Where Have All the Worship Leaders Gone

I have been challenged by two different people to shorten the posts to this blog. This is the first attempt at doing that. We will see how it goes.

Jesus said, "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him." (John 4:23)

Somewhere in the past dozen or so years, most churches seem to have lost the concept of what a worship leader is and does. We could just keep this simple and say a worship leader leads worship. That is probably too simple. It implies we understand what worship is. Most people, it seems, do not know the difference between "praise" and "worship." The difference is critical if we want to truly worship God. Praise is a function of the soul. Worship is a spiritual activity.

We have usually called the time we are in the church building, doing things together, worship. To the contrary, worship is the time when we are one on one with God, in spirit, no distractions, no disruptions. We cannot really worship "with" other people. We can worship in the same place (body), at the same time, and even do the same things, (soul). To truly worship, we must move into the spirit and be alone with God.

In any church service there are three different groups of people. One group does not need any help to worship. Tell them it is time to worship and they begin. The second group, knows about worship and has experienced it on some level, but they need to be helped, to be led, into the presence of God. The third group has no idea what worship is about. They have to be taught whatever cannot be caught during the worship time. Even when they catch onto what is going on, many find it helpful to be given the whys of those things.

A worship leader has a sole purpose when he or she is standing before an assembly. That is to lead each person into the presence of the Almighty. It stands to reason then, that the worship leader must know how to move into the spirit himself or herself. However, simply playing an instrument and/or holding a microphone while worshiping on stage is not leading worship.

Some people think the worship leader has to have superior musical abilities. Seven times in the Psalms we are encouraged to, "make a joyful noise" not "be excellent in music." The truth is that average musical abilities will suffice if the worship leader is able to bring people to the door of the most holy place and then get out of the way so each person can stand face to face with God.

We have visited a number of churches of late and have found it difficult to move past the distractions of cumbersome, wordy songs that most of the congregation finds difficult to sing. It is often as though the person or group on the platform has no idea the difficulty of the songs gets in the way of worship. We used to attend a church where the worship leader had decidedly average musical abilities. Yet somehow, he managed to lead people into the presence of God on a weekly basis, and sometimes mid-week as well. Conversely, there are many very talented musicians and song leaders who simply cannot make the move from soul to spirit to truly lead worship.

All we do here is attempt to stimulate people and churches to better and greater things, hoping that in so doing we will not be a hindrance to the work of the Gospel and the removal of the religious spirit. Should any of these concepts resonate with your spirit, make the necessary changes. Ultimately we members of Christ's body will all come to unity of the faith. (Ephesians 4:13) God bless!