A lesson on "flow"

Happy Tuesday everyone! For some reason, this week I thought it appropriate to give a bit of a hands on lesson. Several years ago, I had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Paul Baloche on the subject of songwriting & leading worship. For those of you that don't know, he is a very accomplished songwriter & leader in the realm of corporate worship. As a fellow songwriter, he has been hugely influential in my writing style as well as my worship leading. 

One of the lessons that really impressed upon my heart was that of maintaining "flow" within the worship service. There are many aspects to creating such an environment...being prepared both spiritually & musically, Being aware of the keys that you are playing in and around, being aware of where your congregation is both spiritually as well as their musical skill level, and the list goes on & on. For a broader lesson from Paul, click here to go to an article on his website. My simple definition of "flow" is to lead in such a way that nothing hinders the Holy Spirit from doing His thing. That thing would be LIFE CHANGE! As worship leaders, we don't ever want it to become about us. Everything MUST point towards Him!

I want to touch on one aspect of "flow" that I learned from Paul, but he doesn't mentioned it in the article that I linked to above. That is that, sometimes, within your worship set, you may have two songs back to back that do not go together in keys, or maybe even style. However, they do fit together really well lyrically. This past Sunday we did an old deliriou5? favorite, "Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble". For those of you that have done this song before, you know that in the original key of D, it's about as far of a stretch (vocally) as is possible for the average congregation. So, A key change on the chorus to E would be out of the question. However, the key to the next song, "Cleansing", was, you guessed it...E. What to do, What to do? Even though, the chorus in E would have been way too high, the verse was fine. So, we basically ended the song per normal in D, the band faded out & I transitioned us to E as we sang only the 3rd verse as a tag before leading into the next song. You know what, it actually worked quite well. The "flow" was kept in tact & the transition was made quite smoothly. The video below is of that transitioned key change into the song "Cleansing." I hope this was helpful to all you blogophiles out there. Until Next Time... 

CLEANSING

PULSE #7 revisited

Thanks for your prayers for me and my family. I stand corrected. The girls actually had strep. Much better than the flu, but nasty nonetheless. The room is also coming along nicely. I'm working on the floors right now & might actually get the door put on tonight. So, onto last week's neglected pulse post.





I'm actually going to defer to others for this one. I've been reading some great stuff lately that fits right in there with last week's lesson. Let's start with a great quote that kicked us off last Wednesday.

"Worship is an exercise of the Holy Spirit directed primarily to God."
-Ralph Martin

When we, as believers, are born again, we are now and forever directed from within by the Holy Spirit. Consider it you're gift from God as you enter into a new life. This impartation is the greatest gift that mankind could ever be given. Not only do we have eternal life as we pass from this world to the next, but we have a guide given to us while our journey remains here on earth. The question is, will we follow His leading, or continually seek our own way?

As we seek to worship him, both privately & corporately, the Holy Spirit resides within us to help us every exciting step of the way. Just recently I read a great article on this very subject. Rather than continue my ramblings (of which I have many), I thought I would give you the privilage of reading it as well. It came from the website myrrhworship.com, a once defunct record label that has recently been revived with a new vision. Anyway, here's what David M. Edwards has to say:

