sarah-born to b...
From Clevedon Baptist Church
Hi,
My name is Sarah and I go to Clevedon Baptist Church, North Somerset. I have been involved in the music group at church for a number of years and have led a dozen services over the last two ish years. Last summer I felt God's call to lead worship. I'm currently trying to work out what that means through prayer and discussion with my pastor Phil and other worship leaders...
I just wondered if you could tell me about your journey into leading worship and any advice you can give me about how to pursue God's call?
I have been looking and applying for internships, enrolling at bible college, staying at my home church and seeing if they could start up some sort of training programme. It feels like a confusing and uncertain time! So I guess I'm looking for guidance.
I would be very grateful for any response.
Yours in Christ,
Sarah
Thanks Per for your message. No worries about the length! I was looking at the Called to Lead programme but unfortunately my finances are not great so I can't afford £6000.
I suppose as you say that you gain more and more experience by leading and learning to listen to the Holy Spirit to direct the way of the service.
I guess I'm unsure whether to stay at my church and ask the leadership to put together some kind of training/gap year programme (i don't know how likely they would agre to this) or to move to another church for a while to gain experience and mentoring!
Thanks again for responding.
hey sarah,
i felt god calling me to lead worship at soul surviour last year, so i got the soul surviour song book, went home picked up the guitar and since then i have lead many services. this was all in te space of about 4 months, i went from not knowing anything on the guitar to leading 200 people in worship, i still can't believe it and its been nearly a year now!
so yea i'm in the middle of gcse exams and i'm thinking i have thought alot about my future. I have decided do a-levels next year and after that i'm going to apply to some sort of training course which includes worship. But the one fact i'm struggling to deal with is how do i really know i have been called to lead? many peope have said i have a gift, and i've prayed to god about it more than i can count and still the overall picture is blurry. I really don't want to follow it up and only finding out that its not part of his plan for me.
so what i'm trying to say is don't worry about the money, worry if the right thing god wants you to do, because if it is money will certainly not be a problem. aslo on a final note, there are more courses than called to lead, you've only to look.
From ttim
p.s good luck in what ever you do! :-)
Hi Sarah,
It's always difficult to give advice on questions of calling.
My 2p's worth would be this:
1) A calling can't be forced, and it can take time to discern. It's worth taking time to explore and question - as you seem to be doing. Patience is important!
2) Calling to you home church. In general, (unless you're in full-time ministry) I would strongly advise against leaving your church to pursue a calling. Your church worships regularly, therefore should be able provide the opportunities needed to explore and develop your gifting. A formal training programme is no substitute for hands-on experience. Church doesn't exist primarily so our personal ministries can be developed, but for us to serve the needs of the chruch. I'd really recommend getting stuck in serving at your local church before you think about moving (unless of course you move for full time studies.)
3) Calling and vocation are different. You can be called to lead worship for your small local church, while having a secular vocation too. Most worship leaders (the vast, vast majority) also work in the "secular" world. Developing skills that can make you employable and gaining experience of working alongside and relating to non-Christians is really important. It will open up more opportunities later on, and while you discern your calling you can keep your vocational options open.
Hey Sarah!
I'd second Pauls thoughts. Personally I had alot of difficulty figuring out my passion for musical worship because I was set on a career.
In me there existed this misconception that those called to lead worship must make a living leading worship.
But in terms of pro’s and con’s, for me, I think I would suffer greatly if I was employed by a church just because I wanted a salary via leading worship. One advantage is I feel more freedom to just-be-me as a volunteer.
I’ve learned there are so many wonderful and beautiful things that you can do as a volunteer worship leader that you simply cannot do (as easily) as a worship pastor. But that wasn’t always the case, I used to think I could only be effective if I was progressing (career wise) into a paid worship position.
I’d recommend taking a big breath every time you consider leading worship as a paid position. My number one piece of advise is: take it slow and avoid taking a mentality of just-gotta-make-it-happen. If you feel a call to be a trained pastor that’s another matter (i.e. go to seminary), but I think musical worship is a bit of a different animal from seminary. The desire to go to seminary and be a pastor can converge with the desire to lead musical worship, but they don’t necessarily have to.
My best to you; Dont be afraid, I know you'll figure out your direction, God never lets us down, and you're not the only person asking these questions.
I agree pretty strongly with Paul & Marc's comments.
First off is to say that if you feel called, then test that calling. You can do that by exploring it as you have done with others, but also asking prayerful advice from friends whose discernment you can trust, and who are loyal enough to be honest rather than just to say, "I think that's a great idea," by means of wanting to encourage you, but without considering it in prayer.
I also feel that worship is foremost a calling to your local church, and that should be somewhere that you serve, including in small groups.
