Seaford Baptist Church Blog

Dear worship choir and potential worship choir members,

I am thrilled with the response to the worship choir, both of those of you who are participating and of those in the rest of the church body. I continue to believe that this group is going to make a significant difference in the life of Seaford Baptist Church in these next months and beyond.

Regardless of whether you are sensing God’s leadership to participate at this time, Here are some specific things for which you can pray regarding this ministry: Pray that God’s kingdom work would genuinely be done through this ministry, pray for the spiritual growth of each person who is serving within the ministry, and pray for me that I might be able to continue to fight for the time needed to study well the songs so that I might effectively lead and challenge the church body from the songs which we are doing.

Here are the songs we will rehearse tomorrow evening, where to find a recording and when we plan to sing them. I hope to see you here.

In case it looked as if there was no room for more people on the risers this past Sunday, please know that we own twice that many risers, and I hope to add one set for this next Sunday.

Also, I have the music to “Unto the Lamb” and we may take a look at that tomorrow night as well. If you missed the link to that last week, you can find it on the church blog by clicking here

Gene

Worship Choir

Wednesdays 7:45 PM, MPR

Sunday’s, 9:50 AM, Worship Center 5

Dear friends,

I have been praying and thinking hard now about the future direction of the worship ministry at Seaford and believe that I am following God’s leadership to say that it is time for us to resume the ministry of a choir to lead every week in Sunday morning worship. The timing was not right last summer when I returned to this position, but I believe that we are now ready. I believe that a re-tooled, re-imagined experienced of Worship Choir is the next critical step in the development of the worship ministry at Seaford.

If there was a way that I could, I would love to reboot our image of what such a choir is and what it does. I hope that at least you will return with an open heart and mind to see the direction that he will lead us.

We begin immediately. I am not a great advance planner. I’m sure there would be advantages to starting in a few weeks but I believe that now is time to act. I urge you to pray about joining me in this ministry, it is my prayer that it will genuinely be a partnership in the gospel. (Phil. 1:5)

Here are some of the basics that I want to see us emphasize in this spring season.

1.      The name of this group is Worship Choir. Please help me to use this title. The name is important. We are not just a choir nor are we just a group of people worshipping. There are all kinds of choirs doing all styles of music. We are a worship choir. It is the dream of my heart, the mission of my life, to help people to know and to honor God. I want to lead a group of people to acknowledge that we have much to learn and much to see that we don’t yet know or see concerning who God is. It is a constant spiritual battle for me to engage in genuine worship, for me to be constantly reminded that God is God and that I am not, to remember that God is the only one worthy of worship. Because I am very prone to listening to Satan’s lies that a thousand other things are really more interesting than God is. I ask you to pray for me as I lead this group that we don’t let ourselves off the hook. So we are not just a choir.

2.      We are also not just a group of people worshipping. A choir, by definition, is a group of people working together, doing the same thing at the same time for the same purpose. Choir creates the opportunity for people of varying degrees of musical ability to participate. Everyone cannot sing solos. Not everyone can lead worship with a microphone in their hand. But everyone can sing in a choir, and the collective effort of all of us, with our varied gifts and abilities, God can use to do wonderful things.

3.      What will we do?

a.       We will sing anthems (specials if you are more familiar with that term) It will take a few weeks for us to get up to speed to be able to do that, But it is my intent for us to sing full anthems as often as we can get them prepared.

b.      We will focus even more strongly on leading worship. That means that in rehearsal, I want to see us working hard to actually learn our parts to the worship songs.

4.      Who are you and what did you do with Gene? I am prepared to have you use music, both for the worship songs and for anthems. I don’t have all the details of how to do this worked out. We need some folders and I don’t think we yet have enough, but I am working on that.

5.      I want us to be loud. I mean it. Loud! That means a couple of things. I really need every single voice that we can find to sing with us. I want to help you to know your music well enough so that you can be confident. I am in the process of instructing the sound guys to work to get the best possible sound from the choir at all times during the service. That means there is no Sunday when we are not singing and leading. That means we need to be offering our best all the time.

