My First Rodeo

Leading worship was never this part of ministry I thought I would really get involved with, well jokes on me, thanks God. I recently was just hired on at Heartland Community Church in Ripon, CA as the director of worship.

Quick background.

At the age of 17 I taught myself guitar through Ultimate-Guitar.com

I was saved at 19, now 24, and was baptized with the Holy Spirit at the age of 20 and remained in an Assemblies of God church from that time until about 23. Worship services, loud music, the Spirit leading, awesome lights and great media have almost always been apart of worship services that I have been apart of.

I was lucky enough to serve Worth Dying For as the Creative Director for about 2 years and helped plant Fearless LA in 2012. In that time I stayed within the media and leadership side of ministry. Building effective ministry teams to dream greater things for the ministries’ media and online presence along with other creative projects that entailed. The worship services never called for Anthony to pick up the guitar, lead any song or get involved with any audio recording.

Returning the the central valley in the beginning of 2013 I became a part of the leadership for a small youth/young adult group for Heartland Community Church, Evangelical Covenant. In their Monday night meetings there was never any worship, so I picked up my guitar, learned the bridges to some songs I was familiar with and loved and things kind of launched from there.

After leading on Monday night, I got asked to lead a ‘youth’ run worship service for Sunday morning. We did so and the church seemed to receive it ok. The typical service is ‘happy – go – lucky’ K-LOV along with 2-3 hymns. The church is now 100 years old, alleluia, and some of the people are as well, once again alleuia. The name Hillsong, Planetshakers, Jesus Culture, Elevation Worship, Kari Jobe and many others are completely foreign to the people. They know some Hillsong worship, but have no clue about the culture that the ‘Stralians have built for the Kingdom.

So now

My writings aren’t going to be full of years of experience teaching you, but me actually experiencing things. I will most likely gain more myself writing these consistently and reflecting on how services are running, how the team is growing and how the church and I can adapt together to this change. I’ve only been saved a few years and Pentecostal services don’t tend to tie in many hymns.

The church culture here wants to hold onto the past and pursue growth at the same time. I’ve work with youth, and young adults and have told some leadership team members in private that this isn’t a church I would have accidentally walked into, let alone stayed. I think I am one of 3 singles who is in this 100 person church. Most are families with legacies under this roof. (Some deserve a pew with their name on it. haha)

My First Rodeo

During the weeks practice I encouraged the worship team to not just play through the songs but focus on God’s love and give thanks for that. I asked them to sing with the church if they weren’t playing on a certain part of the song. I reminded them to stay in attention because as ‘worship leaders’ we are leading the congregation. If we aren’t reaching for God, then we’re capping off the potential of others.

On January 12th, 2014 I led my first worship service. The 49ers were playing at 10:30am PST and church starts at 10:30am PST, so attendance was low, and maybe just how God wanted it. But the service was powerful. The set was as follows:

-‘Alive’ – Hillsong Young & Free

-‘One Thing Remains’ – Brian Johnson

-‘Nothing But the Blood’ – Jesus Culture version

-‘How He Loves’ – Jesus Culture version

-‘Oceans’ – Hillsong United

First time with ‘Alive’, 2nd time with ‘Oceans’ I lead it the first time on that ‘youth’ lead Sunday, and they were somewhat familiar with the others, just in different versions. Usually songs were lead beginning to end, with full on music stands and sheet music.

Not a lot of deviation to how they are written, end on the correct note, crowd claps and pages turn. Now reaching back to my ‘Pentecostal’ worship style, I’d drop out all music and just let the voices sing, over one more time with soft guitar and end acapella once again. My purpose in this is to allow the church to really hear what they are singing. Many times they hear the song, sing the words from the projector and forget them just as fast. Afterwards a few came up to me and thanked me saying I was bringing a different spirit and it was appreciated. (even got tears out of one! Victories for Jesus.)

So that was neat. I half expected some to want to attack me for not singing lower and sticking to hymns, but generally all was received well.

So that was my first rodeo.

I’m in still in a toss on hymns, how to do them, when to do them. How can I help the church progress and meet the expectations of others?

 

Looking ahead…

Now the following Sunday this is the set that follows:

-‘Awesome God’ – Hillsong United version

-‘His Name is Wonderful’ – hymn**

-‘He is Lord’ – hymn**

-‘Cornerstone’ – Hillsong Live

-‘Give Me Faith’ – Elevation Worship

-‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ – hymn**

-‘From the Inside Out’ – Hillsong United

** = Never heard this song in my life so I asked others to lead it while I try to sing along…