Leading Worship For Prayer Time

Recently I taught on leading worship during prayer time/altar time, and I thought I would share some practical thoughts.

The difference between what we do on Sunday morning and what we do during prayer time is the difference between classical music and jazz. In classical, you make beautiful music by perfection—playing the music as closely to the composer’s interpretation as possible. There is a time and a place for this in worship, but it’s not the only way. In jazz, you begin with a framework and fill it out with the player’s own interpretation. It’s planned spontaneity, flexible structure.

The first key is to follow the leader. The worship leader follows the pastor/speaker. Watch for their cues. Use their words and scriptures as inspiration for singing. Match their level. If they are contemplative, play mellow. If they are shouting, play with intensity. Our responsibility is to follow them. The band follows the worship leader. Sometimes the drummer wants to increase the volume every eight bars, but sometimes we need to just stay where we are for awhile. Let the leader lead; don’t cause a mutiny on stage.

During prayer time, I try not to just sing songs, because people tend to stop praying and just sing along. I have a few songs on hand, and sometimes I go with something unplanned. But I mostly repeat a basic four chord progression, that way we can increase intensity or mellow out without breaking the flow or having to give the band a lot of instruction. I encourage all worship leaders and band members to learn the number system, that way the worship leader can flash a number and everyone can change chords together.

If we’re not singing songs, what do we sing? I just sing my prayers. It’s that simple. I also sing scripture. If the speaker has a scripture they have used, I go to that passage and sing from it spontaneously. That will spark ideas of other scriptures and other prayers. Whatever is in you will come out of you, so devour the Bible.

I try not to sing AT people, but to stand in the gap and sing it from my own perspective. If we’re praying for addictions, I try not to say “Set THEM free,” but I say “Set ME free.” It’s less condescending.

Keep one ear to God and one eye on the people. What is the Lord saying? Where is He leading? At the same time, are the people engaged? Are they bored? Do they not know the words? Don’t be so lost in the moment that you forget that your purpose is to lead others.

When you hit the vein, stay there. Sometimes you’ll be singing along and all of a sudden something powerful comes out. Keep singing that.

The most important thing is to not only practice the music, but practice the Spirit. This is both with the worship team AND as an individual. Begin to sing Scripture during your personal prayer time, and it will come more naturally and more sincerely in a public setting. Everything we do on stage should be an outflow of what God is doing in us behind closed doors.

We get nervous when we aren’t singing something planned or making some kind of noise. Just relax, and give God some space. If we leave room for God to move, He will.

I Shall Not Be Moved

Many of you know that over the last two and a half weeks my family has been through a major health crisis with my sister, Elizabeth. She has had two separate tears (dissections) on the interior of arteries leading into her head, one of which had a sizable blood clot. Through the sheer terror of it, we have seen the hand of God at work in many, many ways. The fact that I was in Minneapolis when it happened was so great: I got to be the one to take my sister to the ER, and I got to be the one to take care of her kids. My parents were able to get all the way from Mexico to the Twin Cities in one day. Most importantly, the fact that my sister was already on blood thinners from blood clots she experienced during her pregnancy, unrelated to this issue, is what certainly prevented her from having a stroke. What are the chances of that? No chances; Just God.

The hardest part has been that just as things seem to be improving, something else happens that will send them back to the emergency room, churning up fear and discouragement. It has been like a roller coaster. Elizabeth is home now, walking through 30 days of difficult restrictions in order to allow the arteries to heal.

I’ve said for awhile that I’m not a great pray-er. I love to pray corporately, but I struggle when I’m alone. That’s why I journal, I worship. I’ve also always hated fasting; I’m the worst cheater. But having been confronted with the life-or-death crisis of someone I love dearly, all I want to do is pray. I’m in the middle of our camp season (week 4 of 6), and I’m trying to keep up with two kids, but doing this Daniel Fast has seemed like a luxury compared to what my sister has been living for the last three weeks. But I have felt the strength of God, and a resolve to fight in prayer and overcome through worship. It worked for Jehosaphat.

