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Feb 7, 2006
spontaneous worship "Let the Holy Spirit lead." Those are words that get thrown around worship leading circles all of the time. On one hand, I like the sentiment. It is an acknowledgement that there is a higher power out there who can accomplish more than we can. It acknowdleges that it isn't our agenda that matters. On the other hand, it's naiive. That the Spirit is going to be bound by the 20 minute music block that we carve out each week. And then there are those that attempt to plan, "spontaneous worship times," which seems paradoxical at it's core. That was my assignment. Somehow it succeeded . . . It was almost two weeks ago. Nothing was going quite right. A Wednesday morning, I woke up earlier than I normally would on a Wednesday, although due to a change in work schedule it was going to be the time I would be waking up from now on on Wednesdays. For most of the morning and afternoon, nothing was quite out of place. I went to work, then got off at my new time, 3:30 in the afternoon, which is quite nice. So, I went home, took a nap, packed up my music gear, and headed off to Kroger for an errand and then off to church. I was even half an hour early. Then things were off. Not necessarily wrong, just off. First, I went to print the song sheets for the night. My song files are on my computer here at house, but my printer is messed up, so I print them at church. I open them up, and find that for one song, I only have the lyrics, but not the chords. So, I frantically trying and transcribe the chords and make new sheets. Then people are late for practice. Which is actually kind of typical. But, I include it to help build the tension of the night. Then, during setup, we can't find the mics. And then we have trouble with the sound system. Finally, practice starts an hour late. One of the musicians never shows up. We start practice, and something is off. I'm not sure what. It seemed that most everything was okay, but something was slightly off. It may not have been musical. I can't explain it. Practice wraps up, so we go to pray. I asked someone to open, then opened it up for anyone who wants to pray, and then I close. I closed with only 2 sentances: "Lord, this is your service. Do something amazing with it." Maybe I should be more careful about what I ask for. The service starts, and Brandie asks everyone to move to one side of the room. Which is a really weird dynamic to try and lead worship with. Had I known ahead of time, I may have planned differently. So, I just roll with it. And yet, something was off this night. I don't know what at this point. We finish, and leave the stage. Whenever I lead worship, usually I do two things: I walk around while the adrenaline leaves my system, and I get a drink of water. So, I wander over to the coffeehouse to get my water, and I see John hanging out in the hallway. I ask him if everything is okay, and he says yes, and tells me that Daniel has been by. Daniel is a homeless man that lives in our neighborhood. At times, Daniel can be pleasant and engaging, but under certain conditions, he can be argumentative and abusive. It seems that on nights that I lead worship (and perhaps on other Wednesday nights as well, but I don't notice it as much) Daniel likes to come in at practice time and start up some arguement with someone in the room. Generally, he poses some sort of trick question and then argues with whichever angle you take. If you catch him and don't answer, then he yells at you for not giving him an answer. After a few minutes, John and I wander back into the sanctuary. If we had stayed in the hall, we probably would have headed this off. But, this was an off night. Daniel wanders in and sits in the back of the sanctuary, on the floor. After about a minute, he begins yelling. His indictment is that we are celebrating his son being murdered, and that he isn't going to stand for it. It takes me a moment before I realize that by his brother he means Jesus. Troy talks to him, but he only becomes more agitated than before. I've hung out with Daniel on several occasions. We tend to get along pretty well. Sometimes I can calm him down in situations like this, and sometimes nobody can. So, I give it a shot, and it doesn't work. After a few minutes, Troy tells me to do some worship. So, I walk up toward the stage, trying to figure out what I'm going to do. Normally, in an improptu situation like this, I would start if off by reprising something from the worship set, but something about that set was off on this night, so I didn't want to do it. But, the song, "God of Wonders" was running through my head, and I have arranged a nice medley with it and a couple of other songs with the same theme, so I went with that. This time, the set was on. What is most striking, to me anyway, about this night is not what happened with Daniel, or with anything that happened on stage. It was what happened after I walked off of the stage. I've lead well over 100 worship sets in my day. Nothing has ever rattled me like this night did. I can't explain it but I'll try. Gererally, whenever we talk about encountering the Holy Spirit, we attribute it two ways. The most common is on an emotional level. We tend to equate certain emotional highs as an encounter with the Holy Spirit. This is probablly true much of the time. The other way is on an intellectual level. Somehow a certain answer or revelation comes to us and we attribute it to the Holy Spirit. Again, I think there is truth in this. As I walked off that stage that night, I was shaking. I was rattled. And it wasn't an emotional response, and it wasn't an intellectual response to what had just happened. It was physical. I could physically feel something in the room. As I became aware of this presence, I also became aware of some of the realities of Daniel's condition, which I won't go into because this is not the forum to do so. So, I stand in the back of the room, feeling this presence that I can't make any sense of. Anyway, as we go into the last segment of the service, I feel that it's going in the wrong direction. Only, I don't know what direction it should go. As we get closer to wrapping it up, things feel off again. Then, as the service closes and we hang out afterward, everything still feels off. I think we missed something that night. At least, I did. I can't explain what, though. Maybe it's just some crazy idea in my head that I can't shake, and I'm the only one who expireneced it, I don't know. I'm certainly no expert on the Holy Spirit. But I'm pretty sure something about that night was off. Maybe we missed our chance. Maybe it was a warning shot, I don't know. Whatever it is, it's going to haunt me for a while . . . posted
by Unknown @ 12:04:00 AM |
