My unspiritual thoughts about Worship. (Part 1)

Tomorrow, I’m going to actually tell you my unspiritual idea, but today I’m going to build a little context.

Here at New Life, we split our kids into kinderBASE (4&5 year olds), BASE12 (1^st and 2^nd grade), BASE34 and BASE56. I have the great privilege and responsibility of overseeing the worship in all those rooms. So on any given Sunday, I usually lead about 6 sets of worship with everything from tracks to live band. Lately my schedule has been something like this.

7:45am- BASE56 Band Practice

8:15am- BASEWorship Motions Practice

9:05am- BASE12 Worship (tracks)

run from upstairs over to the tent (and if you’ve ever seen this, or been run over by me, you know that literally… I sprint.)

9:25am- BASE56 Worship (Live Band)

run from tent back upstairs

9:50am- kinderBASE Worship (tracks)

and then I do it all over again in the second service.

It’s an exhausting morning. But it’s also my absolute favorite time of the week.

Crazy schedules, lots of running, and getting to jump and sing with a thousand kids is not why I do what I do. The reason I lead Kids Worship is because I passionately believe that kids can engage God. I believe in the heavy responsibility to train up the next generation of worshippers now, at elementary age. Kids can experience God, hear God, know God, and fall in love with worshipping God and because of that, I run fast, jump high, and yell and sing a lot on Sunday mornings. It’s about making deposits.

I took over worship in BASE56 this summer and for the sake of honesty I’m going to be vulnerable. It’s been the most uncomfortable, stretching, frustrating experience I’ve had in leading worship at New Life. For two years I’ve been really great at leading singing and hand motions for kids 4^th grade and under. But this venue is new, and hard, and there’s real live musicians playing instruments in a real live band. And I’m leading them. Which means that I’m working with… musicians. If that didn’t make me insecure enough, I’m also leading a bunch of insecure 10 & 11 year olds, most of whom are afraid to do anything less than what is cool and comfortable. Whereas a 2^nd grader will jump if I jump, yell if I yell and kneel when I kneel... A 5^th grader looks at his friends and will stay seated if they do, she won’t jump if the girl next to her doesn’t, and they will only kneel if the Holy Spirit walks up and pushes them over (ok… that might be exaggerating). In the midst of all of that, I love these kids. And I love leading them in worship. I love the challenge. I love dreaming about what could flow out of that room. And I love seeing little shift, kids taking steps. I love that the Holy Spirit is present and working.

We just took a brief break from live band in “56” for September. There wasn’t some big spiritual reason for doing this, it was simply because it was impossible to logistically come up with a band of musicians every week. This last week we relaunched live band. And the band was incredible. When we came together for practice I was so blown away I was convinced that the DBand had been reincarnated in the bodies of the people on the stage.

Not.

Band changes don’t happen in one Sunday… but God changes do.

(To be continued tomorrow… )