by Chris John, Cedar Falls Campus Volunteer
Ever watch a movie where the musical score intertwined with a great story and it gave you goosebumps or caused you to cry? Think about the type of music that was being played - was it classical? I would bet that the majority of us wouldn't listen to classical music just for fun - but that didn't stop it from impacting us - when it was accompanied with a great story.
Musical worship (as in the sermon) should always take a worshipper through a spiritual journey that can come through all types of music or songs. Let's take my last time leading as an example. Here was the set list:
Cannons (You are holy, great and mighty...)
Beautiful Things (You make beautiful things out of us. You make me new.)
Our God (And if our God is for us, than who can ever stop us?)
Note the journey from praising God for who He is to acknowledging who we are in Him and then finally, the truth that God is with us, for us, and we can live our lives for Him with confidence. All three of those songs have pretty hard electric guitar solos and "Our God" may be one of our loudest worship songs in our catalog. Yet, out in the crowd I saw people, young and old, raising their hands to worship God. The spiritual journey trumped the musical one.
I'm not saying that the type of music never matters, and that we don't sometimes create spaces for a type of music (acoustic set for example - that is different from the norm). When we let the type of music overshadow the journey we are leading people on, then we have lost our focus on the most important thing: the One we are lifting our praises to.
Let's lead them to Jesus.
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