Mystery of Expectation

Hey everyone,
My name's Kurt Prond. I got into worship leading in High school when I started a band with some friends, and have kind of known since then it's what I am called to do(until I hear otherwise) I ended up leading a group at St. Olaf college that Mike and Nathan actually started, and am now the minister of worship at Emmaus Church in Northfield, MN.

My thought: I was listening to "Behold the Lamb" a christmas album by Andrew Peterson recenctly. Anyone familiar with it? Anyway, the album tells the Christmas story, but starts with creation, and goes through King David and the prophets...really good stuff. The whole album seems to capture this sense of expectation of the fullfilling of these mysterious prophecies of a King who will come to rule with justice and righteousness and a sword in His fist...and I've been thinking, "Do we live with that expectation?" It seems that we get so used to doing what we do, that we stop expecting The Lord to actually show up and change our lives when we are leading worship. It becomes routine. But I think God honors our expectation when we earnestly wait for him. Thoughts?
Kurt

Getting to know you...

It's good to see everyone signing on - I really hope this is a helpful thing for all of us. If Nathan's first topic is any indication, I think it will be.

I know all of you, and many of you know each other, but I don't think everyone does. Maybe, if you're so inclined, we each could reply to this thread with some basic information about ourselves... in what capacity we're leading worship, how you got into worship leading in the first place - I dunno, whatever you want to say about yourself.

I actually don't have time to do my own right now, so I'll reply with that later!

A beginning

Hello all -

I'll dive in and be the first to respond to Mike's invitation (unless someone submits one while I'm typing this). Thanks for forming this, Mike.

All of us worship leaders are very comfortable contributing to a worship service and do so [extensively] every Sunday morning. We work with teams of people sharing music, scriptures, a sermon, administering sacraments, etc. But what inevitably seems to happen is that a group of "us" is presenting the service to a group of "them". "We" are the ones who've done the planning, who know what's happening next, who know when the lights are going to come down for the video clip,...who have the service under control.

I Corinthians 14:26 says, "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church."

So how can we live out this verse and let everyone who comes dynamically shape the service? This verse sounds messy. Is this even possible, especially at larger churches? Plus, let's be honest, some of those slick presentations can be very effective. Music and video and drama all working in sync can have powerful impact on people's hearts and minds. Can we have our cake and eat it too?

An invitiation

For those of us who have been entrusted with leading God's people in worship, there can be plenty - both good and bad - to process about our privilege, our responsibility, our calling. This is the place for us to share our joys, our struggles, our questions, our learning experiences, our favorite resources, and the new visions and wisdom God gives us. Most of all, this is a place for God to speak to us through each other. I look forward to learning from you all, both contributors and any who might wander by and decide to join the conversation.