Thoughts of a worship leader

Its the day after the first day of the Festival of Faith and I must say that it was fantastic; last night. The worship was simply awesome and credit has got to go to God. To see the many people sing, raise their hands, shout and clap in adoration and praise as we sang in the loud and quiet moments - The joy cannot be comprehended! I think that it is a wonderful joy and also an extremely difficult tast to be a worship leader. To be able to get your team of musicians and singers psyked up so that they'll be able to help you in leading out in mass public praise is a challenge.

Worship leading vs Song leading... so what's the difference? I believe that the difference is in how the songs are presented. I would call "Song leaders" those who simply pick songs out without much or any prayer and careful planning. They go up to the stage with their team and go "Our first song is...." and then "our next song is..." finally ending with "Let's all stand for our opening song...". The songs might not really flow well to set the mood right for worship.

Worship has to be inviting in itself; carefully orchestrated to bring people to worship - WAIT!?!?! IS THAT PLAYING ON EMOTIONS?!?! - That's a big question... so is everything planned so that people get all emotional and feel like they've had some spiritual experience? I must admit that more often than not, such things happen... but why? A reason I can come up with is that the worship leader/s and the team have not fully given themselves to God before the worship service... it still is, to them, a performance of some sort for themselves. Such "Worship" sessions try to emulate the effects of the Holy Spirit working within the people who are worshipping but the effects are only temporal.

What then is true worship and why do we plan?

The big plan is to guide each and every worshipper through wherever to meet our creator! The team has to understand that all they're doing is guiding and they're not dragging them. To guide, one has to be pleasant and tactful... you're dealing with people - hence, worship should be well planned so that the music is pleasant and able to bring people to the heart of true worship. From there, the Holy Spirit is given the task of moving around to touch the hearts of people, and I believe that if you sincerely pray about having the Holy Spirit touch the hearts of the worshippers, He'll be there and you can be very sure that He'll cause quite a stir!

Right... so now, on to tonight's service! :)