I’ve been attending rehearsals, in one form or fashion, since I was 5 years old. That’s like 430 years of Children’s choirs, Youth choirs, high school band and choir, college band and choir, Seminary choir, leading choir rehearsals in churches, leading worship band rehearsals. That’s a lot of rehearsing.
And the overwhelming majority of that time--probably 98%--is musical in nature. Maybe 99%.
Over the last 10 years I’ve been shifting that percentage. And for the last few years I’ve been changing what we call those rehearsals.
Now this may be a matter of semantics, but I’d prefer to think of it as a change in paradigms. Rehearsal has a very specific connotation--we rehearse through learning and repetition. We rehearse notes, rhythms, diction, phrasing, dynamics, etc. I love that stuff. When it is right and good, it is thrilling.
But there’s a layer of my weekly rehearsals that has grown. And with the growth of that layer there has been a corresponding growth in the spiritual potency of the music. The more time I spend pointing musicians (both vocalists and instrumentalists) to the text--and thereby to Jesus--the more we experience the Presence of Jesus in those sessions. There are frequently times that I’ll pray, or invite others to pray, spontaneously. There are often times that I will have to shout, hoop, or holler at the power of praise in the room. It isn’t unusual for me to see folks with tears in their eyes, with hands lifted high, or with faces aglow with the radiance of our God. (check out Psalm 84:2, 1 Timothy 2:8, and Psalm 34:5)
That’s why instead of referring to the time I meet with our weekly worship leading team as rehearsal or practice, I’ve begun calling it “preparation.”
On our church calendar it says “Worship Prep” on Thursdays from 6.15-8.00pm. And when the choir meets it says “Worship Choir” on Wednesdays from 7.15-8.45pm. Every three weeks or so, these groups combine. Those are my favorite. We have vocalists, instrumentalists, and choir members preparing to lead worship.
A.W. Tozer wrote,
“The whole Bible and all past history unite to teach that battles are always won before the armies take the field. The critical moment for any army is not the day it engages the foe in actual combat; it is the day before or the month before or the year before...”
“Preparation is vital. The rule is, prepare or fail. Luck and bluster will do for a while, but the law will catch up with us sooner or later, usually sooner...
“...it took David only a few minutes to dispose of Goliath; but he had beaten the giant long before in the person of the lion and the bear...
“Preparation is vital. Let this be noted by everyone. We can seek God today and get prepared to meet temptation tomorrow; but if we meet the enemy without first having met God, the outcome is not conjectural; the issue is already decided. We can only lose.”
How striking is that last sentence to you? It slays me. Few events in our week are as targeted by our enemy as the worship gathering. Every week, for someone in the room, eternity hangs in the balance. The spiritual battle is real. It is present. If we don’t prepare by meeting God in those times we set aside for rehearsal, “the issue is already decided. We can only lose.”
I don’t know if this dynamic can be used to project backwards in our generation to explain decades of anemic worship experiences in churches or not. That’s not my call to make. But I do know that the more careful I am to lead weekly times of worship preparation that include meeting God, the more spiritually vibrant, potent, and dynamic our worship gatherings become.
So I wonder, what is coming to your mind? How can you transform from rehearsal to preparation? How will you continue to, start to, or increasingly lead your worship leading team to meet God?
