When I was in my freshman year of college, I thought that I heard God speak to me and tell me that I was going to be a worship leader. I switched my schedule to music classes, started taking voice lessons and had one of my good friends/floor-mates tell me he would teach me guitar because he played and I didn’t at that point. I always felt inclined towards worship, and I love it! Well, one semester into that major and I decided music wasn’t for me after all, and felt again like God told me something, this time it was that worship was just to be a passion for me, and not an occupation. Okay, I thought. What’s going on?
Well fast forward four years or so and some of those feelings are coming back, I go through both scenarios in my head. I think I could potentially see myself as a worship leader, but then again, seeing how much worship has become “industrialized” in a sense, I don’t want that to be who I am, I don’t want to have church become my “job.” Now, maybe once I get into a worship pastor role, I will not see that as the case, I am just expressing that as a fear that I carry with me. With that being said, there is nothing wrong with wanting to create an atmosphere, so to speak, but if that becomes the sole purpose, and the soul is no longer the purpose, that’s where the problems come. For those that are reading this that belong to Church of the Open Door in Elyria, OH, I am NOT talking bad about you all. I love Open Door, I love working with you and all that!! I am not questioning the way that Pierce, David, and Jared lead worship or the way that Tim does his job at all. Hear me out, and understand this is a blog of some of my thoughts that I am trying to work through and just wanted to share them with you all. I love the way that Pierce, David and Jared lead worship, I feel as though they are all anointed leaders to lead Christ’s church in worshipping Him.
One thing that has always held true is that I feel most alive when I am praising God with everything that I have inside of me. For example, when I was privileged to go to Passion World Tour twice, both in Pretoria and also in Cape Town, both times, I stood under the open sky (both concerts were held in open-air stadiums) and just reached my hands up to God with arms and fingers stretched as far as I could extend them and just got the biggest smile on my face as I just basked in the presence of THE Almighty God. I just thought to myself, if I could do one thing for the rest of my life, it would be to praise God. I don’t sing all that well, I can’t play guitar for very long without my fingers hurting and there are a lot of chords I don’t know, I don’t understand harmonies completely, and I only took one semester of musical classes in college, but none of those things stop me from praising my God. I will share something with you all: my dream is to play drums for something like Passion, to be able to lead others in praising the God of the universe. My story could be one of redemption because I used to play drums, I played with him in the worship band at church when I was just a punk little kid of only 9 or 10 years old maybe; and I was good. I strayed away from that in college mostly because my drums wouldn’t fit in my dorm room, so I couldn’t take them with me. But while I’ve been here on the World Race, my desire to play and my desire to worship Him through playing drums has been ever-increasing and I can’t wait to get back home and resume playing again!! It’s eating away at me in a sense, that I can’t play right now! But I am really looking forward to it so much! So mom and dad when you read this, don’t sell my drums just yet! I am just feeling my heart for worship of the Living God increasing on this trip, and I am loving it!
