Monday, March 12, 2007

Lent Blog: Day 20

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Not doing terribly well with post frequency at the moment. Lots of stuff to write and I was leading worship yesterday morning at church, which I always find more draining and demanding than I expect.

Leading worship - it's an interesting description. In the context of our church, leading worship means choosing the music (usually 9-10 worship songs) in consultation with the person leading the rest of the service. You then get to hurch at 9am to lead the rehearsal, and make the decisions about how the songs will be played. Then during the service, the songs usually come in sets of 2 or 3, and it's up to the leader to decide on repeats, volume and pace changes and when to move from one song to another and finish. I find preaching much less demanding!

Strictly speaking, it's not 'leading worship', or at least it's not leading all of the worship. The whole service should be worship, and I was leading the musical component of it. The music provides the framework, sets the mood and enables response, but it isn't the whole of worship.

Nor is worship confined to church. I still remember attending a meeting in London which had on the agenda 'time of worship' meaning 3 songs would be sung. Someone who had come from Newcastle muttered "I've been trying not to worship God all the way down on the train!"

If Lent is anything, it has to be a time that faces us with this question: do I worship God only in church, or do I continue to keep the consciousness in work, school, pub and when driving my car?

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