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.