After over 25 years of running on very low resource in a lot of areas, my church at home in Canada has learned a lot about the true nature of worship. At one point, there was nearly a 3-year span where we sang acapella every Sunday because we literally had no musicians.  I led worship by myself virtually every Sunday for about 6 years - an experience which at times was emotionally and spiritually draining.  Not a season of time I would like to repeat, although I did learn a lot.

What strikes me now as I think about these past years is how passionate I am about the role of the congregation in corporate worship.

I am passionate about creating music - sometimes for congregations and sometimes not - and I believe that God gave us instruments and gifts to use for His glory. The role of the musicians is powerful, and important, and excellence is important.  Creativity, pushing the envelope, trying new things - this is important.

However, I imagine the congregation as being like a great choir, standing at the centre of a symphony.  We, the 'worship leaders', are the symphony, NOT the centrepiece.  We surround our people and we swell around them as THEY come into the presence of God by their OWN will and choice.

Even the most well-written, Scripturally-sound song does not in itself carry the power to push people into the presence of God every time it is sung. Even the most gifted, sensitive person leading worship does not carry the power to push every person into the presence of God every time they play their instrument and sing.  If we think that's the case, we're confusing our role as worshippers with the authority only the Holy Spirit can hold. 

The choice lies with the people.  We cannot drive them there, we can't force them there. Building and climaxing a song musically cannot drive them where they need to be.  God must reveal, and the people must respond.  The Bible says God is ALWAYS revealing Himself, so therefore, the people should ALWAYS be responding.  And, the musicians at the front need to learn to ride with the people as they respond.  We need to listen to what begins to come from them.  If we crash the cymbals when the people need to be still, we've lost it.  If we are still when the people begin to shout, we've lost it.  It's all about the people.

This is what makes leading worship such a tricky job.  I'm still on a massive learning curve with it.  I'm also learning the value of being able to contribute 'from the floor' as opposed to from the front.  Influence is not about a platform; it's about worshipping God freely wherever He has placed you in the scheme of things.  Somebody else is always watching you. Somebody else is always following your lead.

Often, the first-used question amongst a group of people meeting one another for the first time is, “So, what do you do?”  Being the newbie means this is a question I've been answering a lot lately!

So, let me start here with a slightly different question: what do you think you’re worth to the world around you?

Do you ever feel useless? Or, over-used, and under-appreciated? Or, do you ever feel you’re having to strain beyond what you’re actually capable of, trying to reach a mark that is always just beyond your reach, in an attempt to prove your worth?

Do you feel validated and affirmed in who you are?  Do you think other people truly see and value you?

In an achievement-oriented society, I think we need to take some hard looks at how a performance mindset filters into the church, and how it can so easily crush the hearts of the people. There are crucial issues at stake here, especially as a church begins to grow. We have to get this right.

If a church fosters an understanding of worth to God based on achievement, people with not-so-obvious gifts will always be questioning their place in church life - which is tragic, because it's the so-called 'lesser' gifts that are often the most precious and vital.  At the same time, those with very definitive, obvious gifts - often the people at the front on Sunday morning - will always be wrestling with the question of whether they are really valued for who they are, or just for what they do - which is equally tragic, because it puts their sense of identity into a very small box, and causes them to constantly question their own motives when making decisions.

I, for example, am a musician. On Sundays you will often see me leading worship. But that’s not who I am; that’s just the way my heart comes out. That’s the “spout”, if you will. The spout itself is not what matters; it’s the water that streams from it.

I really, really don’t want to be identified by my gifts. And I don’t want to be measured by anybody else’s gifts - whether my “spout” is bigger, or smaller, or better, or worse than the next person’s. I want to know there’s something flowing through me that will make a difference. I want to know that even if I was lying in a hospital bed with every physical faculty removed, my heart would still matter, and there would still be a way to express it somehow.

My gifts and abilities are not what make me useful to my world, in the same way that they are not what make me compatible with my friends. It’s the heart of a person that attracts, not what they can or cannot do, or what they have or have not 'achieved'.

All this affects how we view “ministry”. I think that in the vocabulary of our churches, we need to have “gifting” and “calling” defined separately from one another, before they can be intertwined in a healthy way.

The gift is the “natural” thing, the earthly thing; whereas the calling is the “spiritual”.  If we don't have a clear sense of our spiritual worth that is entirely separate from our gifts and abilities, the lines between us and our performance-driven society become blurred and I think this gets us into dangerous territory. It neutralizes our understanding of God’s grace and causes us to define ourselves - and our relationships, and our decisions - through what we’re capable of, rather than who we actually are.

