This month, I will be 48 years old. I have been involved in Church music leadership for 30 years. I have been called a song leader, music director, Minister of Music, Worship Pastor and Worship Leader. These titles reflect the transformation of Church music, specifically Southern Baptist Church music over these three decades.
I was in on the ground floor of the "praise and worship movement" of the 70's and 80's. Writers like Jack Taylor and his "The Hallelujah Factor" and Don McMinn's "Enter His Presence" taught us that real worship involves intimacy. John Wyatt, then of Lake Country Church in Fort Worth taught about the "Praise Transition", how to transform your church into one that worships Jesus with fervor and intimacy. This praise and worship movement gained ground through the 80's and 90's and was reflected even in the services at our conventions. New songs and older songs blended together with the teaching that worship was a personal and intimate encounter with our Almighty God.
Teaching about worship and transitioning a church is no easy task, it requires us all to examine who we are and what we do and bring that all in line with what pleases God. It involves taking our likes and dislikes and placing them before the Lord so that He can mold us into His image. Moving towards intimacy can make some believers uncomfortable and some don't mind expressing that discomfort.
The "praise and worship movement" that began as a wellspring and became a flood has been reduced to a trickle. It has been replaced with "Contemporary Worship" and "Traditional Worship" denoting stylistic personal preference or K-Love vs. The Gaithers.
Worship involves intimacy "a table for two for you and Jesus". Out of this real, intimate worship comes a "fire in your bones" for sharing your faith, studying God's Word, serving in His church and making a difference in our community. Real worship pleases Him long before it pleases us.
A.W. Tozar wrote in Worship The Missing Jewel "The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place – worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ."
