Worship Confessional #5

Broken and Beautiful

Some background:
Danny (youth pastor) and I have been taking a new approach to Wednesday night preparing. For a couple of months now, we have been meeting together weekly to discuss the plan for the night and spend a good while lifting everything up in prayer. We realized that many Wednesday nights, we were doing the same ol' and missing out on God's plan. It's utterly astounding how often ministry work gets done without seeking God's will during preparation.

A few weeks ago, God started convicting me about our youth band's intentions. Right around the time of our city-wide worship night (Uprising), I started noticing that some issues were arising for reasons that didn't reflect the hearts of true worship leaders. It was at that time I realized that we were in need of a spiritual overhaul. So the next week (3/11) we started a new "stripped down" (not clothing, everyone was fully clothed) approach to worship.

We spent some time talking about having hearts of worship before we ever step foot on the stage. We spent some time in scripture and praying as a team. The biggest change was the instrumentation and layout of our stage. We pulled drums and electric guitars out of the equation and broke it down to the basics: 2 acoustics, bass, djembe, and vocals. We have everybody sitting on stools and took the overall tone from rock-tastic to chill/acoustic/coffee house. This has helped visually and aurally convey to the students the direction we are heading as team and as a youth group.

Worship 4/01/09
So far the response has been great and the group is starting to really respond. Here's a look at last night's set:

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-Video of the Week
-Announcements

Our God Above (G) - Andy Melvin
You Are King (G) - Me
Came to My Rescue (C) - Dylan Thomas/Hillsong
From the Inside Out (C) - Joel Houston

Message/Video testimonials

Part of Your Story (G) - Todd Wright
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We have been doing a series on changed lives. I Am Second has been an incredible resource and an effective illustration to tie the message together. The Hillsong montage was based on driving this point home.

"I called, You answered and You came to my rescue and I wanna be were you are..."

"My heart and my soul, I give you control, consume me from the inside out..."

I felt that through both songs I was able to introduce the topic, and Danny was able to drive it home. Two of the SFA student video testimonials were from our Crosspoint Celebration Service (last semester) and one from a professional motocross champion. Despite about 30 seconds of audio failure during one of the testimonies, everything went off without any issues.

It's amazing how God has been laying things on my heart and Danny's at the same time. Breaking down the music to minimize distractions has been a huge help to preparing hearts to hear God's truth. When we stop and prepare and actually invite God into our presence, He shows up and incredible stuff happens.

Sorry for the long post. This has been a long time coming and I felt like it needs to be shared. I hope that if you are leading worship, or just barely making it to church on time for the first song, don't skip the step of preparing. Get your heart clean, and make things right. God wants to show up and rock your world. All you have to do is let Him.

Philip