This week, our FY100 students engaged with the What Is Worship? DVD, and the Leading Worship DVD.
This week our students respond in 250 words or so, how they interacted with the ideas presented, and amplifying our session the week before.
If you’re not in the class, feel free to interact with our students.
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The worship DVD was an inspirational overlook at who, why, how we worship which brought me to reflect on my own response in worship. And more importantly how i bring others into worship. worship is more than a sunday morning service, its a life time of just being who God created me to be. Every move and passion of mine is a form of worship unto God. Each individual has a chioce to worship and in what way that they believe makes then feel fully alive. We also, get the opportunity to take the worship of creation and offer it to God. In this we celebrate Gods creation and look at its beauty everyday.
The movie reveals that personal,prayer, holines, proclamation, church, culture,family, character, and truth are all apart of being an effective worship leader and worshiper.
Another important part in leading worship is to lead with a pastoral heart this way you can guide the congregation to grow. And you yourself will grow because you always learn from different situations and characters within the church. The movies where a good look at alot of different aspects of worship that i had not thought through.
y 100
Samuel Gallo
10/1/07
Today’s lesson was a reviving experience, that has helped me to understand song writing and worship leading.
Today we covered topics like understanding what worship is, what the worship set is, establishing flow, rehearsing the band, leading the set, learning the process. In the afternoon we got into other stuff like grappling songs for the church, what inspires us to worship, developing song structure, writing lyrics that really do last, memorable melodies, editing songs and co-writing.
Lot’s of good teachings were covered today, but the one that remained most impressed to me was “leading the set” teaching, in leading the set one must keep in mind that our human emotions can evolve into worlds of confusion, so it’s best to stick with what God is telling us to do.
Coordinating the worship set with what the Pastor is requesting can be something that is directly coordinated with what God’s desires are for that congregation, so it’s good to be humble and let God have it His way.
Other worship leaders like Tim Hughes, Dan Wilt, Brian Dorksen have helped me to understand how worship is not a mechanical thing, or some special formula that makes people get closer to God, on the contrary worship leading has everything to do with seeing what God is doing and imitating that.
Another aspect that Dan Wilt and Kathryn Scott get into is keeping an eye out for people’s needs, during the worship time. Kathryn advises us not to get into lot’s of spontaneous stuff, because you loose the people it’s best to stay in a place of listening to God.
I find that leading worship from a place of peace and trust is not easy, but it sure takes off the pressure of performance and caring about others skepticism, as worship artisans we can find our peace in letting God do His thing rather than us always getting in the way (God help us).
All of the DVDs that we watched last week were quite enlightening. There were a few things that stood out to me the most, specifically in the “What is Worship” DVD. I don’t remember who said this in the DVD, but whoever it was brought up these question regarding holiness: “Am I not doing this so I don’t get caught?”, “Am I not doing this because God is watching?”, or “Am I not doing this because of who I am?” This caused me to look at myself and apply these questions to my own life. I realize that I don’t always do things with the best intentions and that sometimes I refrain from doing things because of what other people will think or because God is watching…not because it’s who I truly am as a person (hopefully that makes sense.) I think it was very important for me to come to this realization, because now I’ll be able to pray about it and ask God to help me fix that aspect of my life. My whole life should exemplify worship. By that I’m not solely referring to my actions, I’m referring to the reasons why I do the things that I do and my motivation behind how I’m living. This was not the only thing that stood out to me from that DVD, but it caught my attention the most, by far.
Another one of the DVDs that was quite inspirational was the songwriting DVD. It touched on a lot of really good ideas, and I know that many of the things that were taught in this DVD will help me as I continue to write songs. It was great to hear from some great worship leaders on this topic, and to hear about some of the stories behind the songs they’ve written.
The one thing the struck me in the videos was the quotation by Brian Doerksen. He said that after worship set he takes a few moments to lay it before God as an offering and then waits for a response. When I heard him say that, I was shocked that my first reaction was, “That would be so scary.” As I thought about it, I realized that it is much easier to claim that our actions are for God as opposed to truly giving our worship as on offering. All of us can recognize without any doubt that we are not perfect. Also, we can recognize that God is entirely perfect – there is nothing in Him that is incomplete or sinful. As if giving an offering of ourselves is not difficult enough because it involves becoming so entirely vulnerable; we are stuck with the knowledge that our offering comes from our imperfect selves and is given to One who can clearly see our imperfections. We have to give our awesome God a gift that we know is broken. If you stop there, that is scary, even terrifying. But we cannot stop there, and that is what I realized is something that I do too often. As we can see through Jesus, God did not want it to stop there. Just like a father glows when given a picture of something he can barely make out from his young child, God glows at an offering that was created for Him. Our hearts need to be fixed upon Him and we need to be true in our offering. After that, God can forgive the imperfections and see our hearts. That, for me, is reason to worship. Isn’t is a lovely cycle?
