful. Talk often seems unnecessarily intellectual in that context.

Dave made me rethink that today…

After the first song, Dave read an 8-verse passage from Psalms and then talked for about 4 minutes about fear and intimidation in worship, about how Satan uses self-consciousness to keep us from really worshipping… He prayed and did a little “casting-out” and all I could think about was how freaky this might seem to a new-comer…

Then Dave started the 2nd song…

And the mood of our church was completely transformed. People were clapping and singing and lifting up their hands… But it was more than just the external actions… There was genuine freedom, genuine praise and real corporate worship.

I asked my wife about her experience in the service and she laid it out like this:

“Dave led… He took his role as a leader seriously and it gave people permission and empowered them to really worship.” What Dave said was not really as important as his example: he set aside his own discomfort and self-consciousness to encourage the rest of us to set aside ours. And it paid-off in a better worship experience for the whole congregation.

Next Sunday, it’s my turn to lead… And though it’s not really my “style,” I’m thinking that there may be some wisdom in leading more like Dave…

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