You might have seen my comments on other posts, but i'm also very sceptical about going to a college to learn worship, or do a 'school or ministry' thing or similar. I think that you'll learn most if you put yourself into a relationship with someone which is a bit more organic, and i'd probably err on the side of saying an internship with a church near you might be a better bet if it's something you want to pursue and you feel you have to 'do' something.
Paul's comment about learning through experience is bang on. Whilst some technical ability helps, and advice on preparing and leading sets is good, it's no substitute for just doing it. I don't see why someone would shell out £6000 to go to Watford when you could do an internship for free, and/or spend the money on music lessons and ask advice on the forums here. I think you'd learn a lot more going the latter path.
Put it this way, and I don't mean it as a denigrating comment, but do you think the guys at Worship Central are that much better at leading worship than ALL of the other weekend warriors serving at churches across the country? Undoubtedly they are good, and there's the Lord's anointing there, but the fame is principally as a result of being in the right place at the right time. And my point is this: there are loads of other experienced, very able and humble guys who aren't big names who can provide lots of wisdom and good advice and guidance for you.
My question to you, if you want to go to the Called To Lead thing at Soul Survivor, is to say why go there? There will be a couple of chaps who've got experience of leading really large congregations at festivals or whatnot, but the likelihood of you doing that are minimal. If it was AN Other church who were asking you for £6000 to go there, would you still do it? You could go do a part time worship internship at my old church, Trent Vineyard, and do it for free...
And finally, I especially agree with Paul's point # 3. I'd suggest that it's really wise to take the advice of people who've got past college and uni now, and are in jobs. Bible college and Called To Lead won't help you pay the rent.
It's quite easy to say, "If God wants me to do it, the money will appear," which is very definitely true in some instances, but I don't think it takes the place of hard work, graft, and a prudent approach to financial management around which there is a lot of scriptural wisdom. Nor do I think it takes the place of trying to arrange your life so that you've got a career lined in up which you can earn sufficient money to support yourself and your family.
I feel that some of the things that Joe (irish_admiral) mentioned were aimed more towards what I said than Sarah. After all, she decided not to apply for Called to Lead. But I failed to write a comment short enough not to hijack the thread, so I pm'd you.
No worries Per, thanks for your email!
My comment was generalised really... I gave Niall a hard time on another thread as he's going to Hillsongs in Australia! You just happened to be on here. It was more a reflection on our culture in which one says, "I need to learn how to lead worship. Hillsongs/WC/SS do that well: if I go there and learn, I can be like them," and is very consumer oriented, I feel.
It's more of a personal conviction than anything, but I recognise that each of the above ministries will teach and disciple well. A couple of people I know went to the Soul Survivor thing, and are both very good worship leaders. Whether they would have still been good worship leaders if they'd gone elsewhere remains to be seen...
Can you translate this into English please??? I did it on Google translate but it made no sense whatsoever! Thanks. Sarah
unfortunately its spam selling shoes probably sarah, this time in another language!
New Song
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Hi Sarah,
I don't know how "qualified" I am to respond to this, but I'll give it a stab. I'm sorry this will probably be a quite lengthy post. [edit: It became REALLY long sorry]
It seems like we are in a somewhat similar situation. Last summer, I felt in a special way that God called me to lead worship.
I have been involved in worship ministry in one form or another since I was 13, beginning with a guitar in smaller groups like my youth group. They patiently sang along to my sub-par playing. It took me a long time just to be able to find a decent tempo for songs. I often started (and continued to play) songs in about half of the proper speed. Before I began leading worship and playing guitar, I had played French horn for some years, so I had a basic knowledge of sheet music and even knew a couple of chords on the guitar.
Time passed, and I started playing in the worship team for the youth services of our church. It was not a high-profile thing, maybe 50-100 people. I did that for 3-4 years, I don't recall exactly. In the beginning I had no idea of what I was doing, but I learned a lot, like how to tell the difference between my voice and the other guy when we sang into the microphones. I spent a lot of time working with the worship there. The last years I was one of the people who led it.
Before you make any misled conclusions about this, I must point out that worship was not a big thing at that church at the time. I got to do it not because I was good but because there was no one else who wanted to do it. This was quite painful at times, especially because of how we were neglected by the employees at the church. I could spend weeks making sure that we could all meet each week at a particular day, and then hear that the organist *might* have a student at that time, so we might or might not be able to practise. That church is empty at least 10 hours per day on weekdays.
But in some ways this has also been a blessing. I have been able to focus on worshipping God and trying to help people do the same, without ever being close to the "rock star" feeling. It simply hasn't been very cool to be worship leader. It's not until this year that I have even began to feel such vibes.