I am so happy to be responding to this blog and taking a break from writing my paper for Philosophy 101….
The “What is Worship” dvd was great, because I recall it having much more content than I expected it to. I don’t know if this was something directly spoken about in the dvd, but I felt like I learned a lot about character while watching. It was so interesting to see other worship leaders sharing their experiences, their hearts, their vulnerability and stories about how they came to where they are. It was also amazing to see the humility that followed.
I also really appreciated the forward and practical nature of the Paul Baloche dvd. He spoke on things that can be applied to any worship set and it was great to watch someone assemble the worship time for a church.
The “What is Worship” and “Leading Worship” DVD’s are great resources for worship leaders. I appreciated the content of both of them. I like that they expressed that worship is not about religious acrobatics, but about response. A response to God’s overwhelming love poured out over us, His creation. It is our task as humans created in God’s image to reflect His image to the world around us and in return then reflect creation’s worship back to God. I liked what Brian Doerksen had to say about why singing a song congregationally is a form of worship that has stood the test of time. To paraphrase him, he said that it is something that we can do together.
Also I like that it is expressed that what we do corporately in worship leadership is the overflow of a private worship and prayer life with God. I think it was Matt Redman who said that praying is not necessarily what you do on your knees in your bedroom, but they can be littered throughout your everyday life. They can be little and often, small utterance of praise when you see something beautiful in creation or a little thank you to the Lord when something you have been doing just seems to work out.
To be honest…. I hate blogs, this is my opinion and I am not seeking to hurt the emotions of any particular person. I feel like blogs are an easy escape from being a real human with real struggles and problems. A blog to easily becomes a mask in which we can hide behind and then go on and on and on with a response about the “said” subject putting on a show for every other blogger, when in reality we are really struggling with problems. Who reads blogs anyway…. I think we should discuss these topics in person, so we are forced to confront each other face to face and then maybe , we can start being real with each other. Although in the end it could just be me with the problem.
Response
- The movie offered wonderful insights regarding worship leading. For some reason I found myself taking principles offered and applying them to subjects outside of worship leading in particular, preaching to be exact. Dan is authentic, real and cool, although it was funny seeing him with glasses. In learning about worship leading, I find myself not satisfied, I feel as if there is something more for us to reach for and yet we have all forgotten what it really is, something huge….. Just a thought
Romans 12:1-2, in the message bible sums up what we looked at in class. “Take your everyday, your ordinary life and place it before God as an offering.” All aspects of our lives belong to God, “fully alive” and active. This spills into our relationships, our work, our play our prayer life our sleeping time, this is our worship. We cannot separate our lives into little compartments to be monitored and looked at separately. Music is just one part of the whole. God is asking us to live a live pleasing to Him, a life of holiness. Holines is not simply an outward act of moral purity, it must start in the heart. “As you come towards God,holiness in your life will be quickened.” Our character is what God knows of us, as it easy to keep up appearances, God knows what is really going on. When we lead worship what comes out will be an outflowing of what’s in our hearts.
I think the video series is a wonderful resource for all worship leaders as it gets right back to what it is all about.
Last weeks class was very good. I found the Dvd’s “What is worship” and “leading worship” to be very instructional also the people that were featured in them made interesting points about the overall subject. It was great to see the different worship leaders share what was on there hearts and being able to have a positive influence on us and challenge me to look at my self.I showed my how much work really goes into a production such as an evening of worship I never really put much thought into how much work goes into leading worship till the addressed some questions and challenged me. over all I found the dvd’s to be a good way to learn they went a little to fast for me but that is ok.
Well the What is worship dvd was interesting and i found that i did get alot out of it but i think that it just went too fast for me get really get anything out of it or to type what i really wanted to write down. i think if it was in person and we had chance to discuss what you were saying it would stick with me. i loved the different attitudes and thoughts of the different people interview on the dvd and it help to challenge me on worship i have been in in the past and see how i can talk some of the major points and relate them to worship. dan i found that your very happy, like too happy. an example is like those science videos that you had to watch in school with the kids and the like totally just too happy, its a little annoying and i find that classes are 100% better in that aspect. but don’t get me wrong i know why you had to be like that, it is the most efficient way to tell the people watching the dvd. overall i enjoy a class with the real you over a dvd, but it is a great resource.
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