Yesterday I started a series of posts on worship leading. You can read my first one HERE. Admittedly I am not a worship leader, but I felt like God gave me some insight into what makes a great worship leader. These are in now way original to me I’m sure, they are just things I’ve been processing and wanted to blog them. The first thing a great worship leader has is a desire for GOD to be worshipped! This is greater than their desire to worship God personally!
#2 A commitment to spiritual disciplines I am convinced that a worship leader who is NOT consistently committed to spiritual disciplines WILL NOT be a successful worship leader. A great worship leader can’t rely on their God given talent, their song selection, their band, their “experience”. A great worship leader MUST rely solely on their personal connection with God through the developing and practicing of spiritual disciplines.
The worship leaders desire needs to be connecting the people with the heart of God. How can they lead people to the heart of God if they themeselves haven’t gone there? In my own ministry, there is a DEFINITE difference in my sermons when I have practiced spiritual disciplines and times when I haven’t.
The worship leader MUST be in the Word of God daily, and it needs to be personal time with God, not office time looking for Scripture guidance for songs. The worship leader MUST spend intentional time of seeking God’s face through prayer. This needs to be personal prayer time as well, that is NOT centered around worship planning, but around the molding of their own heart. The worship leader needs to schedule times of fasting. Fasting is a spiritual discipline in which we abstain from something (food, caffeine, tv, etc) in order to seek God’s direction or will in our lives.
I think pastors and worship leaders make a very common mistake. We spend too much time praying for God to direct and bless our ministries, inspire our sermons or give us a great worship set. We need to be praying for God to make US into who HE wants us to be.
If the worship leader is not purposely allowing God to mold him, his ministry will never be molded and he will never be great! We MUST stop concerning ourselves with the outcome of our ministries, and start CONSUMING ourselves with the outflow of our heart! Now that dog’ll hunt right there. If the outflow of my heart is in tune with the heart of God, my ministry outcome will be successful! (And that applies to ALL areas of ministry and life)
Trying to be disciplined,
Jeff
