“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow.”

– A.W. Tozer

We have an old piano at our house … my husband Rich learned to play on it as a kid, I have tinkered on it, our son taught himself to play the “Up” theme song on it. Uncle Reubs has had a go of writing songs on it, and so has Brooke … but the truth is, it quickly goes out of tune and needs someone to come in and retune it regularly (true confession – we are not very good at making that happen).

If I’m honest my heart is a little like my piano. It quickly goes out of tune with God’s way. Like the hymn writer of old wrote in Come Thou Fount, my heart is “prone to wander” and in its fickleness needs constant retuning.

Worship is a tuning fork

For us as worship teams, Sundays are opportunities to call people back to who they are in light of who God is – to lift their eyes higher and to remind them Whose they are.

Praise the Lord, all you nations;
    extol him, all you peoples.
 For great is his love toward us,
    and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord

Psalm 117 (NIV) is the shortest Psalm in the Bible and yet it is key to who we are as a community and what we do. It is seen by scholars and pastors alike as a “call to worship”. And “call to worship” is what we do as the worship team every time we set foot on a platform or open our mouths in a backroom or at a team night or a studio writing session.

Our mandate and mission aren’t primarily to stir expectation or elicit faith or get people to sing but our job is to remind the Church that when we gather as God’s people OUR GOD IS ALREADY PRESENT and, because He is already here, we are invited and called by God to worship!!!!!  Check that out. Worship leaders don’t extend the invitation to worship God, God Himself invites us in to worship Him.

Worship is the one thing that we can do for God, as worship itself requires someone lower to put themself in a position of adoration and affection towards someone of greater value.  God cannot worship Himself but He knows that worship for us as humans is grounding, formational and shapes us. It makes us more human, more like He intended for us to be, and it tunes us and puts us in step with his Spirit.

So this month when you walk into the spaces where you will lead the Church in worship… remind yourself God is already there, He issues an invitation to worship and your job as a worship leader is to help the Church respond with joy to that incredible, mind-blowing and astounding fact.

Come, let us worship.

Cass