Saturday, September 5, 2009

I only know about a few things

But this is one of them. Leading worship. I mean, I've been getting paid to do it for like 15 years, so that definitely makes me, I don't know, something.

I did a worship leader seminar today at Grace Bible Church here in B/CS.

(Speaking of "leading worship for 15 years," today, at the seminar, I was told by three very-much-grown-up minister types that I was their first introduction into good/modern worship. They were like, "yeah, I was just a kid and you were teaching me how to..." I appreciated the encouragement, of course, but gee whiz did I feel old. Oh well, you take your atta boys where you can get them, right?)

Here were some of the topics that we covered in the seminar, mostly in response to questions from the audience:

What is worship? (Broad definition and narrow definitions)

What is the job/role of the worship leader?

Why “corporate” matters.

How “corporate” affects what the leader does.


Interacting/co-laboring with teachers/preachers.

The integration of other creative arts into a worship gathering.

The pros and cons of tech/multimedia in a worship gathering.

It went really well. I don't usually enjoy teaching in large groups (read: I'm bad at it), but this was really just a long Q&A with a few planned teaching points. I had a good time.

Anyway, since I've never really talked at length about leading worship on here, I thought I'd see if there is any interest in that sort of thing. It would take days to write on all these topics, but if anyone is interested in hearing about any of this, let me know what stuff on that list is more interesting to you and I'll just kind of regurgitate my notes on here and maybe get some discussion going. If not, I won't get my feelings hurt. I've had more hits on this site in the last few days than I've had in a long, long time, so I'm feeling loved and all that. I'm sure all the traffic had nothing to do with the fact that I was giving away free stuff.

9 comments:

freetosing said...

I'm interested in hearing about all of it.

Robert Conn said...

Tell me how “corporate” affects what the leader does. I mean cause that sounds really interesting and potentially convicting.

Jeff said...

dude- i've always wanted to hear your thoughts on worship. there's an audio of you talking a little about it on your church's website but it's like a tease. i think i'd especially like to hear your ideas on the pros and cons of tech, how corporate affects what the leader does and, like you talked about in the audio, thoughts on how we use music (drums, crescendo, etc) to stir different feelings throughout the worship time- when is it worship and when does it become like a concert (spirit vs the kick drum-DW)

jeff CaedmonRWK7@aol.com

Dave Wyble said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dave Wyble said...

I'm tempted to just ask about the stuff further down the list (the tricky bits, perhaps) but it would be more useful to start at the top. I'm sure we all could talk on why we worship, and what worship is, but to get your ideas on this would set a better foundation for the rest of the information. That's a long way around to say I'd like to hear all of it.

I go to festivals and seminars every year to learn more about worship. The teachers are sometimes very famous (Paul Baloche) and sometimes "just" local worship leaders. I always come away with something.

Thanks for the offer!

kathryn said...

I'm most interested in hearing your thoughts on the use of other creative arts into corporate worship. Maybe you could do a series of short podcasts (one for each topic) to get the conversation started and post one of them a week for a while. That might be faster than writing, since you've already prepped to talk about it.

Jennifer said...

Yes, I'd love to hear your thoughts on those questions. Please share with us! :)

Kyle said...

Yes, PLEASE share your thoughts on this stuff. Is there any chance that the whole talk you gave is recorded?

Kyle

LP said...

You need to link your "writings" or whatever link off your old site w/ the very swell commentary on worship/lyrics/style/etc. so we all know what you REALLY think.