Immersion Worship

I was over at Mandy’s blog a little earlier today, reading her worship confessional, and something she said jumped out at me:

“…it’s not about the numbers…”

My immediate response to this was “of course it’s all about the numbers, because numbers equals souls”, but then after thinking about it some more, I think I have a better understanding of what she was saying.

One of the best things I did when we launched The Summit earlier this year was to stop counting people. Back at Impact Church, I would see this ‘count’ sheet every Monday, that showed how many adults we had, how many kids we had, how many first time guests we had etc, and it was compared to the week before, the month before, and the same Sunday one year before. To what end, I have no idea, but it seemed to me to be a guage to answer the question of “Where are we in relation to last week, last month, and last year?”

At The Summit, I’ve had to force myself out of the trap of counting heads, but rather realising that those who are there are those who I have been called, anointed, and appointed to minister to, and so I get on with the job of giving my best and giving it with joy in my heart.

However, the flip side of that coin is that numbers actually do matter; it’s the perspective on those numbers that traps us. If we get obsessed with simply seeing a crowd for the crowd’s sake, we lose our way. Sure, it’s great to be leading worship to a packed room, where the atmosphere is charged and the energy is high, but that shouldn’t and musn’t be the emphasis of the numbers. Instead, each ‘one’ in there must be viewed the same - a valuable and precious soul that God wants a relationship with.

God is definitely interested in seeing his churches packed out, there’s no doubt about it. In Luke 14, Jesus told a story about a man who was holding a dinner party, but none of those he had invited came to the party. instead they all made some lame excuses about why they couldn’t go. So what did he say? He told his servants to go out in to the city, to the streets and alleys, and compel all the misfits and homeless and wretched people in to his house for the celebration. Even after that, there was still room for more people, so he told them again to go out again to the countryside and find whoever they could and drag them in.

Compel. Drag. Those are some pretty strong words. But here’s what it comes down to; God wants His house full. He wants it bursting at the seams. Full of souls. And souls means numbers. So instead of being focused on comparing numbers and seeing x number of seats filled, our focus must be on tomorrow’s numbers and x number of souls finding Jesus.

Remember; before you and I knew Christ, we were just a number. It was because of someone or something touching our lives that we were saved. Now we’re part of a different number…”I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.”

Besides, God must think that numbers are important. After all, he named an entire book of the Bible after them.

Set 1
1. Name Above All Names (Tim Hughes)
2. Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
3. Because of Your Love (Paul Baloche)

Set 2
1. ‘Til I See You (Hillsong Utd)
2. You Never Let Go (Matt Redman)

Thoughts
Wow! What a Sunday. For as long as The Summit has been around (7 months today), I can’t quite remember an opening set that was as energetic as today.

We had Dean from Canyon Hills back with us on bass, and with Joel away on vacation, Josh stepped up and rocked us on the drums. The energy and unity was like no other Sunday I can remember at The Summit. Actually, scratch that. It was like no other Sunday I can remember at all.

We opened with ‘Name Above All Names’, Newsboys style. This is one of my favourite songs to open with and is always a good one to set the atmosphere. ‘Everlasting God’ was tight and the congregation again really took to this song. ‘Because of Your Love’ kept that momentum going and rounded off a very celebratory and energetic feeling set.

Scott’s message was on the power of prayer…’Look Up, Don’t Give Up’…and just hit the spot that I’ve been needing lately. However, I’m absolutely convinced that I should never plan to do ‘You Never Let Go’, because that’s two weeks in a row that we’ve dropped it. No, more seriously, we had to drop a song for time, and I just didn’t want to drop ‘Til I See You’, as I think it fit with the message a little better. However, I will do ‘You Never Let Go’ sometime soon. Perhaps not next week, but sometime…

We had a good number of new faces there today, which is always awesome. With the new academic year just about starting up, the various students from Vanguard and from UCI are trickling back in and bringing their friends with them. That’s just awesome to see. In a few weeks we’ll be gearing a Sunday towards them and towards a more evangelistic, outreach edge, and we’ll be running a major outreach event for a week at UCI the week prior to that. God’s got some big things in store for The Summit this autumn and I can’t wait to be a part of it.

Yes, yes…it’s been long overdue. So, for those of you who’ve been gently reminding me of the convenience and criticality of RSS feeds, I have finally provided an XML subscription for you.

Subscribe to Immersion Worship.

And for what it’s worth, I recommend Feed Reader for those of you who are stuck using Windows, or Shrook for those of you who have the joy of using Mac OS X.

Stupid Church People (stupid being the operative word) is a blog that I peruse once in a while, mostly because it’s controversial and offensive and, every once in a while, says something that is nearly true (but not very often). However, a recent post really struck a nerve with me. It was a post discussing, and I quote, “God’s weaknesses”.

The term in itself is ridiculous. When you’re discussing an all-knowing, ever-present, entirely-perfect God, there are no weaknesses. Certainly, there are limits that He imposes upon himself (for example, He won’t lie, He won’t break His promises), but these are not weaknesses. They are definitions of His character, defined by Himself, that are the source of the idea of being saved by grace.

Check out the post…God? Wrong? STFU. Is God weak, and do we “let Him off the hook”?