The truth is, nobody needs your gift. There is not one person who needs you to offer your gift to them. What they need is the grace of God coming through the expression of your heart. That, and that alone, is the call of God. 

We’re not “called” to a task; we’re called into a relationship. I’m not “called” to be a musician or a worship leader. I’m called to love God, in that He called me, He beckoned me; and I want to call back to Him, because I love Him and I want to be with Him, and I want everybody to know it. For me, part of this may come through music. But, it won't always come through congregational worship songs (that was a big one for me to overcome!), and sometimes God will not give me a public platform to express it. 

The thing is, take away every gift, and every platform - and desire for God would remain. It’s the most powerful thing about who we are, and it’s what our world needs to know.  It doesn't matter how it comes out.  What matters is that it comes.

Upon reaching a spout, a man who has wandered a desert for miles is not going to stand and gaze lovingly upon that spout. He’s going to crank it for some water. If it doesn’t produce anything, that man will walk away every bit as desperate as he was before he saw it.

In the same way, you can have a gift, but if your desire for God isn’t flowing through you freely, your gift is useless. It won’t do anything for anybody. “Having your heart right before God” is not a Spiritual Task. It’s not something achieved by tasks. While aided by discipline, it’s not achieved by discipline. It is a simple matter of whether or not you are in touch with your desire for Him.

The other side of that coin is that sometimes we have desire for God that needs to be re-assigned to a different spout. If God takes one means of expression away from you, there will be another, and He'll have done it because He knows how best you can express Him to others. This can feel threatening if you have defined yourself through platforms. However, there’s tremendous freedom in letting that go, as scary as it might seem. It has been exhilarating for me to realize that if I lost my voice tomorrow and didn’t sing another note in my life, I’d still be Katie. Not a bit of my identity would be lost. My heart would still sing through, just in another way, perhaps through another person. 

I think the bottom line is that God will not let those who love Him waste their time trying to define themselves by the tasks they perform.

So, I will finish then with another question: will we let Him shift us and change us?

Will we seek to know our own hearts, and the hearts of those around us?

During the industrial revolution, a saying was coined that still survives today: "What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow."

Historically, Manchester has spearheaded movements in many social spheres including politics, literature, business, and the arts. 

As a church, it's a mistake to think we stand outside of that sense of movement.  We should be part of the flow, influencing the direction of it - not just by the quality of our work, but by the way we live our lives.

How to influence our society has been a source of constant debate in many churches, particularly in the area of the creative.  The perennial choice seems to have been whether to create a 'Christian' sphere that sets itself apart from the mainstream scene; or, alternatively, to 'engage with culture' and purposefully produce creative art that could appeal as easily to a secular audience as to a church congregation.

I suggest that we uncomplicate the issue by looking at what the Bible says.

Jesus instructed us to let our light shine before men. He pictorially illustrated his followers as being like a 'city on a hill' to which all nations would stream in.  The image of the church in the book of Revelation is of a glorious Bride. This doesn't mean we will all take on a feminine identity in heaven; it just means that we will be presented as something really attractive and desirable to the world around us, and to our God. The lost and needy and broken will long to be like us, and our King also desires us to be with him forever.

In this sense, the arts are a hugely important sphere in which the church can show itself desirable to the world.  We should create art that speaks something of heaven.  Whether it can be labeled as 'Christian' or 'mainstream' is really not the point.  What matters is that the heart of God is expressed - and believe it or not, you don't have to recite Scripture for that to happen! 

Having said that, I think that incorporating Scripture into a more poetic framework (as opposed to congregational) is not really that hard, and it's something that does lend power. The Bible is full of stunning imagery and poetry. The Psalms are absolute magic, in my opinion! And I'm always struck by how creatively God spoke to the Old Testament prophets, frequently giving incredible visions and pictures - experiences which hopefully most of us can identify with to some degree!  Familiarity can rob us of our appreciation of the beauty of Scripture, and also, a reactionary approach to 'religious' art can rob us of our ability to use Scripture creatively. 

I was given a prophetic encouragement several years ago about being like the Fifth Column. A little Googling revealed that the term refers to 'a group of people who undermine a larger group from within'. 

Perhaps our approach should be Fifth Column in nature, involving more stealth and cunning than aggression. We don't need to drive a tank into the bank to steal the money; we're already in the bank, and we have the keys to the safe! I think we should absorb freely into our culture without fearing becoming 'tainted'. We have the security of church leadership and prayer to help direct us. It doesn't have to be complicated.

Manchester's got a lot going on. It's time to absorb into the flow and enjoy the ride!