Worship as a lifestyle

In the Christian community we often use the term “worship as a lifestyle” – meaning, of course, that worship goes beyond what we do in our gatherings together (i.e. singing, reading the Bible, praying, and so on).

It’s true. Not only is worship something we “should” every day during the week, it actually is what we do every day during the week: the way we live our lives, the things we focus on, give our energy and money to, stress about; those actions literally reflect what or who we worship.

“Worship,” the English term, is from an old English word “worth-ship”; it carries the meaning of “attributing worth to something or someone”. The way we spend our time and energy and money and focus during our day and week shows what and who we attribute worth to.

Based on that, we could theoretically turn that whole phrase around and still be accurate: rather than “worship as a lifestyle”, we could truly say, “my lifestyle shows what I worship”.

Hmmm. That’s kinda scary, actually. With that in mind, reflecting on the choices of where I’ve put my time, energy, and money this past week reveals more to me about what I worship than I’d wanted to know.

More often than not, unfortunately, it’s we, ourselves – or the things in our own little world – that come out on the top of that heap. My ‘disposable’ money? Spent on me and my interests. Time? Spent on me and my interests. (Okay, I know for you it’s different. I’m just familiar with my own tendencies…). Sure, I give money to good causes, and I volunteer; but if I compare what I spend on myself to what I give selflessly to others, unconnected to my own interests, I see a clear propensity toward self-interest. Would people be able to convict me as a God worshipper based on the evidence they find? I don’t want to know the answer to that.

To my way of thinking that’s one reason why having focused times of worship are essential, periods in which we consciously think about God and our relationship to Him. Those times bring an intentionality to the focus of our lives that would be missing otherwise. Worship as a lifestyle? Yes. Worship as an intentional focus for right here, right now? Yes –indispensable! Whether we’re singing songs, reading Scripture (or poetry or other prose that draws us to focus directly on God) or praying, moving into intentionality about worship encourages us to let the truth of God permeate our very beings.

Only when that purposeful focus happens regularly, when that permeation of God-truth occurs consistently, will my lifestyle reflect that heart of worship with more constancy.

That focused and deliberate time of worship doesn’t have to be all about music, of course. Not everyone even likes music! Perhaps the unconscious equating of ‘worship’ with ‘music’ is what leads some people to declare their loyalty to the concept of ‘worship as a lifestyle’.

At Worship Café we’ve had the joy of hosting Filid, a fluid time of worship which incorporated poetry, historic narrative and reflection as well as music. The full worship session is available in the archives. It is not a typical Sunday-morning evangelical demonstration of worship, by any means, but Filid does effectively move us outside the box of expected musical expression and across the lines into reflective and contemplative worship which only sometimes involves music. Check it out, if you’re so inclined. www.worshipcafe.net - and look for the button marked “Archives”.

Worship as a lifestyle? Worship is a lifestyle; my lifestyle reflects my worship. Intentionality, chosen times of focusing my heart and mind on God and my relationship with Him, will go a long way toward helping my lifestyle reflect a heart of true worship.

Princess Di

The Café has been quite full the last couple of weeks. It’s been great. It’s different than being in a worship session on a Sunday morning in church somewhere, but it’s sure sweet when there are a bunch of people all engaged in worship or reflection or enjoyment of God all at the same time in the same place. (Is it okay to use the word ‘bunch’? Perhaps I should have said ‘flock’ of people…)

This past Sunday Graham Ord was at/on Worship Café. This was his second visit, the first having been in January of this year.

The first time he was at the Café Graham was joined by Scott Matthies on percussion. Scott was with Graham again this time, and they were joined by Dave Moore on bass. Dave is an old friend of Graham’s; Graham introduced him as being the best man at his wedding. There is something about old friends doing music together – doing worship together – that is very engaging (although, truth be told, Dave did object to being labeled “Graham’s old friend”; he made it quite clear he was Graham’s young friend).

In one of the many interesting points of the session, Graham shared the story of when his oldest daughter was in hospital back in England years ago as a really young toddler. While he and his wife were there at their daughter’s bedside, concerned for their child and feeling helpless at not being able to do anything for her, Princess Diana made one of her visits to the children’s ward. Graham told us how amazing it was to be sitting there talking with the Princess, comparing notes on their kids, chatting about what each child liked to eat, and so on. It was very surreal, Graham said.

It made me think of worship. We get to hang around with royalty (the ultimate in royalty, in fact) and can chat about anything that’s on our mind. Sometimes we formalize it, sometimes it is completely casual. (I’m learning, actually, that formalizing is not necessarily a bad thing; for a while there it seemed like anyone who formalized worship in any way, shape or form was being très un-cool and not really being true to the heart of God. I’ve come to realize I was being presumptuous in thinking that. So I’ve discarded that mindset to a large extent. Nuff said.) (Okay, here’s a bit more: you can check out the Filid in the Worship Café archive for an example of a more formalized time of worship. That was cool).

Anyway, we get to hang around with royalty. And even though in worship we are often expressing our love and appreciation for what’s been given, even when we’re not expecting anything in return and are happy just to tell our Creator how much we love Him, we somehow come away changed. I don’t really know how that works. But I’m very glad when it happens.

The last song in Graham’s set was his well-known “The Lord is Gracious and Compassionate”. He shared a brief story of how the song came to be (which I won’t relate here), and it made me think how great it was when God smiles and a guy who walks in humility writes a song which impacts so many people.

