As I think of what to write in this post, I am conflicted as to it’s topic. Guess I’ll just have to touch on them all! Lets start with grooving. Not musical grooving, but life grooving or as I would like to call it, life trenching. We all have our routines and daily schedules. There is nothing wrong with a routine, but they can be blinding. Sometimes we can dig in pretty deep with our routines, so much so that we loose sight of the world around us. With my recent travels, my eyes have been reopened to the desperate need in the world around us. I do not want to loose sight of this. I don’t want to be the typical American, stupid to the world around us. We waste so much, and it takes so little to help. Some might want to give me a great big red light here and say “you don’t need to go around the world, there is need here!” And I agree! It is sad that it often takes an out of the normal trip away from our collective life-trenches to see the need both locally and abroad. My challenge, for myself and for you is to peak out your trench every now again, or preferably not dig one in the first place.
Now on to grooving, except this time I am talking about music. Today on my way into work, I decided to put in an old worship album that was in the CD visor. I couldn’t stop laughing, the music was so iconically 90’s. Full of the same terrible xylophone based keyboard voice and the occasional single line guitar solo that is so abrupt that it might just scare you. The real funny thing is, well, that I used to jam out to this stuff. I like almost all of the songs, but something is missing. As many of you may have read about this blog, it may be old news, but you should probably hear it again. While in the Philippines, we had the opportunity to visit a church on Sunday. A modest, God-fearing church that has inspired my soul to new levels. By all accounts we would consider this church disadvantaged, near a busy and noisy street with lawn chairs for seating. By my account, we are the disadvantaged ones. We have so many things in our churches, distracting things, and sometimes distracting people. It brings to mind what is needed to gather together to worship God corporately. Not drums, keyboards, cool lights, HD projectors or a boomy subwoofer. Take some time the next time you visit a church to see how much extra we pack in. Now most of you know me (and for those who don’t, Hi! My name is Brent Powell) and probably think I’m being a bit hypocritical about this. Aren’t you a worship leader? Didn’t you once tell me how much you like drums and big subwoofers? The answer is yes, but I’m analyzing myself here too, okay. So back to my original question here, what is needed? The first one is obvious, people. You can’t do anything together if no one will do it with you. Second, we need to worship God. Thats it, see you later! But for reals people, that is all we need. We get so caught up in the spectacle of “worship” that we loose sight of what it really means to worship God. It isn’t about singing, albeit that singing is a great way to praise our Lord, and my personal favorite. It is about everything that we are doing. We aren’t worshiping with our lives if all we do is sing a couple songs on Sunday. It is no surprise that we feel empty during our local church services and we require a concert in order to get an emotional rise (read: not worshiping). So to put if basically, we do too much in church because we do too little in our lives. We somehow feel that we can compensate for the lack of devotion by singing our hearts out on Sunday. Now I’m not telling everyone to go to their worship leaders and tell them to get rid of their drummers. But what I am telling you to do is be accountable for your own heart and if you are a worship leader reading this, stop trying so hard to impress God, worship Him! I am guilty of trying too hard to bring the worship all by myself, I can’t make worship for others. I can worship, and we can worship, together. I hope that these rambling words made sense to at least one person!