The following is only for the purpose of reflection, rather than self-importance.
I’m continually tracking how much time I spend preparing for events, both normal and special.
I just spent another 1.5 hours this Saturday morning, on top of 4 hours of prepping chord charts, transcribing songs from CDs that have no charts with them, PowerPoints and rehearsal, getting a worship set, prayers, etc. together for tomorrow morning.
I also spent 4 hours this past week organizing a 3-month worship team schedule that incorporated everyone’s unique schedules.
Note: Part of my expanded prep time is due to the fact that I’m needing effective worship chart preparation tools for my Mac. I’m waiting for a few promised web sites to be up and fully functional. Then, the time it takes should shorten considerably.
With 2 services, I’ll spend another 5 hours or so involved as a worship leader/leader tomorrow, etc. As for me, I’m paid for approximately 4 hours by our community for the work I do on this, and I’m grateful given our community’s resources. Most worship leaders are 100% volunteer. This would make me 75% volunteer. I count it a privilege, and actually would prefer not to be paid part-time for this or full-time anymore, having been there and done that before (I’ll say why in another post sometime).
It really is a privilege – I just forget how much time it takes for the volunteer worship leader to pull together an effective and beautiful Sunday am worship set.
Essentially, approximately 15 hours later, another series of worship expressions will rise from our hearts before God. It’s tiring sometimes, but its worth it. The energy seems to be there when you get up and prepare to lead people in songs we love to sing to God.