My Worship Revolution

A couple times this summer Missio Dei Community has gotten together at my place for a time of music, prayer, and creativity.  We called it “Dwell,” a time for us to sit with God.  A time to pray together and ask for guidance as we head into the Fall as Missio Dei Community.

Worship through music isn’t something we’ve done a whole lot of since starting as a faith community.
Why? We want to create a comfortable place for anyone to join us and just have good conversation about faith and Jesus.
Let’s be honest.  If you don’t “get” the musical worship thing, 10 people in a circle in a living room singing Kumbaya seems a little weird. (FYI – we don’t actually sing Kumbaya. The songs are much better than that.)
As one respected leader once said to me, “Remove as much as the freak factor as possible.”

That being said, it’s also a huge part of who I am as a leader and who we are as followers of Jesus.
It’s a way for those of us who follow Christ and/or love music to connect to God.
And this seemed like an appropriate season to spend some time in prayer together.

We’ve been trying to incorporate more creative ways of connecting to God for people, too.
We’ve been spreading art supplies and altered books materials around the room for people as well.
One of my favorite parts about last month was my friend Todd joining us.
He ended up with my old job as a music teacher at Ceiba.
He grabbed an old 2nd guitar we have in the house and played along.
A little bit later he moved over to the piano and followed along on that.

With some people singing, and others doing art around the room, it created a really cool relaxed participatory feel.
So much worship music at churches today is about presentation, and it was fun to be able to freely express our prayers through different mediums and instruments without feeling the need to “rehearse” beforehand.
My friend Kevin recently described our community’s worship through music as being less like a concert and more like a campfire.
I like that. Stickin with it.
I’m looking forward to doing it again this weekend as we pray for our community as we launch into a new season of ministry this fall.
Feel free to join us.

How about you?
Just out of curiosity…musical worship, makes sense and you love it or not your thing and aren’t feeling the group karaoke?
I’d be especially interested to hear from my friends who don’t go to church regularly but have experienced it about what your perception was/is.