There once was a man who came to church every Sunday to pray the exact same prayer. Week and after week, he would stand and proclaim loudly “God, please clear out the cobwebs!”  Finally, after months of listening, a wise women stood after him and said “Why don’t you just kill the damn spider?”

And this is why I want to be a worship leader.

Let me explain… Through the help of a handful of wise guides (listed below), I’m beginning to realize that worship is not only a way that we express ourselves to God, but it is also a practice that forms us into Christlikeness. The way we worship shapes us into certain kinds of people. And so my role as a worship leader is not simply to get people to raise their hands during church, but to help us become the kinds of people who use our hands for good all week long. Our goal is not simply to create a worship service, but for our worship service to create a certain kind of church in the world.

I believe that the purpose of gathering together is the realization of God’s dream for reality: the Restoration of All things. Like Jesus, we want to see God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven, and so we gather to focus on God and practice becoming the kinds of people who can join in this restoration. Through these prayers, songs, readings, and disciplines, we practice being people who can set our little kingdoms aside (if only for a moment, in the safety of a community) and seek God’s epic Kingdom, week after week, until we actually become the kinds of people who can join God’s redeeming work in our office cube on a Tuesday afternoon.

There is an important aspect of worship that helps clear out the cobwebs of the week. Hallelujah! We all desperately need the church to be a safe and gracious place. I know I do. But at a certain point, a truly safe community is only safe if it also teaches us how to kill the damn spider.

What does this look like in your church? What could it look like? What kind of worship liturgy/service/set have you found to be most helpful in forming your community toward Christlikeness?

If you’re interested, here are some wise guides who have much to teach us about all this: Ian Morgan Cron, Dallas Willard, Glenn Packiam, Isaac Wardell, James K. A. Smith.

This weekend, after they blew my mind in concert, I posted “What I’m trying to learn from Sigur Ros” at aaronniequist.com/blog. Specifically thinking about our role as worship leaders in the church, I shared three big ways that Sigur Ros can influence us: (1) Beauty must retain some darkness, (2) Amazing music doesn’t require virtuosos, and (3) Embrace the weirdness. Check out the post HERE.

But I wanted to add one more today…

(4) Lean into the Mystery.
Sigur Ros doesn’t make much sense, honestly. And it doesn’t seem like they are trying to. The music of Sigur Ros often sneaks past our brains and appeals to that deeper, more powerful Mystery inside and beyond us. And in this way, we worship leaders have a ton to learn from them. I certainly do!

To over-generalize, it seems to me that our parents’ generation of evangelicals were focused on clarity, rational understanding, and pragmatism. Churches in the 70s and 80s were all about making faith work well in our actual lives. Practical, non-weird, and all about clarity. This was a huge gift to a generation of christians who had grown up with a faith that seemed irrelevant to their daily living.

But it seems to me that their kids have had plenty of practical tips for Christian living, and are now longing for something deeper, more holistic, and less explainable. If I could speak personally, I am looking for transcendence more than clarity. I need a faith that captures my imagination more than convinces my thinking. And I’m beginning to wonder if our worship practices will need to lead the way…

In the context of Rob’s new book “What We Talk About When We Talk About God”, I recently asked Rob a couple questions about worship leading:  How does a new way of talking about God affect the way we worship God?  And further, how might the way we worship God affect the way we talk about God?

Here is part one of the interview:  aaronniequist.com/blog

Eastlake Community Church - a really alive church in Seattle - recently released a new worship album called VI: Dark & Light.  You can download it for free HERE, and I highly recommend you do.

I love the sonic approach they take…the songs are really strong…and the musicians are clearly fantastic;  but if pressed to describe what I love most about this album, I would say:  it is unpretentiously honest.  You get the sense that they are simply singing the prayers that we all actually feel and pray…or at least wish we had the courage to.  (Check out track 4: “Dark, Dark Things”.  Wow.)

CS Lewis wrote:  “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”  And that is EXACTLY how I feel while listening to this music.  What a gift…

I watched Sound City yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Dave Grohl and the story of Sound City Studios really fired me up as a musician and artist. You’re going to love it…

Last week I got to teach two breakout sessions at Honolulu 2013 about worship, liturgy, and moving beyond singing.  It was a fun experience with great people, and reminded me of how deeply I believe this stuff.  

Elective 1:  Moving Beyond Singing into something much more Mysterious, Subversive, and Beautiful.

Worship is this huge, beautiful, epic, mysterious, global, active, intimate human/divine interaction, but when someone says “Okay, it’s time to worship”, we all assume “It’s time to sing.”  This is not bad, of course.  Singing is a fantastic way to worship God.  But it’s only one part of the whole. This breakout will explore ways to move beyond our usual framework, and in doing so, help more and more people engage with more and more of The Almighty God.

Elective 2:  Evangelical Worship Leading, The Liturgy, and me.

While leading worship in a mega-church for the last ten years (at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, MI and Willow Creek in Chicago, IL), I’ve been feeling more and more drawn to The Liturgy – both personally and as a worship pastor.  The depth, reverence, and historical grounding have been profoundly moving.  But how does this fit into an evangelical mega-church with big screens and moving lights?  Is there a way to bring these ancient practices into this modern context, or are they fundamentally incompatible?  In this breakout, I’ll share what I’m learning, what I’m wrestling with, and a few big mistakes I’ve made.  And then we’ll dream together about the future. 

If you are interested, I posted all my notes, slides, and resources HERE. Please dig in to them and let me know what you think!

Linda Parriott is one of the founders of Clayfire Media, someone I respect, and someone I think you should know.  If you lead worship, definitely check out their site. Under Linda’s bio, she writes…

“…creative worship, while messy and challenging, does not require huge budgets, an elite group of designated creative types, special talents, or high technology media productions. Rather, a commitment to inviting–expecting!–the community to co-create worship in full partnership is the most important requirement for artistic, creative, spiritually formational worship.”

This is really freeing to me.  And challenging.  I spend way too much time complaining:  ”Worship could really take off here if we had ________ or _______.”  ”If only the pastor would let us _________”.  ”If only our sound guys would ________”.  ”If only….”

But Linda is suggesting that if we have a group of people who gather to worship God, then we already have everything we need!  Beautiful.

I think really highly of Glenn Packiam as a worship leader, pastor, and thinker.  His blog is one of my favorites, and I’ve been loving his new album “The Mystery of Faith” for a while.

And here is why:   Glenn asks the questions that matter most.  

You don’t get the sense that he is trying to crank out the next hit - although his songs are easily good enough. Instead, he relentlessly asks the deeper questions of worship, formation, and the Kingdom of God.  As Simon Sinek would say, Glenn begins with “WHY?” and builds everything from that foundation.  And in a world where style often trumps substance, even in worship music, this is rare.  And so inspiring.

Here is a 3 minute video where Glenn shares the question that’s been haunting him…and what he’s trying to do about it…