I want to share something really encouraging that has happened since this all began. About six weeks ago I began to realize that the tree in our front yard was being completely devoured by grotesque bag worms. They cocoon in a leaf, then they spin down on a web that’s about four feet long. Our tree looked like the flying swings at the carnival, only it was worms. It was so revolting. So finally I had a company come and pour heavy chemicals to kill the bag worms. I thought for sure we would lose the tree, because within 24 hours the leaves were completely dead. But they said it would be that way this summer, but next year it would come back.

The most amazing thing has happened. About four days ago I began to notice little green leaves sprouting. Now, the tree has almost completely recovered and is covered in bright green foliage, which camoflauges the old cocoons that are still hanging. You don’t see the brown anymore, all you see is green. I feel like it has been a miracle happening before my own eyes. And I’m holding onto that for my sister. Because even though the tree was devoured almost to the point of death, the roots were still strong. And if you know my sister, you know one thing: she’s strong.

Many people have asked how they can pray.

1.  Pray for complete healing. That the blood clots would dissolve. That the arteries would heal quickly.
2. Pray that she would not suffer any more dissections or at any time present any symptoms of stroke.
3. Pray that the excruciating headache she has had for three solid weeks would cease.
4. Pray that the peace of God and the comfort of the Holy Spirit would surpass our understanding.
5. Pray for Tory, Elizabeth’s husband, for strength and wisdom.
6. Pray that the green shoots of hope and wholeness would overtake the remnants of what has happened.

I love Johnny Cash’s version of the hymn “I Shall Not Be Moved.” Just like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.

I'm Over Being Cool

There’s something about being a parent that finally forces you to let go of your own self-image as a cool person. Currently almost all of my shirts have a stain somewhere by the neck from Lincoln’s spit up. That is not only uncool, it’s completely disgusting. This morning I put on an outfit that may not be the apex of cool, but I look good in it. That is a higher priority now. I can’t even talk about my hair.

I’m realizing that I am now a full-fledged adult. I am a parent; there is no more sleeping in. When the gas tank says ¼, I get gas. That was a big one. I have now accepted that my decisions must be made based on functionality and productivity and the effect on others. I no longer have the luxury of cool.

You know what? Our churches are full of people like me: People that are over being cool. They don’t have the time, money or energy to constantly obsess about being cool. Occasionally they have a better day on the cool spectrum, but it is no longer the goal in their life. Their days are made up of decisions about their children’s safety and nutrition. They are trying to make their money last as long as their month. They are working on complicated marriages, or trying to balance single parenthood with work and occasional enjoyment. They look at college students and while they may be a little jealous, they see their coolness as being rooted in insecurity and even some selfishness.

I think we do way too many things in church because they are cool. We eliminate programs, institute practices because some cool kids somewhere wrote a book said that’s what they did to be cool. But how does it play out in the lives of our people?

When we eliminated Sunday School did we think about the fact that those teachers were now uninvolved in the weekly life of the church, not to mention the discipleship of other believers? When we turned out the lights, did we realize that we can no longer tell if people are singing along or standing there uncomfortably? When we taught the latest song did we take the time to look at the lyrics and see if they are actually theologically correct, or did we do it because it has a great groove? Save it for the night club. That’s where the cool people go.

There may be things that work out to be cool that really are the best for a particular community. But are we really asking ourselves the harder questions about why our churches look the way they do? I’d love to know some of the cool-factors that have been instituted in your church, and why they did or didn’t work for the overall picture.

Let’s get over being cool and be ourselves, if we can figure out who that is. Let’s get on with solving real problems and helping real people find their place in the body of Christ.

Take me back

Tonight I’m cleaning out the office, going through all our old CDs, packing them into a box. Actually, 95% of them are Wayne’s. He’s the music guy in our house. If it wasn’t for him, I would still only be singing from the hymnal. You think I’m joking. I’m BAD about listening to music. Thank God I married a music buff.

You can definitely tell we came of age in the 90s. And it’s all Christian; secular music was definitely off limits. Carmen, Michael W. Smith, Ray Boltz, Crystal Lewis, Hillsong, Hillsong United, Winds of Worship, Rebecca St. James. Then there’s all the stuff we recorded in college at NCU: One Accord, Come Now Your Kingdom, Make Me New, Chorale. And then all my early CDs, with their first and second covers because the first ones were always SO bad.

