Worship Leading

GuitareditI have served as the worship leader for our contemporary service for the past 3 years and did it in my previous church for about 8 years. Anyway, they just officially hired someone for that position to start this coming week. I must admit that I’m excited! It’s been way too long since I was able to sit in church with my wife. I can hardly remember the last time we were able to worship together in a contemporary service.

Some people are concerned that I’ll miss it, but I really don’t see that as a possibility. It’s just music. I truly believe the best worship leaders are “lead worshippers.” They are worshippers first and secondly they are leaders. Over the years, I have discovered that this amazing contemporary music movement which has so dramatically changed the church, is not really the way that I connect with God. When the whole movement began, I loved it. I could lose myself in the songs and truly be connected to God, but now I seem to connect to Him in much more private ways when I’m studying alone or listening to sermons in my car. Anyway, I think I’ve become more of a worship leader over the years and less of a lead worshipper. I’m glad to hand the baton over to someone who truly feels called to this ministry.

Guitars

Here are some pics of the guitars I play. Most of you aren’t interested, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. God has provided me with these fine instruments – I could never have afforded them on my own. Someone from the church actually came up to me and handed the $$ for my acoustic when we were going to start a new worship service and said, “I know you’ve had your eye on a guitar and that you can’t afford it, now, go and get it.” It’s amazing to me that when you use your gifts to serve the Lord, He takes care of things for you and even gives you the “desires of your heart.”

The acoustic is a Taylor 510ce and my electric is a Brian Moore custom “iGuitar.” The Taylor has a piezo pickup and a mic mixer (for a more natural sound) in the electronics. The Brian Moore has 3 outputs – a regular magnetic pickup (electric sound), a piezo pickup (acoustic sound), and a 13-pin midi output. (for some really funky sounds) You can also mix the sounds together.