"The Holy Spirit works within each believer to do whatever He has to in order to awaken and deepen our awareness of and need for Jesus’ Presence in our lives. He does this by drawing our hearts closer to the Lord in: our faith in God, our love for God, our obedience to God, our communion with God, our hunger for God’s Word, and our praise and worship of God! It is “deep calling unto deep” (Ps. 42:7). The Holy Spirit—the deep in us—calling unto God—the deep in heaven. And the precious Holy Spirit draws us into the deep waters of worship where we can experience the Presence of God within the veil.
I cannot emphasize enough the role of the Holy Spirit in our worship. His is the still small voice that encourages us to lift our hands in surrender, to praise Jesus with everything in us, to fall at His nail-scarred feet in worship. The Holy Spirit is constantly and consistently working within believers to deepen our experience and walk with the Lord. He is the Leader and Guide to all truth and righteousness. He is the Light within that illuminates God’s Word and our understanding of it. If we will cooperate with His promptings, we will be taken to new places in our relationship with the Lord and in our times of worship.
True worship is mouth-to-mouth resuscitation…deep calling unto deep. Worship is coming into His Presence and allowing the life and power of God’s Holy Spirit to fill our lungs (Ezek. 37:1-14). The promise of His Presence will work every time. And when Jesus is present, everything is possible and available. Can you imagine Jesus showing up without wanting to touch us, heal us, assure us, comfort us, release us, deliver us, save us, fill us? You see, in the atmosphere of God’s Presence, our faith is emboldened and it reaches up to receive what we need. Jesus said, “With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26).
True worship will always break down pride and fear. In true worship, pride must go because we must admit that we cannot do anything on our own to make it and we desperately need God’s help, grace, mercy, and love. True worship confronts our fears because we are going to either have faith in God or give in to what we are afraid of. We realize that we cannot serve two masters.
Praise and worship build our faith as does reading and memorizing God’s Word and quoting it aloud. This sends fear scurrying for cover. Fear is the enemy of faith! God’s assurance to meet our needs and deliver us comes on the wings of worship. As we worship, He speaks back and we leave that encounter encouraged and built up in our faith. Don’t be afraid, God knows what He’s doing—put your trust in Him as you lift your praise and words of worship!"


I leave you with this question from PULSE. Are you occupied? If so, with what?

That should be enough to chew on for a while.


BLESSINGS!

PULSE #5 - Temple

On the road again! C'mon everyone, sing it with me...I just can't wait to get on the road again! The fam & I are fast on the road back to Clarksvegas even as I type. Of course, by the time you get this post, we'll be home. Oh well. We're going to take one more stop by Robbers cave & do a little hiking. All in all, it has been a great mini-vacation. I'll be blogging a bit later about our experience at church yesterday. We were going to go to Gateway church in Fort Worth, but decided at the last minute to go with Lisa's parents to their h church, Grace Temple Baptist. To sum it up shortly, God is up to something AMAZING within that body. Like I said, I'll blog about it later.

For now, on to this week's (last week's) PULSE.

“Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
-1 Corinthians 3:16

Well...do you? If you're a believer in Christ, do you truly believe that your body is the temple in which God's spirit dwells? Are you living in such a way that He would want to enter in? Are you hospitable? WOW, these are some meaty questions, but if you really call yourself HIS, then the Word is clear.

Let me put it another way. If someone were to ask you where you go to church, what would you say? As a follower of Christ, I would be completely right in saying...you know, according to God's word, I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I'm really at church all the time. As Lamar put it in the text, I'm a “Winnebago of Worship”. I LOVE THAT!

Several of you have heard the woman at the well story. I challenge you to read it again. Read the whole thing at John 4: 1-42. Let it soak in & then read it again. What is God trying to teach us in this text? Is worship a place? Or, is it an attitude? Man, am I full of questions today! I just think this is something that's worth wrestling with for a while. I mean, if we miss this, then our whole view of worship is going to be skewed. As true worshipers WE HAVE TO GET THIS!

Alright, it's time to rustle some feathers. Read this very closely...”THERE ARE NO WORSHIP WARS AMONG TRUE WORSHIPPERS!” That's right, if you're heart & motives are in the right place, then it won't matter what place or method you are using to worship. I'm very thankful to be serving in a body that has gotten past all this junk! Sure, we worship in different ways, but ultimately, we see God's hand in all of it.

So, let's get back to the root of it all. If we truly are the temple of the Holy Spirit, then we can & should be worshiping Him at all times. Yup, at work, play, even Wal-Mart. The scriptures are full of teachings on “Full-time” worship. Just to name a few:

“Pray without ceasing”
-1 Thessalonians 5:17

“And my tongue shall speak of Your righteousness and of Your praise all the day long”
-Psalm 35:28

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth”
-Psalm 34:1

“Let us constantly and at all times offer up to God a sacrifice of praise...”
-Hebrews 13:15

I'll leave you with a statement that I have found to ring true in my life & in time, I pray it will in yours as well. “If you make your private worship a regular habit, you won't feel awkward about worshipping in public.”

Does your temple need a little spring cleaning?