If you missed the worship time with Graham feel free to catch the rebroadcast. And see you next week.

Heather Clark

We had Heather Clark as a guest on Worship Café April 4th. We hadn’t realized back when we booked her that April 4th was Easter Sunday, but it was. And we wondered how that would affect the turnout.

The turnout, as it turned out, was great. Martin was going around just before the session began putting out extra chairs, and it’s a good thing he did. The only seats left open were a couple right up at the front, and at least two points during the webcast we saw the onscreen silhouettes of people sneaking past others to fill those last spots.

Heather brought only her son Josiah and her friend Holly along for the drive down from Kamloops. Often she leads worship with a full complement of bass, drums, electric guitar and a couple of vocalists, but for this session she elected to go with just herself and her piano.

And what a good choice that was – it was a perfect arrangement for the café. The sound was not at all overpowering and was still room-filling with the strength of Heather’s voice and the fullness of her piano.

Right at the outset Heather told us all that she had two basic ways of doing worship: one being with a band leading at conferences or other large events, and the other being just her and her piano when no one else was around but Jesus. And she said her intention was that the Worship Café session was going to be the “just her and Jesus” mode – and it certainly seemed that everyone in the seats was able to connect with where the session headed.

With a great blend of original songs along with spontaneous vocal and instrumental meanderings and songs by other songwriters, Heather’s worship session was (to me) both relaxing and refreshing. We were trying out a new placement for one of the cameras, and I personally really enjoyed working on getting good shots while being in worship mode; I knew several of the songs from before, which made it easy to connect, and there were several new-to-me songs which gave lots of opportunity to head in new directions in worship.

Toward the end of the session Heather brought her song “Deeper” into play (which I’ve always liked) and spent a good amount of time just floating on that for a while. Some of the “classic Heather Clark” songs that are used a great deal by other worship leaders are more corporate and ‘punchy’ in their scope (“Open to me the gates of righteousness and I will go through them… and I will praise the Lord…” with the strong 4/4 beat going on the kick and bass and piano, for example) so it was a real treat to have Heather lead in this much more “Song of Solomon” type intimate setting on Sunday.

I know that everyone in the packed café really enjoyed this more up-close-and-personal time of worship because it felt like most of them came up to Heather and various members of the crew to tell them so. I trust those who logged in online were treated to the same level of connection as we were, and I can’t see why that wouldn’t be the case – I watched the rebroadcast stream again this morning and found it just as bona fide as the live event on Sunday.

Heather will be on the home page streaming window all this week, so feel free to log in if you missed Sunday’s time and you’d still like to catch her worship session. And once we get the session archived, it will be available with all our other past sessions in the Worship Café archives at www.worshipcafe.net (Sometimes that takes a while, but it’ll be there eventually).

See you next week…

Leading at the Worship Cafe

I had an interesting experience this past weekend when the artist we had booked for Worship Café phoned on Saturday to tell us he was sick and would not be able to join us on Sunday.

Actually, he didn’t phone ‘us’, he phoned (obviously) the booking guy. And then the booking guy called me to ask whether I could sub in.

As one of the producers at Worship Café, I sometimes think about stuff like that: what if someone cancels fairly last minute? Should we put some type of explanation on the site for those who’d decided to tune in because they enjoy the particular worship leader who was booked on that day? Should we do a re-broadcast of a previous worship session so that there’s at least something up and running on the site?

The deeper consideration, of course, relates to the “live” aspect: we archive all our worship sessions in full at www.worshipcafe.net so that they’re available to anyone who logs on; therefore, if we simply re-broadcast a previous worship session to replace a live event on Sunday, how is that building up the ‘live’ community aspect of Worship Café? (Answer: it’s not, really…) Will people who have logged on interact with one another during an archived re-broadcast like they often do during an actual live worship session? (Answer: don’t really know for sure, of course.)

One of the supporting characteristics to my being a producer of Worship Café is that I, too, am a worship leader. That helps with understanding where we’re going with the site, and it really helps with interacting with the artists we’ve booked. This isn’t an alien world to me, this worship leading thing, it’s something I’m quite at home in.

Back to the conversation with the booking guy. All of the above thoughts were running through my mind as we were trying to decide what to do to replace the guest who was sick, and in the end I said that I’d fill in. The live aspect could at least be preserved that way.

And that’s where the interesting experience came in. It’s one thing to produce the live sessions, making sure the equipment is working, helping the sound guys set up, ensuring the camera shots are working and the worship leader is ready to go, etc. etc., but it’s another thing to be on the other side of the camera. This time I was on the other side of the camera.

A worship leader wants to connect with those he or she is ‘leading’ in worship – there’s something about the group dynamic that works better when some kind of connection is established; but how does one go about doing that with an online group of worshippers? Who is online? Where are they connecting from? What’s going on in their life at the moment? Those are among the things that one has a much greater sense about when one is physically in the same room with everyone all worshipping together. It’s a little different when one is leading in a room where the people are visible plus at the same time on a website where people are logged in but are not visible. Will the online viewers connect? Will this work for them too?

In the end, though, it all came together. I know for sure we had online viewers from the East Coast (because they posted comments in the live feed) and I know we had people in the Café out here in the West. So we had at least a national gathering. And now I know more of what it feels like for the person leading worship, so I’ll be a more experienced coach when it comes to producing the shows.

Onward and upward. Os, as Aslan said, “farther up and further in”. Now that this week is behind me I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks of worship at Worship Café with Heather and Graham and Norm and others… should be good.