church . Congregational singing alone wrongly becomes the definition of worship . How do you personally best model worship times on a given Sunday morning ?
[ Christine ] Several ways . First of all , when you lead worship , meaning you are serving as a model to inspire other people to connect with God through physical , tangible , sound , worship , praise , which are the expressions of worship … you ’ re really just opening the curtain , taking away the veil of what happens in private . That is the best way to model publicly among a group of people , and to have a consistent private time with the Lord where you already know where to connect .
You become like a GPS , you have to know the way in or else you ’ re going to get everybody lost . You have to be connected to the satellite or else your signal is not going to go through . It ’ s very easy to sing a song and interpret it , we ’ re musicians . We ’ re dexterous at art . That ’ s what we do ! But it ’ s not so easy to really connect with the Father for the sake of Him blessing His children . I think a lot of it comes with the concept of what leading worship is . I have heard consistently throughout the church the comment , “ We ’ re going to minister to the people ”. And yes , ministry means service , so we do serve the people , but when we are in a worship leading moment we are not ministering to the people . We are ministering to the heart of God . Singing praises to the one who give us the ability to do so by keeping us alive and providing for us every day . In turn when we bless the heart of God , we minister to the heart of God , we serve the heart of God with our praises . He comes and inhabits , and He is the one that blesses the people .
We can ’ t pretend to be transformers of other people ’ s lives through our expressions of worship . That ’ s absurd . There is nothing we can do or have in and with of ourselves that will provide transformation to anyone , it ’ s always God . So , connecting with Him and being aware that everything we are in those moments of public connection is a model to the people that are watching , and enough for God to do something in the people and the people to get blessed , it really has nothing to do with us . It has everything to do with our connection with Him , thats what makes people feel inspired , because we all long for that connection , we all long to be in with God . When we see someone else doing it and doing it well in spirit and truth , wholeheartedly without pretention … they want to do the same thing because it ’ s just natural to want to be connected to God . That ’ s what I ’ ve learned over the years and there are a lot of stumbling stones and a lot of learning experiences where I lost my focus in the past , and I thought it was about me and how pretty I sing and that I could push the hearts of the people . But no , it has nothing to do with me . Everything is His . Nothing is mine . So , I do very well to let Him have the platform and step aside and let Him take the front and center .