Eastside Assembly of God is a great Church. One of the reasons for this is we have a group of people dedicated to leading the Church in worship. Our worship team devotes many hours of time to their ministry. As matter of fact, I can say without reservation that the members of our team are the some of the hardest working people in the Church. They sacrifice a lot of their time and their talent to lead us into the presence of God. And I have to say that all of their hard work is paying off. I really appreciate their efforts and I thank them because I am never disappointed by their ministry. Each and every Sunday I experience the presence of God in our services!
So if I can, I would like to ask a huge favor from the rest of us at Eastside! Wouldn’t it be great if all of us became worship leaders? We can do this by each one of us responding to our time of worship in an overt way. There are many people who come to our Church each week with a need in their life and sometimes that need could be met by simply experiencing the presence of God. And if we are entering into our time of worship with the idea of invoking His presence many needs will be met. By the way, it is a great thing to be a part of God meeting a need.
So here are some practical suggestions for being a leader of worship:
(1) If you are physically able, stand. I used to wonder why it is so important to stand during worship. Because I believed that the more comfortable I was the better I could worship. (I can focus on God and not my hurting feet.) The reason we stand is very simple – we stand in honor of the presence of God. When someone of importance enters the room we stand – think of the times this occurs. When a king enters, when the President enters, when a judge enters the room we stand as a show of honor. So if we are serious about invoking the presence of God shouldn’t we honor Him by standing? And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. --Nehemiah 8:5
(2) Raise your hands. The reason we raise our hands is because we are giving a sign to God and to others that we are surrendering ourselves. There are amazing things the Holy Spirit can do through us when we yield ourselves to Him. By surrendering ourselves and raising our hands we are indicating to God that we are focus totally on Him. I used to wait until I got a certain feeling before I would raise my hands in worship, but I found out very quickly that when I offer to raise my hands in surrender to God I get that same feeling. For some reason raising my hands makes my heart more sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
(3) Focus on the words of the song we are singing. When we are all singing the same words we become unified in thought. The greatest miracles of the Church happen when we are in one accord. That means we are all putting our minds on the same thing. That is why the most effective worship songs have words that are directed to God. Did you ever notice that almost all of the Psalms are directed towards God?
I believe if you will help me with these simple things the worship experience at Eastside will be amazing and we will experience the presence of God in new and exciting ways. Most importantly, people’s needs will be met.
