How Do You Teach Worship

As a father and youth leader, I am always wondering and thinking about teaching kids about worship. It is hard enough to help adults understand what worship is all about, but gets tougher when we are talking about young people.

Worship to me is an extremely important expression of our Christian faith and as such, it seems like we as leaders need to be concerned about teaching this to our children. Seeing a young person engaged in worship, where they are really connecting with God is a sight that I will never get tired of.

My thoughts to this point has led me to believe that modeling worship is a good way to teach it, but I'm wondering if there is more that should be done. That is not to say that other teaching isn't taking place, such as teaching on God's character and his interaction with His creation. It seems like we have done a good job in teaching about Christianity, but have we done enough to explain that worship takes us into the courtyards of the King Himself. Have we explained that God does indeed inhabit the prayers of his people. If not, how can we really do this?

For me, worship did not come easy, in fact it took me a while to understand why people in church would ever enjoy all the singing that they did. I wanted to skip the singing and get on to the good stuff, I thought all the singing was a waste of time. It took time for God to capture my heart and for me to realize that it was happening. Worship went from singing songs to an interactive experience, where I moved closer to God and where He came closer to me. It was a place where I could be totally exposed before Him and where He could speak to me and deal with me in all the ways He desired.

In the end, I guess I am left with more questions that answers, but my desire is and will always be for more and more people to experience real worship. I want to help others to find this place, this special place where the veil between us and God is especially thin.

Master's Commission

Master's Commission led worship and ministry for the girls at a recent Friends retreat, which led to us inviting them to come to the church to speak to our youth. The girls from the Friends group could not stop talking the members of Master's Commission and how great they were. All of their talk really set the expectation extremely high and I have to tell you, Master's Commission more than met the expectation set... they blew it out of the park. I can't tell you how impressed I was by these young people and their obvious love for the Lord Jesus.

They spoke to the youth today about unity, something that has been on my heart for a long time. For me, it was so obvious that they were speaking the heart of God, that it caused me to weep many times. They spoke of Sacrifice, Honor, Drive and Glory and used skits to reinforce their message, which was more than cool. I am struggling to get everything out that I want to say... which is why this sounds like I'm rambling.

Drive = Passion + Desire

Drive is what moves us forward, it is taking the thing that we desire (our goals), fueling it with out passion and "Going For It!" without reservation.

Honor + Sacrifice + Drive = Glory

Glory cannot be seen until we begin to Honor someone, Sacrifice something and Drive towards the prize.

Master's Commission did what they called a human video to the song "I Need You To Survive". This was an extremely touching part of their presentation. They signed (sign language) to the lyrics of the song as they moved throughout the area where the youth was sitting. This is one of the times that brought me to tears as it was such a graphic example of our need for one another.

I am looking forward to seeing Master's Commission again real soon in the hope that the Lord will use them once again to speak to me.

My hope is that the hearts that Master's Commission touches end up being the very treasures that they are laying up for themselves in Heaven.

For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?
1 Thessalonians 2:19

A very cool picture from God

There was a Worship and Ministry night at the church this evening (Thanks Kim). It was a wonderful time of being in the presence of the Lord and participating in corporate worship with a group of people I really love. During worship, I got a couple of words and God allowed me to see something very cool.

There is a guitarist in the worship band named Charlie, Charlie has a little boy named Caleb. Charlie was in the worship band tonight playing a mean guitar (Charlie is extremely gifted) and right in the middle of a worship song Caleb (who is maybe five or six) came in from the back of the sanctuary, walked right up the aisle, up onto the stage, across the stage and right to the feet of his Dad.

The Lord used this event to show me what our relationship with Him should look like. Caleb did not think twice about his dad being busy playing guitar, Caleb didn't think anything about all of the people who would see him go up on the stage, I don't even think a whole team of mules could have kept him from going to feet of his dad. To Caleb, all he saw was his dad, and he went to him as if to say... "It doesn't matter what my dad is doing, he is my dad and he will always make time for me!". It is just like that for you and I, but the difference is that we have trouble overlooking the things that Caleb didn't give a second thought to. We get concerned about what people will think of us if we run to our heavenly Father. Our God, our heavenly Daddy will always make time for us and we need to run to him without reservation.

When Caleb first went  up on the stage to his dad, it brought a smile to my face, just seeing him go. But when the Lord revealed to me what He wanted me to see, it brought tears to my eyes and choked me up. It did so several time throughout the night as I remembered the lesson. God loves us and wants us to come to Him, not waiting for a proper time, for a convenient time, He wants us to just to come!

Thank you Lord for this beautiful picture, I needed to see it and I guess I was meant to share it.