The Technical Difficulties Sunday

Sunday morning I was praise team leader. This, as many of you know, is not something with which I am unfamiliar. It takes quite a bit to make me nervous or to rattle me while on stage nowadays. But God always finds ways to stretch us.

Our church has a screen at the front which shows all the words to the songs, all the readings, all the Bible passages, and basically runs the service with the assistance of the praise team leader. We ran through the whole service early Sunday morning and everything was just fine. And then the service started...

Verses to songs were missing. Responsive readings were gone. Worship order was completely mixed up.

I made a few comments apologizing for the jumble and managed to get the congregation to the sermon portion of the service.

When I sat down I immediately regretted not taking more time to stop, take a deep breath, and refocus the congregation. I felt distracted and I felt as though everyone else was distracted.

Someone said something to me after the service that really got me thinking. What would you do if you came to church and there was no electricity - thus no instruments, lights, projected screens, etc.?

I realize now that no matter how much time we put into planning a service, sometimes there needs to be some room (divine intervention or not) for the Spirit to step in and guide us. If I came to church and had no power, I wouldn't just leave. I would worship. As a praise team leader I need to be more prepared to usher the Spirit into our services and not rely so heavily upon all the worship equipment and worship orders. My job is not to coordinate all the instruments, voices and computer equipment. My job is to lead worship! All those other things can really end up distracting us from the real purpose of gathering together on Sunday. It isn't to sing songs we like, or give some money to the church, or to pray as a body, or to hear God's word preached. Definitely they are all aspects of what we are there to do. But in truth, we are there to worship. No matter what happens to the screens at the front.