Mezzamorphis

Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find a blessing.

Do you find that it’s a burden to get to church on Sunday? You were out late the night before and really don’t feel like getting out of bed for church, weren’t you? Maybe the baby was up all night and you’re just tired. These are (sometimes) justifiable circumstances for not showing up on Sunday morning. Believe me, there have been several weeks where it’s difficult for me to get going in the morning. I’m not a morning person by nature, though I need to be.

Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”[1] At our church, we gather together on Sunday mornings specifically for worship. It’s great to be able to see each other at the end of a typically hectic and busy week. Sunday mornings is where we know our lives will intersect.

However, when someone who is part of the fellowship isn’t there, it is noticeable. A part of the body can’t simply go missing and the absence not be felt. There is a desire in all of us, however deeply buried, to be wanted and needed by those we choose to surround ourselves with. This is part of the community that builds up in a church, be it a traditional church, a church plant, even a house church. When someone chooses to become a part of a body, they are grafted into that body and taking them away becomes a painful process.

What does this have to do with worship? Simply put, everything. When only a few voices sing, the emotion, the power, the blessed choir of the saints is diminished. If ten people of a congregation of 100 show up to worship, there is no widely held passion in that place. How does that look to those who are not believers that happened to be in the building that morning? Honestly, do you think that when we are in eternity with God, some of us will sit around and say, “I’m not going to join in the choir right now. I’ve been singing for 5,642 years and I’m just tired”?

We are blessed beyond imagining with the ability to sing praise to our Creator, our Savior, and we choose not to. We come up with excuses why we can’t go to church, or don’t want to. I’ll be honest and tell you that I came up with those same excuses for several years. We would go to church every once in a while, but most Sundays we would be the first ones in the door when Bennigan’s opened. Church was boring to us, but rather than taking up that cross and finding somewhere we could put down roots, it was easier to just not darken the door and go through the trouble. As my wife and I got older and our kids started to come to the age where we felt they needed to be going to church, we changed. Finding a church wasn’t easy, but we found one where we felt part of the community.

We also come up with excuses why we can’t sing. “My voice isn’t really good” or “I don’t like this kind of music” are two that come to mind. I’ve always admired my father for singing during church even though God didn’t exactly bless him with golden pipes. That didn’t stop him though. His earnestness in singing the hymns of faith says a lot about him.

To put it simply, join with others and sing. We would love to have you at ours (Pin Oaks), but if you can’t come here, just find somewhere. There is strength in the fellowship of the believers and you will be blessed by what comes out of it. Wherever you go, sing all.

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[1] To be theologically honest, I don’t think this verse specifically means the assembling of the entire congregation of a specific church, but rather an assembling of believers together. This could be the whole church, a small group, a Bible study, even just a group of guys getting together to build something. Anything that builds community. However, for my purposes in this series, it’s going to describe the entire church.

A few weeks back my parents (who are wonderful) bought me a collection of works by John Wesley. These are not tiny books. Each of them is about 800-1000 pages, and there are eight books. It would take me a while to read them all, unless I go Harry Potter on them and read them to completion in one sitting, which won’t happen.

That this part of divine worship may be more acceptable to God, as well as more profitable to yourself and others, be careful to observe the following directions

Wesley then goes on to lay out six themes for worship. Those six themes will each have a post of their own in this series. I want to explore what Wesley says, but then apply it to worship today. There are things that I can improve on, and things that I want to point out from the perspective of an admittedly amateur worship leader.

I think that worship should be pursued with passion and zeal, not something we should have to stand and endure. Do we get more excited about a football game or a political race than we do about worship of our Savior? Ask yourself that question and truthfully answer it. I can say that I will often be that way. I’m always amazed by the amount of passion and vitriol we can direct at the rivals of our favorite teams, but on Sunday mornings we stand there with no emotion whatsoever.

As a worship leader, my job is to lead people to the throne room of God on Sunday mornings, to provide an avenue that helps you in the congregation to give glory to our Creator. I’m still learning how to do this effectively. I’m on a constant search for information about how to be a better worship leader. I was praying about it this last week, and God showed me that I’m trying too hard to be right, and not just being. Rather than being a worshiper myself, I’m too worried about the music sounding right, or what people are thinking of the songs that I’ve picked out. I need to let that go and just worship along with everyone else.

The best compliment that I can receive from someone is nothing, that I and the worship team became completely transparent and they focused on God.

So, let’s all journey together and listen to this call to worship. Share with me what you think of the series as we go along, or even what I’ve said here. I look forward to sharing this with you!

Is this not one of the best album covers ever? Love the look on his face. You can’t often combine cute and awesome like this. Click on the image make it bigger and see how cute Losiah really is.

Oh, and the EP is phenomenal too. Go buy it from iTunes and help Carlos get to #1. Worship music with some drive to it, phenomenal lyrics, and just overall awesome. Can’t wait for the full disc to come out in a couple months. My favorite song on here so far is “We Will Worship” but “Jesus Saves” is moving up the list too. I”m fairly certain that we’ll be introducing these into worship in the next few months. I’m starting to get a fairly long list of new worship songs. This could be good and bad.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been listening to different music trying to come up with ideas for worship songs on Sunday mornings. One song that kept jumping out at me was a remake of “I Need Thee Every Hour” by Jars of Clay. The one verse that kept bringing me back to it was:

I need Thee every hour; stay Thou nearby
Temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh

This is such a powerful thought for me, and so true. When I am actively reading the Bible and making time to pray, the day-to-day temptations that are usually in my path don’t have the effect they might otherwise have. When I don’t have that closeness to God, those temptations seem to have more control over me.

One thing that the song doesn’t really say is that it really isn’t God’s job to keep close to us. He is an invited presence in our lives, our homes, our churches, and our world. It is our responsibility to make the effort to seek Him. We make the choice to remain close or to move away. God never moves.

I pray that tomorrow everyone at church can take these words to heart during worship and really let them sink in. One of the great things about old hymns is the language used is so elegant and powerful.