Back in the Saddle Again

    On any Sunday morning, you’re likely to find me leading worship for the nine o’clock service at my home church.  In April of 2010, we added a second worship service. My church is growing, but I wouldn’t say we’re busting at the seams. We launched what I refer to as First Service because an increasingly vocal segment of our congregation found it almost impossible to connect with our new and much younger worship leader who had arrived the year before.  Poor guy! He loves the Lord, he’s immensely talented, and he has a genuine anointing to connect people to God.  He came to us fresh out of college ministry, however, and he floundered a bit for before finding his way (most admirably, I must say) through the worship style preference minefield of our multi-generational church family.  After our pastor got an earful of grousing from the deeply perturbed, he met with the worship leaders to talk about the idea of adding a new service. We agreed that, whereas it wasn’t the ideal solution, we really needed to give our older people a service geared more closely to their preferences.  And then he asked me to lead the music for it.

    “Great!” I thought to myself.  Writing songs and leading people in worship to God has been my “sweet spot” in life, and I’ve been at it for over 30 years now.  At this stage, however, retiring to a place by a lake somewhere has a lot of appeal to me. I find that I need extra motivation to keep writing, singing, and playing guitar on a regular basis. You know the old maxim, “use it or lose it.”  I’ve been on worship teams practically non-stop from the late 1970’s, but I haven’t had the weekly responsibility of being a worship leader in years. “This will be good for me,” I reasoned.  I actually began to think excitedly about developing a worship song repertoire for the new service. Then we started discussing service times.  My pastor said, “We’ll keep the later time for the main service. Only we’ll move it to ten-thirty.” We’ve met at ten o’clock since Noah got off the ark, I think.  “Let’s see...we need to allow about 15 minutes to transition between services, so....so we need to start this new service by nine o’clock.” 

    “Nine o’clock.” The words reverberated in my mind like a death knell. Starting a worship service at nine in the morning meant that I would have to rehearse with our worship team at .... oh, Lord....eight o’clock! And if you really want to actually start by eight, you have to get into the building, tune your instrument, set up your gear, get plugged in, and warmed up by eight.  Suddenly this new service idea was not nearly as exciting to me as it was two and half seconds previously.  “What’s the big deal,” you ask?  “I have to be at work by that time and often much earlier.”  True. But I bet you never have to stand up in front of a group of nicely dressed church people, who may secretly be thinking, “You’d better sing something I like, or the arms stay CROSSED!” and sing reasonably well, while you’re at it. And you have to look happy about it because you’re a Christian, not to mention the fact you’re the worship leader. And you can't drink strong black coffee while you're doing it, like you probably do at your job, or even like the people in those seeker-friendly pews. Chairs. Whatever!

    Besides, I’m a musician. Everybody knows musicians are typically not early risers. We tend to be night owls. We stay up late to watch Andy Griffith re-runs on television, and maybe Dave Letterman (we think Dave Letterman is funny. Maybe it’s because of Paul Schaffer’s band). That also explains why we require large quantities of coffee to function during the hours before noon. You can frequently find flocks of us huddling together in a Starbucks somewhere, speaking in low tones about how hard it is to get to pre-service rehearsal on a Sunday morning.  And anyways, it’s Sunday, for pete’s sake! You know, that day of rest we’re all supposed to be resting on?  I now get up on Sundays earlier than any other day of the week, which is why I go into a coma after lunch almost every Sunday afternoon. But I’ll head down that rabbit trail some other time.

    Our two services have been running for over two years now, and hallelujah! the grousing has pretty much ceased.  The church has been meeting in one combined worship service since mid-June though.  Since a lot of people vacation during the summer and numbers are typically down for both services, our leadership made the decision to meet in one service for a few weeks. It’s been wonderful having the whole church body worshiping together again as one big family. I’ve really enjoyed some time off from my weekly worship leading role, too. We all need a break from time to time.  Plus, I think worship leaders need to sit in the pews now and again to regain some perspective of what it's like to be led in worship. We need those times when we’re not working as leaders, but can stand among the congregation as one among many and simply worship.

    My respite ends this Sunday. I’ll be back in the saddle again, leading worship for the First Service crowd. At least I hope it’s a crowd. You never know with this bunch!  I’m truly going to miss sleeping in a bit longer on Sundays, but I at least I’m not alone.  A whole team of faithful ones are willing to join me every week in my misery.  Some misery -  I get to play my guitar and sing to the Almighty, worshiping Him along with his precious saints!   

    Musician or not, I actually have a functioning left-brain. So I sent an email to the First Service worship team to remind them all that we’re back to rehearsing at eight o’clock starting this Sunday. Sleeping in, sadly, has come to an end for us. As I told them, “If we were a Seinfeld episode, I would say, ‘No sleep for YOU!’”  

And on this first Wednesday in August, that’s all she wrote.

Lynn

"From my devotional reading this morning:  "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits;" Psalm 103:1-2