Tim Clark’s Blog

I led worship this week on Sunday morning for the first time in years. Though my technical skills are a little rusty, I really enjoyed it. Worshipping (and leading worship) is one of the things that tap into my passion.

While I was leading (and destroying) some of the songs, there was a sense of breakthrough in our congregation. One of the best worship leaders I know, my friend Caleb Quaye, was visiting this week and later, over coffee he confirmed that God was doing something very powerful.

But it wasn’t because of the quality of music (he confirmed that too) and it wasn’t because we sounded “like the CD”, or because we designed the set just right.

What I needed to remember was that our songs in worship are simply a vehicle to an encounter with the living God. Too often in our church culture we look at songs as if they are a destination: Get the ‘band’ to play them just right, nail the transitions, build to an emotionally satisfying crescendo, and end big and right on time, and we feel that we just had an amazing worship experience.

As good as that might feel, the target is more musical and emotional. What we need is a spiritual target. When I am told of the churches where the Holy Spirit was moving so powerfully in the 70′s I hear that they sang simple songs without great transitions and often with little more accompanying them than a Piano or Organ. But worship was powerful. People got saved and healed and baptized with the Holy Spirit every week. Folks walked into the room and said “God is truly among you”.

And it wasn’t because the music was amazing. The songs were decent and true, but they were simply a vehicle to real worship where God moved in and through the praises of His people. I fear that we now have become so enamored with the songs themselves that we worship the worship, and not the God that the worship is designed to get us to meet (for more about what God thinks of that kind of worship, read the Old Testament book of Joel).