Joy Let Loose

How can you ensure you are leading worship with joy (instead of giving up with defeat?)

Ok now. Some of you read that question and are just about to click away. Even if you don’t have a musical bone in your body, this post is for you too. Please stay. 🙂

Some of you would know that my main ministry role is as a worship pastor. I have held numerous roles within this realm, from volunteer, to paid staff, to a professor of worship. All of these roles have stretched me and taught me much about Christian worship. None has really stretched me as much as my current role. And it’s not the role itself, or the church (which I love!). Rather, it was the reality that I was ultimately the one responsible to encourage our congregation to come  joyfully and fully to the Lord in worship, while in the middle of my own season of difficulty over the last eight months or so.

Rewind…

I’ve been through other troublesome seasons before as a worship leader. Like immediately after one of my husband’s best friends hit a moose with his car, dying instantly, and we had to lead worship at his funeral. Or that time five years ago when I had just spent several nights in the hospital learning to navigate a new Type 1 Diabetes reality with our 10-year-old daughter, only to wake up early the next morning (groggy) to an email announcing my fill-in worship leader for that morning’s chapel service had backed out. I remember being angry, yet not wanting to thrust anyone else into a last minute situation, and just crying in the shower. I was so mad at God for all my little girl was going through, exhausted from sleeping on an uncomfortable hospital cot, and overwhelmed by what was now only a 4-day reality for us that literally changed our lives.

But somehow, I was going to need to get up in front of our entire Bible College population and start leading  worship with joy in less than two hours. 

God met me right there in my frustration. He can always handle my anger at Him. And as I cried in the shower, He filled my mind with Truth. Scriptures came back to me. Songs welled up. And before I was even ready to drive to the chapel, I was excited to lead our people to worship. Because I realized again that He had never left us. I remembered His goodness. And I wanted to share that with other people so they could remember too. That morning stands out in my memory as one of the most powerful mornings of worship I have ever experienced in the hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of times I’ve led.

Leading Worship With Joy

(Instead of Giving Up in Defeat)

Who is a worship leader? What does a worship leader do? Most people would answer that question with descriptions including singing, playing an instrument, or leading from a platform into a microphone. And yes, in our church contexts, the vocational worship leader tends to do those things. But I would suggest there is more. There are more people called to lead worship than those of us who are skilled musically.

In fact, I would suggest that  all Christians are called to be worship leaders. Because to lead worship with joy is to point the way for other people to worship Jesus. You don’t have to be musical to do that, now, do you? In fact, here are some of the ways Christians can lead other people to worship God:

• share your story of meeting Jesus
• send an encouraging text that reminds someone of God’s love
• tell someone about God’s provision when you were in need
• add chairs to your table and invite people into your home
• create graphics that highlight truths about God and share them through social media
• change the conversation to one that is uplifting when it wants to drift to negativity
• visit someone who is experiencing difficulty and help them, reminding them of God’s presence
• invite someone to join you in a reading plan
• openly replacing lies with truth as you discover them
• write out 10 reasons you are grateful and post it as your Facebook status
• listen carefully when people talk to you, and tell them where you see God moving in their story

This is only scratching the surface. But I hope you can see that none of these scenarios involve music, yet all point other people to God. This is  worship leading.

So What?

So what’s the big deal? Why am I even writing this post?

Well, because when life is tough, it’s really hard to do any of these things. It’s much easier to simply give up in defeat. It’s very tempting to a) share all the negatives, forgetting anything positive, or b) withdraw from people completely. But worship leading requires other people to be led. And it forces us to see through the negatives to realize the positives are still there, even if they seem to be in some other dimension.

And here’s the other reason. Every Christian is called to spur others on. All of us have the opportunity to be part of someone else’s spiritual formation story. How we choose to lead worship in our own lives will leave a legacy in someone else’s life. I want to leave a legacy of  joy. I want to impact the lives of others by pressing in with faith through the difficulties and the desolate seasons in my own. Faith shows the reality of what we are hoping for even when we can’t see them yet. And I lead worship with joy when I trust and pursue what I believe to be true, and I let others know about it.

Leading worship with joy is incredibly vulnerable. It’s risky. But great faith takes risks on believing God. Because He will never disappoint.

Great faith takes risks on believing God. Because He will never disappoint. Click To Tweet

This is real life…

I have several Christian friends facing very difficult things: broken marriages, family members in drug rehab, financial distress, foster children in precarious circumstances, health uncertainties. Each one of them can be tempted to despair at every turn. But instead, each of them is called to  lead worship with joy.

 In hospitals and police stations, on the phone and online, in private moments and very public ones, they each have the choice to lead worship with joy. Not to ignore their circumstances, but to lead through them. They have the opportunity to help other people be formed spiritually by how they choose to point to Christ in the everyday-ness of their lives. And the reality is, as they choose to praise God at all times, their own joy will be restored. Their eyes will open to God moving in their own circumstances, they will be strengthened to persevere, and they will radiate faith.

Our worship is our fight song. It is our weapon to defeat the enemy. It is how we engage in lifting our own heads to face the realities of our day head-on. Leading worship with joy is how we win against defeat.

So what about you?

How is God calling you to lead worship with  joy? What tangible steps can you take today to point the way to Christ? What will it require of you? And how do you think you will grow through it?

I love it when people visit  Joy Let Loose to read and then engage with me in the comments. Would you be willing to share a story of how you lead worship with joy in your life? And would you also be willing to share this post with people in your circles who could also learn to lead worship with joy? Let’s let joy loose together!

Elizabeth Joy