I've been at Calvary Fellowship for over a year now. It's been a long, hard year for me. God has a way of jacking up what I want to do. If you haven't heard, my accepting the position of Cantor here was preceded two months earlier by this statement: "I'd rather die than work at a church. It's like quitting life." My dad simply said, "Careful what you wish for, Riley."
While I have been surprised by the amount of growth inside me during this time, learning to care about people other than myself, be a shepherd of my bands and challenge those members to grow in their faith, I've been more surprised by the confirmation of some of the vision God gave me a year ago. Last Friday, most of the band leaders and I got together to talk vision and practicals for the upcoming year. Most of what we discussed I'd come up with last year, but this time it was different, more clear, more realized and in light of my and others' growth, more pertinent.
The key word we talked about was "Emphasis". I want to instill in us band leaders, praise leaders, worshipers a sense of what's important. First, it's important to be grounded and unified by Christ, his work on the cross, and his reconciliation of us to the Father. In addition, here are some of the emphases we highlighted.
3 Emphases For Songs:
Faith (in God above)
Hope (of eternity with God)
Love (shown by God at the Cross of Christ)
Inspired by 1 Corinthians 13:13, I want the songs we sing to hinge on singing about who God is, and the faith he's given. Singing about the hope of heaven, and how joyful that will be, and especially the cross, and God's love ("…the greatest of these is love.")
3 Emphases For Getting It Done:
Pray (with / for your band)
Practice (other than Sunday, doing what is good excellently)
Pour out (invest in people; on and off stage)
I want to emphasize community with one another. I don't consider someone on stage leading music to be a "worship leader" (which is why you'll see me refer to them as "praise leader" or "band leader"). No, a worship leader is someone who leads others to worship Jesus off the stage. So I consider it of utmost importance to spend time in prayer together, bearing each other's burdens. Practicing is further investment together, and how we begin to prepare for leading on Sunday in the most excellent way possible. There's simply no excuse for a poorly rehearsed band. Lastly, we need to pour out what God has poured into us. As mentioned, we are committed to leading worship off stage. Leading on stage flows naturally out of that.
Emphasis For Music:
"Value the sound of the congregation more than the sound of your instruments" (Bob Kauflin, from The Functional Limits Of Creativity). I love that take on music like I love music itself. Our music is a tool for achieving the goal: praise, which requires us to inspire the people to sing. It's not music for the sake of sounding good. It's great music for the sake of inspiring hearts to praise God.
Overall, the goal at our church is to worship Jesus. Our goal during the music is praise Jesus. Everything is a tool to achieve those goals. In short, everything is an act of worship.
Find some of our music here: Calvary Fellowship Music Sampler