I’ve long been confused by the line in Matthew 10:16 when Jesus told us to be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves”, but I think some of the struggles I’ve faced in ministry over the last month or so have really helped me to form an understanding of this.

Jesus knew ministry was tough. He knew it was demanding and hard work and that it’s thankless nature can bring the human side of our spirits down. But at the same time, he doesn’t tell us to shut up and stop whining. Instead, he gave the great advice about snakes and doves. C.S. Lewis wrote a very simple commentary on this line that I think sums it up well; “He wants a child’s heart but a grown-up’s head.”

I’m finally understanding what it means to be shrewd as a serpent. I need to use my head. If something is wrong in my ministry, then I can’t let it get me down or feel sorry for myself or have sloping shoulders and blaming it on others. I have to take responsibility and fix it. If something isn’t working, I have to think of a better strategy. It’s up to me to ask for advice and help, and thank God for Proverbs 24:6 - “in an abundance of counselors there is victory”. I guess I’ve figured out that it’s okay to have a plan and a strategy and to spend time troubleshooting and problem solving. That’s what being shrewd like a serpent is.

I guess now I can stop wriggling around on my belly and hissing at everyone…

Set 1
1. Giver of Life (Tim Hughes)
2. Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
3. Happy Day (Tim Hughes)

Set 2
1. You Never Let Go (Matt Redman) 1. Everything (Tim Hughes)
2. Everything (Tim Hughes) 2. Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)

Thoughts
It was so good to be back at The Summit, being with my church family, doing what I’m made to do in the place I belong. Every moment, from load in and setup to tear down and load out, was joyful.

It was also good to have Dean Pugh from Canyon Hills playing bass for us today. A solid bass player and a very cool guy, he gelled with the band like he’s always played here. It was awesome.

The opening set was a bit disjointed I think. Perhaps we should have opened with ‘Happy Day’ and ended with ‘Giver of Life’, but it seemed to take a long time for there to be a real shot of life. We debuted ‘Everlasting God’, and it worked really well. I think because it’s been around for a while and done by several artists, many people in the congregation picked it up very quickly or perhaps even knew it anyway. As a band, we weren’t entirely tight on it, but that’s okay; it was definitely the highlight of the opening set for me.

Our second set changed at the last moment when Scott asked if we could sing ‘Everything’ first and then do ‘Everlasting God’ again, so we dropped ‘You Never Let Go’ and went right in to ‘Everything’. I’m loving that song right now. In fact, I wasn’t really done with the sensitive, focused moment by the time we got to the end of the song, so we played the chorus over a few more times. Then before we launched in to ‘Everlasting God’ again, I shared the verse in Isaiah that it’s written from, and encouraged the congregation to not just celebrate Him as our strength, but make it our prayer that we would truly learn to wait on Him for renewal. We played it much better the second time through and there was a definite intensity in the congregation.

Furthermore, I really liked ending the service with an upbeat song, and I may continue to do this.

Until next time…

Is it me, or is anyone else having trouble telling the difference between Hillsong United, Generation Unleashed, and Planet Shakers?

For the life of me, they all sound the same…

You’ve noticed by now I’m sure that there is no worship confessional or weekend wrap up this week. That’s because I wasn’t at The Summit, as covered in my last two posts.

I was, however, back at the church that I grew up in, and in fact this was the first time in about 8 years that I’ve been back to that church. The 90 minutes or so that I spent there left me with feelings of both sadness and joy.

I’m sad because the life and energy and vitality that I knew to be prevalent when I was growing up seem to be gone. There wasn’t much expression of joy and the environment itself felt somewhat reserved and oppressed, and I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling that the church really wanted to break through and really wanted to explode in to life but were holding themselves back.

Having said that, I felt joyful and refreshed when I came away because of the worship. It wasn’t the most musically excellent worship I’ve heard, and there were plenty of distractions to contend with (guitars out of tune, words not up on the screen etc.), but the worship itself was so genuine and declared the truth in such a blatant and unashamed manner that it not only invited me to seek God and go boldly before Him, but it also challenged me on the hang ups that I have about Summit worship and the focus that I sometimes put on the things that ultimately don’t really matter.

My brother-in-law, Simon, is one of the worship leaders there, and it was great to be led by him. He mentioned to me that he’s pretty new at worship leading and hasn’t led all that many times, but the thing I really noticed is that he has a pure heart for glorifying God and seeing His victory declared in worship, and so when the odd moment happened here or there that could have ruined the moment (such as forgotten words, or prompting to go in to a verse and suddenly going in to a bridge), his focus on simply leading the church in worship transcended those pitfalls and kept the momentum going. That to me is one of the hallmarks of a great worship leader.

It’s a strange thing to go back to the place that laid the foundations of my faith and being able to experience it as a visitor. There was something weird about seeing what was going on around me with a different perspective than when I was a member there. I’m older and a far more mature believer now than I was then, so the experience in itself was somewhat surreal. I’ll be praying for that church; that the Holy Spirit will arrest the issues that are holding it back and that God will inject new life, His life, and cause it to explode.

There’s no reason why it can not be a church that changes the world. Even Jesus said it; “I will build my church and even the gates of hell can’t stop me.”
Bring it on, hell. You don’t stand a chance.