Worship

[ ]When I left Music College I came home with a dilemma. How could I merge the two main thrusts of my life; my piano skills and my desire to know God and serve Him? Within a couple of years, God answered that question for me. I started attending a Pentecostal church in Newcastle which my wife had attended before going to University and where I had been baptised seven years earlier.  The concept of music as a ministry in the church had not really been developed and there was no band of musicians, just a pianist and a Hammond organist. The organist was always there but the pianist was just whoever happened to be there first. There was no rota and, on occasion, the church service would start with one piano player and then switch,  if a better player arrived later. It didn’t seem that a classically trained musician could fit in very well.

Everything changed when, a little over a year later, a professional worship director began touring the Pentecostal churches in England speaking about how to set up a music ministry in your church. The man, Bruce McGrail was training churches how to minister in music, along the lines of the Levites as recorded in the book of Chronicles in the Bible. Our church invited him come and teach all the musicians in the church about biblical worship and setting up a musical team. He was a very fine teacher and a lovely man and at the end of two weeks he suggested to the church leaders that I should be the one to lead the group of musicians. What a shock for me! I wasn’t expecting that and did not think of myself as able to be a musical director. My musical skills were of course well developed, but my leadership skills were just in embryo form. It seemed to me like the blind leading the blind.  However, God had other ideas. I felt that it was from God and stepped out in obedience with some trembling.  So commenced my training in worship. I knew I could not do the job without God, but with God, all things were possible. How wonderful God is and how able He is to take a willing servant way beyond what he could ask or imagine.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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