Churches
The ability to worship corporately is one of the greatest gifts God has given His people. It is God’s longing throughout the Scriptures that “we would be His people and He would be our God.” God's vision that we would be His authentic worshipers - both individually and corporately - is greatly lacking and desperately needed in many churches. We’ve lost the vision and value of worship and settled so often for a WIIFM (what’s in it for me) focus instead of focusing on our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently we not burdened with those things which burden God’s heart or invigorated to expand His praise through our work.When it comes to worship it seems the Church constantly struggles and swings from one extreme to another, from intellectualism to emotionalism, from over-powering leadership to non-leadership, from programming at the expense of people to no programming (or godly planning) at all. All of these can be summed up as an over-emphasis of "churchianity” that becomes a form of idolatry. This should come as no surprise and should be something we guard against vigilantly. After all, even Jesus was tempted by Satan to compromise and pollute his worship and he (Satan) is still doing it today. (Matthew 4:9,10)
Thankfully, the Church of Christ moves forward by the grace of God. The more our hearts are captured by God's calling, the more our hearts are broken over the inauthenticity we see and the lack of “salt and light” influence we see in our cultures. It is my desire to raise the vision to its proper place and see the church around the world engage in authentic, Spirit-empowered, life-changing worship through its understanding and practice of worship in all of its facets. It truly is the jewel we must protect and project into the world.
How can we help?
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I can at least begin a dialogue about what worship should look like in your church. Is there a dialogue going on? What do you do to protect and project the worship jewel in your church?
Resources:
Our services include:• Consulting
• Teaching
• Assisting Services or Events (planning, programming, production)
• Worship Team Training (Spiritual, Musical, Leadership)
• Worship Leading (Interim/Transitional Leadership)
• Mentoring Artists
• Musical - charts, tracks, lessons, directing
Books:
The Missing Jewel
"The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place – worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ." (A.W. Tozer).