Worship (Part 1)

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name."
-Psalm 103:1
      I'm going to do something I don't do too often on this blog, but since it is a blog I should probably do it more often. Today I'm going to talk about my experiences and hopefully it will be interesting and informative. More specifically, I'm going to talk about my experiences with worship. First though, what is worship? Worship is giving honor and revering something, normally a god. For this case I am going to talk about worshiping God, who is really the only person worth our worship and praise. God is glorious, powerful, holy, awesome, great, almighty, omnipresent, and the list goes on and on.
      The first time I ever encountered worship was probably from the day I was old enough to go to church. My parents brought me to church every Sunday, which I thought was normal for kids. Every Sunday the children's service would start with a time of worship. When I say worship I mean someone playing guitar and singing songs, with everyone singing along. I'm sure the worship leader knew that it would take a lot of time for little kids like me to learn how to truly worship God, but they wanted us to start learning early, which is good.
      Most services I have ever attended, even at other churches, start with a time of worship. This was the case in my youth group. However, this time there was something different, I wanted to join the praise team. I had just started playing drums for a year or so, and since there was no current drummer I wanted to join. I thought it would be simple; just attend a practice or two and I would be playing drums for Sundays (and Saturdays). What I didn't know and didn't foresee was that I wouldn't be playing drums for a very long time. I had to wait until my freshman or sophomore year in high school to start playing. I wanted to join since I was in the seventh grade.
      It's not like I was a bad drummer or anything, just that the youth group leaders wanted me to learn the true heart of worship. As a praise team we would clean the bathrooms at church every Saturday, and I had to do it without even being able to play yet. I went to those practices every week for two or three years, and at times it was very frustrating. I wanted to know why they wouldn't just let me play. I waited longer than anyone had ever had to wait to join praise team, and I seriously doubted that they wanted me to join at all. It's not like me to quit easily though, and I kept pushing through, and eventually I got to play.
      When I started playing drums, it was rough. I thought I was good, but looking back, I really wasn't that good. I even made a sort of motto because of how bad I was; a drummer's primary and most important job is to keep time, no matter what. If the drummer starts to speed up or slow down, it is very hard for the band to correct that. If the band slows down or speeds up, it is the drummer's job to get the tempo back. I was terrible at keeping steady tempos, which really hurt the team. Whenever I have an opportunity to teach drums or just "coach" a praise team, I will tell the drummer to keep it simple and control the tempo.
      Then another change happened; people left praise team and other joined. Now I was one of the oldest and I felt that I had to help lead the team. One of the new members played drums, so sometimes I would play piano. Now this was a very, very rough new praise team. I started to notice that the drummer was making the same mistakes I did, the guitarist sometimes didn't know what he was doing, and the singer didn't seem confident. I soon realized that I had to step up and do something about this, because it seemed other people didn't want to.
      Don't get me wrong, it's not like we didn't have talent. The problem was just that no one really took a step to lead the team and that caused long practices and awkward worship times on Sundays. So, much to my dismay, I started singing while playing piano. I am a terrible singer, so this was a very difficult choice to make, but I realized that somebody had to do something. Having a mic made it much easier to direct the team and also lead songs into new sections without serious miscommunication. Now this definitely didn't make us perfect, but it definitely helped the flow of worship times.
      Unfortunately, sometimes when people step up into a position of leadership, it gets to their head. That happened to me. Once I started "directing" the praise team, I often would get visibly frustrated and I would question why we couldn't be better. I seriously questioned how the youth group leaders let people on the praise team play, especially since they made me wait so long. I would say things like "come on, have you never heard this song before?", and, you get the point. I hope that I didn't seriously hurt anyone's feelings, and I'm very glad that I didn't say everything that came to my mind at that time.
      I am currently on the church's praise team, after graduating from high school. I sometimes still get frustrated, but this praise team has been playing together for some time, the leadership is already there, so I don't go as crazy. I pray that I don't do the things I did before and that I would be a blessing to the worship team. I am playing drums again, so I want to stick by my motto; my most important job is to keep the tempo. Nothing is more important than that, except that I have to worship God through my talents and with all my heart. (Sorry this was so long, but if you like this style of blog just comment below and I'll try to do more).
-Smart