So, while I was working with the worship on these services, I grew musically and started to learn "worship leader stuff", like putting together set lists, trying to listen to the leading of the Spirit in the services and communicating with the team and the pastor and so on. It was also an very intense time for me spiritually. (Hey, I was teenager!) I had a period of about 2-3 years of what in retrospect could be called spiritual desert. Back then, it just felt painful. It was very hard to continue to praise God the last year of that. I kept saying to him that I can't take more than a week of this, he gave me tiny glimpses of hope and it continued. (See 1 Kings 19:3-8) Singing songs about God's power or that he is good, or – well, pretty much any song except lamentations – was an act of pure will. I didn't feel it at all. But I knew it.
Well, life continued at its steady pace, and I was gradually entrusted bigger tasks. I have always been switching between the roles of being the "worship leader" and just playing my instrument. God has been talking increasingly clearly to me about worship, and (I believe) has given me dreams (not nightly dreams, but I'd-like-to-do-this dreams) about it.
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When presented like this, it seems as if it has been a straight and steady journey, but it really hasn't. One of the issues that I've been struggling with (and am still working on) is that I'm not really a good musician nor "church person". My brain works on mathematics and computer science. I can understand very difficult theoretical concepts about math but God is truly really hard for me I just can't grasp it. I started programming when I was 9 years old. That's about the same time as I started studying English. My mind breathes code. When I was in high school, I participated in programming competitions and was twice in the top four people in the country, so I have been in Germany, Croatia, Poland and Egypt on international programming competitions. (This isn't as cool as it could have been, because most people don't begin coding before college so it was really not too hard.)
But the fact remains, and has been haunting me ever since I started leading worship. I'm at best an amateurish musician, but I am already a very talented programmer. Why on earth does God want me to focus on music?? I regularly have lows when I really can't understand this, why can't I just do what I'm good at and be rich and have a nice and easy life? Ever since I graduated from high school, I have had people on queue for me to do freelance work for them. Man it's hard to let them down to spend time doing something that many of my friends don't even think is a worthwhile thing to do.
I have been trying hard for quite some time now to become decent at guitar and I now feel that I at least don't suck anymore. But it has been much work that often has seemed downright stupid to do.
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Also, worship in Sweden isn't what it is in the UK, especially in my denomination. Even at the large (uhm.. large to be Swedish Christianity) youth events it is often done almost as an afterthought. This has left me with a huge painful dissatisfaction. I've spent a lot of time trying to try to learn to do it better and better, but it has been hard because it's difficult to find people who are worth learning from. Because worship is often done so carelessly, many people have rarely or never seen it done well, even people in leading position. This further complicates things, I have many times found myself arguing with people I highly respect, trying to convince them that it is worthwhile to strive for worship where the spiritual, the musical, the technical and the organizational sides are all done with excellence. I believe that it is something worth striving for, but it's hard to be convinced of that when so many smart people you know disagree.
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The third large issue that I am fighting with is that my ears are extremely sensitive. It really sucks. I can barely be in my church when a hundred people sing a song á capella without earplugs. I have some tinnitus but it's not too bad. Yet. It does become worse when I'm in loud environments, like a stage. I have prayed a lot about it but God doesn't seem to want to fix that now. So I have spent a lot of time and a lot of money to acquire hearing protection equipment. It actually works but it's cumbersome. Here it has helped that it's so easy for me to get money.
But still, it's not uncommon that when I lie in my bed and try to fall asleep, I hear the whine in my ears loudly (it's the worst when it's quiet), and I ask myself why I'm doing this. Why do I do this thing that I'm not even particularly talented at, when I can just quit tomorrow and easily get an education which would get me a job with high salary and a considerable cool factor. I'd even get money from the Swedish government for taking the courses.
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For me, it has taken lots of time of talking with pastors and praying and thinking. In fact, it has taken me so long that I sometimes have become really discouraged. Last summer, when I felt that God called me to really focus on leading worship, I assumed that I would begin actually doing it relatively soon. But he has told me to wait. I don't understand why.. I guess he'll tell me when it's time. (I do lead worship at my church now, but not a whole lot.)
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So. In November I'll move to Watford and attend Soul Survivor Watford's Called to Lead course. It's not a worship leading course, but I still think there will be plenty of opportunity to watch and learn.
If you have read this far, I hope that it has encouraged you. I don't know how it would do that.. but well... It's not always easy to know how to follow God's calling, and many times (most of the time?) he doesn't tell you much about the future more than what you really have to know. I like that, because I think I would bail otherwise. Also, leading worship is (like many other things) quite hard to do and requires years of hard work before you become really good at it. But I believe it's worth following him no matter what!
Because it seems as if we're in an – at least a little – similar situation, I feel a little awkward trying to give advice.. But I guess this is how life works. If I should give you one piece of advice it would be to be persistent and not give up. It might take longer time than you expect.
Good luck! Feel free to pm me if you like..
Warm regards,
Per
(When I look at this, I see that I boast a lot in this post. Sorry about that. I didn't mean it; I have lots of problems and bad sides as well, I just didn't see a reason to mention them here...)