It can be very helpful to know what God is doing in other churches and movements. Picking up new songs, sounds and ideas from other places often forms the beginnings of whatever new direction we choose to take the worship in our local church. But this process of looking towards what is ‘working’ in other places has, for many worship leaders, replaced the more crucial and effort intensive work of prayer and of connection to our communities.
So readily have I loved what God is doing in other places with other people before appreciating the special and unique thing He is doing where I am. This tends to happen for two reasons. Firstly it is because what God is doing somewhere else is more professional, more polished and more popular. My eyes get drawn to its impressive impact and my heart desires the same things for where I am, so I channel my energies into recreating what I see elsewhere. This is not a sin or a crime or something particularly wrong. But it is, perhaps, not the very thing He has for us. When I boil it down, it is easier to replicate than it is to seek the Lord. It is easier to replicate than to improve, to work harder and to love others. This is why I end up relying almost entirely on other people’s songs, styles and methods.
Secondly, I cherish what God is doing elsewhere because I just don’t believe He is doing something in me and in my community. Or at least I don’t think it will be as ‘good’ or as ‘successful’. This is, of course, a lie. God will not give me or my church second best. There are no people, churches and movements that God loves more than me and my church. His heart for our songs, our worship, our people burns just as fiercely than for any other. But I often don’t believe that. I usually don’t expect that we might write incredible songs or that we may find new sounds and methods. Too regularly my faith for that is found wanting. So I defer, to what I KNOW ‘works’, to what I KNOW gets hands lifted and voices singing.
Yet it can be so different. When I am spending time - REAL time - seeking the Lord for our church, in prayer, in worship, in resting in His presence - I find the new songs and methods and rhythms that our church needs. When I am connected to the people whom I serve in genuine family-like community - loving them, knowing them, walking with them - I can write and create from the best place possible.
Jesus made it simple for us - love God and love each other. What we truly need as worship leaders and song writers will always be found there and nowhere else.
