Something spiritual ... worship leading and playing.

To go with all that cricket stuff.

I'm going to write a series of posts about worship; Andrew from church and I lead our Youth Band at church where we are encouraging a number of our talented youngsters to learn about worship and develop their skills at playing together and learn some of the songs we play regularly as we lead worship in the church.  Due to having not one but two talented drummers amongst the kids, I am forced to play the bass, which is very amusing for everyone except me.  We also have a ukulele, and several voices and Jacob (who is already a fantastic electric guitarist and really blesses God and the church with his playing in the band on Sundays as well).

Anyway, we need to come up with our teaching for the summer term, and I thought that this would be a good place to start to put some of my teaching ideas in place, so you can give me feedback or further enlighten me for the teaching sessions.  The areas I am thinking to break it down to are these keys to serving God through the playing of instruments, or worship leading as we have come to call it!

Firstly the key attribute to anyone who is going to be a worship leader or serve God through their playing is to be a worshipper of God; to love God, to be devoted to him above all else, and to live for Him.  Straight forward this one, and truth be told, something that all Christians should be living for, but this is the key attribute or behaviour of a musician: that they love to worship God.

Alongside this then come the qualities that we expect to see in a worshipper of God, with the Holy Spirit indwelling: the fruits of the spirit.  Love, joy, peace etc.  I think the important ones here are faithfulness, and self control.  A worship musician needs to be dedicated and to work hard.  From personal experience, another crucial personal quality is humility; as a drummer, knowing that you can be heard, and that you can have a large influence on the band, on volume, on tempo etc. means that it is vital to be humble, to seek to play your role, to respect the worship leader, and not to seek glory for ourselves.  These qualities will flow out of a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Another couple of scriptures I want to look at are 1 Chronicles 25 and 1 Samuel 10:5-10.  As a worship musician, these are two of the ways in which I want my playing to develop to glorify God.  In the first passage, the temple musicians are appointed, and they are trained and skilled in playing music for the Lord.  The word translated skill here is the Hebrew word Sakal, and can also be translated to mean sensitivity.  These musicians were in the temple, skilled musicians who had been trained to play music for the Lord.  God loves our music, and loves to hear it, and from this passage we see that there is skill involved in playing for the Lord.  I pray that I, and my fellow players, and the youngsters that we are teaching would all develop this skill.  The second passage talks about a group of travelling prophets, who come playing their songs, and their music leads Saul to also prophesy, at a time in history where prophecy was not common or undertaken lightly.      I love the idea that when these prophets play, the spirit falls upon Saul and causes him to prophesy, the sense that the music seems to carry the Spirit with it.  I also pray that our playing would carry the same annointing.

Any feedback, other ideas, let me know.  Especially if you too are a worship musician!

Thanks.