With the ever-increasing emphasis in mainstream churches on “worship” (put in quotations because here I am using that word specifically to refer to the music portion of a church service, especially in churches that have a “worship time” in their services somewhat delineated from the preaching of a sermon), advice abounds on how to improve that aspect of the service. As a sometimes worship leader, it is certainly a goal that those in the congregation would be engaged in and get some benefit from the music I’m leading and this portion of the service. Many worship leaders (myself included) get frustrated from time to time with the feeling that people aren’t as engaged as we feel they should be and might even feel discouraged thinking it is their fault that every single person isn’t singing and raising their hands in all-out worship. So we look for answers on how we can improve, thinking that if we as worship leaders just do the right things, we can lead a congregation that worships in this way.
Category: <span>Devotional Thoughts</span>
As I sit at home today looking out the window at the falling snow (well, okay, it’s almost all sleet, but roll with me here) I started thinking about whether there was snow in the Bible. When I think of Israel and that area of the world, I think of heat and sand, but it does actually snow there, and snow is mentioned several times in the Bible. I want to share two of those with you today.
Most of you know that my son Jacob has an autism spectrum disorder. Next year Jacob will be making the transition to middle school, which is a scary time for any parent, but made even more so with Jacob’s special needs and the uncertainty of what resources he will need and have available in this next step of his educational journey. In order to get a sense of what he will need, my wife and I took him to the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD) in Chapel Hill a couple of weeks ago for a consultation. CIDD is a fantastic place and we had first visited there several years ago not long after Jacob was first diagnosed.
Two weeks ago tonight, I had the distinct privilege of delivering the message for the Sunday night service at Havenhill Baptist Church in Kingston, Jamaica. I felt led to share a lot of my personal story and walk with Christ during the message, but I tried to make clear that my message was not about me, but about Christ and all He has done for me and in me. I had sketched out the rough message weeks prior to going to Jamaica, but I heard a song for the first time just a day or two before I left on the trip that really confirmed what I was trying to say. I meant to mention it during the message itself, but ran out of time. So I’m posting it here for you to enjoy. This is Big Daddy Weave singing “My Story.”
Last year about this time, my wife and I were locked in a battle with the local school system over their planned changes to my autistic son’s class placement. If you are interested, you can read the blog post I wrote back then by clicking here. For a period of about six to eight weeks, we did everything we could think of to show those in authority that changing Jacob’s class was a bad idea. We attended school board meetings, talked to other parents and teachers, wrote letters and emails, made lots of phone calls, and prayed a bunch. Just when we thought we had run out of options and didn’t know what else we could do, we got a phone call that Jacob would be assigned to the same class and teacher the following year. God stepped in in a dramatic and powerful way so that it was clear that He was the one who handled it.