For most of my early years leading worship, I planned by feel.I'd think about the sermon topic, pick songs that matched, and arrange them in whatever order felt right. Fast song to open, something quieter to settle people down, a reflective song before the preacher stepped up. Emotional pacing —...
There's a feeling I've had in certain services that I've never quite known how to name.It's not boredom, exactly. It's more like waiting. You're sitting in the service — or standing at the front — and somewhere in the back of your mind is the sense that the real thing...
There's a moment in rehearsal that I've learned to dread.You're working through a new song with the worship team — one that's genuinely beautiful, technically demanding, harmonically interesting. The musicians are locked in. The vocalists are tight. And then you step back and realize: no one in a congregation is...
I still remember the first time I sat through a worship service and didn't understand a word.It wasn't ancient history. It was my mid-twenties, traveling in a country where I didn't speak the language. A friend had invited me to his church, and I said yes without thinking through what...
There's a document called the Didache. Most Christians have never heard of it, which is part of what makes it interesting.It's a short manual — some kind of handbook for new Christian communities — written somewhere around the end of the first century. Maybe earlier. Scholars argue. Early enough to...
Sometime I came across a line that stopped me mid-page. It was in a history of early Christian worship, and the author mentioned — almost in passing — that for the first three centuries of the church, Christians had no purpose-built church buildings. None. For most of that time, no...