Try to stay on track...
I’ve led corporate praise and worship, in one forum or another, for 20 years. It doesn’t seem to matter much how simple or complex, how seeker-sensitive or presence-driven, how contemporary or traditional, they all have one thing in common: spectacular trainwrecks.
If we pay attention, these embarrassing implosions will yeild up a treasure trove of valuable insights and applicable conventions to help us dodge the bullet in the future. If we don’t pay attention, we can count on a desasterous repeat… sometimes again and again and again.
Having learned this lesson the hard way… I pay attention. Still, there are new lessons to be learned. This week:
I started leading worship for a small group, meeting in a family home. The setting is informal, simple and presence-driven. I generally practice at home on a small, hollow-body electric guitar (out of respect to the neighbors since I live in an apartment), then play my acoustic guitar at the actual meeting. I also play with really light picks (think: a piece of paper in the shape of a guitar pick) and decided that I needed the extra volume that a heavier pick would afford… so I switched out my picks.
I don’t really consider myself a guitar player… I picked it up without any lessons when I was in my late-20′s. So, while many guys my age have been playing guitar for 30 years, I’ve only got about 8. And since my primary purpose in learning was to facilitate small-group praise and worship, I really just chord along and play rhythms. Good enough for what I do… but not outstanding.
Begin knowing that our group leader tends to be warm and our hosts tend to be cold… so an oscilating fan was brought in to bridge the gap. ..
Whoosh… all of my carefully laid-out charts went sailing into the corner behind the couch.
Of course, as any guitar player will tell you, switching to a heavier pick is not the cakewalk that we novices would suppose. I had to continually adjust my grip on the pick to keep it in my hand… dropped it once.
All of this was exacerbated by the fact that I was trying to transpose 2 songs by sight…
And for the coup de gras, my darling little daughter, age 3, decided that the best place for her was right behind me on the couch… dancing, squealing, licking my head (not joking) and finally jumping down. In the last maneuver, she grabbed the neck of my guitar to swing down and knocked all 6 strings out of tune…
All in all, not my most brilliant moment.
After it was over, Paul, who leads our group, said to me, “Let’s get together on Friday… bring your guitar.”
Looks like I’m finally going to get guitar lessons….
The idea of “purpose-driven” Christianity has gotten a lot of attention in recent years… In some churches, the administration of every program asks “why are we doing this?” at weekly staff meetings. But even in the midst of all of our collective navel-gazing, I wonder if we haven’t overlooked the very heart of the question… especially when it comes to the reasons and expressions of worship.