I put in Winds of Worship 12. It’s like I can smell the pear-vanilla candle that I burned in my apartment when I would pray. All the things I was struggling with, the people who blessed and complicated my life, it’s like I’m right there. I was just so hungry for God, so desperate to please Him, so diligently seeking His will for every decision.

Am I still that hungry? Or is my relationship with God like a comfortable marriage where people know each other but it has lost its passion?

It’s good to remember.

What takes you back when you hear it?

Chile, mi patria- Chile, my homeland

Some of you may not know, but I spent my high school years living with my family in Chile. We have still not made contact with many close friends; neither do we know the condition of the house I grew up in. But a few people have managed to post their status on Facebook, or have called on Skype.

I know that everyone is feeling compassion fatigue from what has already happened in Haiti. That’s why I wrote Pictures of Tragedy, because sometimes it gets old to me and I get numb to the suffering of others. But that doesn’t make it go away for the people who are living it.

I want to make giving available if people want to give. My family is intimately connected with hundreds of Chileans. I encourage you to go to my dad’s website, www.mikeshields.org, you can make a contribution there. They will get it to real people.

This is an email sent to my mom from a close friend in Chile, and I’ve translated as closely as I can. I’m disturbed how the media has made it sound as if there’s only one building that has collapsed, when in fact every house has major damage, and some entire communities have been washed out to sea by the tsunami. This is her story of what happened to her and her family Saturday night, and members of her extended family in other parts of Chile. Her name is Isabel and she is a theology professor and a cancer survivor.

“This earthquake has been much worse than we ever prepared for. In the area where we live, we’ve been without power since Saturday 2/27 at 3:34am. We’ve had 150 aftershocks. This morning, of the 7 we’ve had, the strongest has been a 4.5 in Santiago and a 7 in Concepcion. The earthquake was an 8.5 in Santiago and 9 at the epicenter. Tonight they will cut the water where we live for two days, so you can see it’s been very complicated.

I’m okay, but I need to get my head checked because I’m not feeling too well. During the earthquake a heavy jar fell on my head right in the area of my titanium plate, and I’ve had a lot of pain for the last two days.

How was it for me? It was so surreal. The movement woke me… but as someone who is accustomed to earthquakes, you expect it to end in a few seconds, so I wasn’t scared at first… but then it kept going longer and increasing in intensity, and you could hear the sound of the earth. Immediately all the car alarms went off, and everything started falling and breaking, I couldn’t see a thing because I had all the curtains drawn, but I heard this terrible sound of things crashing… I stood up on the bed, and from a dresser that’s past the foot of the bed, a place where I keep books and decorations, plus a space for the TV, things started flying at me. I tried to hold on to the television, but the motion each time was more brutal, it was like a powerful jolting from side to side. Once the intensity began to diminish I got down from the bed in the pitch blackness, but I was trapped by a bookcase that had fallen over right in front of the door. I felt desperate because there was no light…I couldn’t get out, I called to my mother but she was sobbing. So I had to start carefully and patiently in the total darkness to try to unblock the door. When I was finally able to get out, the door to my mother’s room was stuck shut. The poor thing came out in like a panic and just kept sobbing… finally Walter got there, his room had fractured, so it took him awhile to get out. We tried to calm my mom down, but it was difficult because the aftershocks kept coming. That’s how our day began, in the middle of the night...

But it’s worse in other areas, in San Antonio the sea swallowed up 200 cabins. In Santa Cruz, the 6^th region, where we vacation, where my dad’s family is from, the house where we spent our summers, it’s gone. A cousin who was recently married spent her honeymoon in a little house owned by her in-laws. They had that little house and a restaurant. They survived the tsunami but the ocean took the house, the restaurant, 200 chickens, horses, vehicles… it took the place where they got married, it took the whole town. Getting a connection has been almost impossible, but she managed to contact us and cried and cried on the phone, absolutely desperate. They were on a hill, and they spent the night there, standing up…

Fortunately I found this place with internet access… what more can I say.”