ChurchBass: Practicing Worship

Hey,

I belong an email list called ChurchBass of great guys and gals who (not surprisingly), play bass in Church. It's one of the few online communities I've been part of long-term. You can find out more at www.churchbass.org.

Here's one (part) of one of my recent posts:


How much do we practice worshipping during the week, away from the church or rehearsal or people watching us, and simply worship? I mean just God and me, one on one?

I've probably written of this before. I think that as musicians in church it is all too easy to get caught up in the "on stage" (or platform or whatever) thing. It's all too easy to enjoy the performance, and forget about why we are there, and what our job is: to lead the rest of the people in worship of our God. (us WITH them, not us for them, or to them, or set apart from them - but that's another post!)

One of the significant ways I have found to counteract that temptation, nay, sin (as it focuses on me, and not the Almighty), is to practice worshipping on my own. We (presumably) practice our instruments and the songs to avoid wrong notes and musical train wrecks, but do we engage in a practice of worship to avoid leading the people astray? We practice technicalities in order to improve on our musicianship; do we practice different ways of worshipping to improve our relationship with God, and our appreciation of who He is and what He has done?

Musical practice is vital, and I think we would be amiss to ignore developing the gifts God has given us. I also think that we can easily stay worship infants if we don't consciously practice worshipping. Both are important, but in different ways.

I haven't thought this through entirely yet, but my inkling is that this is different to Quiet Time, where we wait and listen on God, or learn more about Him. Personal Worship Time (as opposed to Personal Practice Time ;-) is about actually worshipping God. Sitting down (or whatever) and saying to God, "Now I'm going to worship you, because you deserve it. I'm not purposefully looking for anything from you, Lord. I just want to explore ways of worshipping you." Perhaps its just a different way of having a QT.

Sometimes, when I know what I'll be playing on the coming Sunday, I'll try to "live with the songs" throughout the week: worship with them day in, day out. The idea is that when Sunday comes around it's just an extension of my personal worship times, taking the pressure off playing, allowing me to just worship. (Confession: that used to happen a fair amount, now I'm pretty lazy... ;-(

Ok, rave off. I hope you're encouraged, rather than laden with another "do this" chore.

TC&GB,

pk