Hey Everyone, I've been thinking a lot these last couple of weeks about how God speaks to us. Do we recognise Him? How do we know it's God? I'm convinced that God speaks to us far more than we think - we just don't realise it's Him! Perhaps we're not familiar enough with knowing His voice...perhaps we're too busy to take a moment to listen! There are a large number of scriptures that talk about 'being still in God's presence'.
This is important in the context of our worship on a Sunday morning too. When we meet together as a church family, there is an expectation that we will encounter God - so do we create sufficient opportunities for people to actually hear Him when He speaks? This has got me thinking about how our whole meeting is set out, and in particular how we, as a worship team can create these opportunities for 'space to listen'. Does 'space' mean 'silence'? Do we stop playing completely? I think the answers to these to questions is usually 'no' - more often than not, having a flow of music allows people to remain in an attitude of worship and helps them to keep their focus on God. I do think, though, that we need to work at 'lingering' more - going around chord riffs and simply waiting to see what happens before we move on to the next song on the list.
Another part of this that has got me thinking is more about us - the musicians and singers... How good are we at creating space for ourselves within our worship? Do we hold back and make space to 'listen to God' as individuals, or do we jump straight into playing or singing our parts? Obviously, this is not always as straightforward as it is for people in the congregation! We often rely on eachother to play intros, come in at certain points to add emphasis or change the dynamic within our arrangements and so on. However, I wonder if we looked out for 'listening space' more consciously within our songlists, would we find that not only do we hear or sense God personally, but also discover a greater sense of God's presence within the meeting generally? In order to do this, we need to work on our arrangements; listen more closely to what eachother is playing; trust eathother more to fill the gaps and not try to fill all of them ourselves!
I read another worship blog recently where the writer was explaining how he does something similar with his musicians. He has got his team to imagine that what ever their band line -up is, it always needs to add up to 1. For example, if there were two musicians leading worship at a prayer meeting, they both need to make up 1/2 of what is being played in order to get to 1. On the other hand, if there is a large line-up of, say 8 musicians and singers for a bigger meeting, each person needs to be thinking about playing/singing 1/8 of the overall sound in order to get to 1. I know things are not as evenly organised as this within a band dynamic - but I thought it was a really good little idea to think about. It has certainly made me think about how I need to play less and listen more!
Did you know that the words 'SILENT' and 'LISTEN' share the same letters?
Tell me what you think...
Simon
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