Sunday, January 09, 2011

INVISIBLE PRESENCE

Today is one of our favorite of all; it's Sunday.  With tremendous anticipation, we watch for the cars to roll into the parking lots and the tens, and hundreds, and thousands empty into our church buildings.  We are excited.  Rightly we should be.

This is a time for leadership to be invisibly present.  I speak of the preacher and the worship leader.  This is a daunting task for we are us.  Yet, it is imperative we be up front and as unseen as possible.

How?  By letting the attention be upon the Son of God through singing, communing, and preaching.  Christ is to be honored and, thus, God glorified.  There's a way to do it.  The two staffed worship leaders we've had at Memorial--Allen French and Shane Coffman--are ideal at leading the songs without drawing undue notice.

A move they make which helps is to sing a round of songs without their commentaric interruptions. 

I encourage all of us who stand before the assemblies to do what we can to let the Spirit of Christ be seen from His invisibility while, we at the same time, do what we can to be noticeably undistractive.

1 comment:

Tim Pyles said...

Great thoughts, Terry. I love the concept that you describe of leading worship in a way that makes the Invisible (the Divine Nature) apparent, without the visible (us) unduly getting in the way and blocking the view.

"Commentaric interruptions"; I never knew what to call them; I just know that they drive me to distraction, literally; distraction from the throne of God, the cross of Christ, and the table of the Lord.

The best sound system in a church is the one you never notice; it doesn't make you strain to hear or cause permanent hearing loss with audio explosions; it just works; you don't even think about what a great sound system it is; it works so well that you don't think about it at all.

We do well as worship leaders and preachers if people are able to see God, hear God, and praise God with minimal thoughts expended on those of us who are leading in the assembly.