The Pilgrimage of one Charismatic with a Seat-belt, part 1

The recent blog post from Bob Kauflin at Worship Matters shows us how a Charismatic with a seat-belt motivates the church to worship God! It reminds me why I myself benefited and learned so much from leading corporate worship in the past, something I currently do not do nor have any plans to continue to — for I’ve always had a deep desire to faithfully magnify the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit by skillfully combining God’s Word with music, thereby motivating the gathered church to proclaim the gospel, to cherish God’s presence, and to live for God’s glory.

Back in the Day

I don’t have any formal musical training, and so when my English Ministry elder of my home church asked me back in 1996 to “lead worship” for our small 20 member English Sunday worship service, I simply accepted the invitation because I was brand new Christian and yearned to serve the Lord in whatever capacity available to me. From those early days in our new church building, cramped into a small Sunday School classroom, I lead worship for at least once a month for about 10 years. At the beginning of college, I began to teach Sunday School at church, and also concurrently led and coordinated the worship music ministry for my campus fellowship(Chinese Christian Fellowship) as the Worship Coordinator. During those years I picked up bass guitar by myself, mainly to spend less time “in the spotlight” and to make room for the younger generation to start learning to lead services.

Charismatic with a Set-belt

If you know me, I’m the kind of worship leader who says a little too much than “normal” worship leaders. I always sought ways to “spice things up”, whether it be through biblical written-out prayers with ample alliteration, dynamic invocations, powerful Scripture readings and passionate readings of Spoken Word pieces. In recent years as far as I can remember, I would always try to start the worship service with a slower, familiar call-to-worship type song (my fave to use for this opening slot was the classic “All in All“); people are usually kind of groggy and only half-awake at the beginning of the service (or late!) so this allowed everybody to get warmed up vocally to sing praises to God.

After that, I might pray an invocatory prayer and/or read a Psalm, and then jump right into a powerful, upbeat praise song. I might have a couple of those (possibly medlied), which then was followed by/lead into songs of a slower tempo — namely songs that reflected on the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ for our sins. I usually said a prayer of confession repentance before singing that song, while a soft guitar/piano intro plays, and I’d do my best to include Scripture that speaks of Jesus’ redeeming work on the Cross. (One of my faves here has been the less well-known song, “You Gave Your Only Son (Praise You)” by Martyn Layzell). If I didn’t stack that with another song about the cross, I often followed that by with a song focused more on our need and/or commitment to Christ (my faves here included “Rescue” by Jared Anderson and “What Else Can I Do” by Steve Fee)

With all the worship leading experience under my belt, I longed to take my ministry to the next level, and to further use my gifts for his church and people.

Part 2 of 3, continued tomorrow…