6.      I want to change what you listen to in your car (or when you work out, or whatever you do when you listen to music). I’m not a person who believes you should only listen to Christian music, or only listen to music for that matter. I listen to different kinds of things. However, I do make good use of the time in the car when I am learning music and I would love to encourage more of that behavior among choir members. I’m going to work hard to either provide you with recordings or show you where you can download them for very little cost.

7.      Not too hard, but not too easy either. I want to strike a delicate balance. This is the musical group for everyone. So, I want to make it accessible to anyone in the church who would like to participate. So, I have to be careful in talking about a lot of rehearsing, listening to music and working hard to do our best, because I don’t want to scare people off. On the other hand, I want us to do our best. I believe people want to be a part of something that does things well, so I will also work hard to do that. That means that I both want people to be at practice every single week, but I know that no one can really do that and this needs to be the group that can accommodate varying schedules. Also, I very much want the worship choir to be a musically satisfying experience for persons with strong gifts and training in music. We very much need those people in choir. So I hope to take time to warm up voices as well as do some minor voice and musical instruction. It is a  tall order to balance those, but that is the direction for which I am aiming.

8.      Recruit, welcome enthusiastically, but be careful. I am re-learning something I’ve known for a long time. It’s important to be friendly, but that’s way too easy. What it is both harder and more biblical is to offer friendship, true biblical community. We say in Seaford 101, people are not looking for a friendly church, they are looking for friends. If we want people to minister with us, that means we must open up our hearts and our lives to them as well. That is the biblical model of how Jesus welcomed people onto his ministry team. So do recruit, do be welcoming. But if you pressure someone or attempt to make them feel guilty if they don’t believe this is a good time for them to sing, that will be counter productive. Be gracious. Love draws. Guilt pushes people away.

I have much more to say about these things, but many have stopped reading already so I will stop.

We begin immediately. I hope to see you tomorrow night, Wednesday evening at 7:45 in the multi-purpose room! I plan for us to lead worship this Sunday.

Gene

Good evening worship choir (and the rest of the worship ministry)

I spent this afternoon preparing for our rehearsal tomorrow night. I continue to discover new music that excites me. I’d like to have you listen to a you tube video of the song, though I’m concerned you’ll think I’m just impressed with the size of choir and orchestra in the video. I am impressed with that of course, but that’s not the point. I don’t think such a huge choir and orchestra (as in the video) is needed for us to do this song, which is incredible. More importantly, what I see happening in this video (which is rather poor technically) is a vision of what I want to see happening in our worship services at Seaford. Would you join me in seeing that come about?

Here is the you tube link. The son is called “Unto the Lamb”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDdE8s_y4c4

I don’t yet have the music, but I am working on it.

Here is the agenda for tomorrow night’s rehearsal from the standpoint of the worship choir.

Band and choir members, please note that I will be bringing the choir over to work together at the end of the evening. That is important for this week since the set up is different.

Regarding tomorrow’s practice: The sound for the band is not set up because we need to tear down immediately following the rehearsal for a wedding this Saturday. Also, the rhythm section is not together now, but we will fix that for Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, it is my plan to have the rhythm section on the left side of the stage as you are facing the stage from the congregation.

I hope to see you tomorrow,

Gene

What is the significance of one life, one voice? How do you know that your presence in a worship leading group would not be the very one that would encourage a unique set of people within the congregation to worship? In most lists that I’ve seen from writers and theologians concerning the purposes of the church, worship is listed first. Though there is a critical place for private worship, it is obvious that the expectation of scripture throughout is that God’s people will gather regularly and faithfully to worship. In the early church, they seemed to meet every single day! Acts 2:46–47 (ESV) ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” This passion to be together and to worship God exuberantly was a significant part of the atmosphere that led to the Lord adding to their number daily in an amazing harvest of spiritual new births! None of us are fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives if we are not regularly, faithfully and overtly worshipping God. What does it mean to worship? The shortest and most clear definition I have seen is that worship is the “expression of reverence and adoration of God.” ^[1]

So what does this have to do with the worship choir? There are people who you and only you can reach. There is a segment of people in this community and this body that your worshipping presence in the worship choir would encourage strongly. Your involvement in this group is not just about whether it works for you and your schedule. How do you know that God is not calling you to do this? It’s hard for me to imagine something more important than helping people worship. A person becoming a faithful and consistent worshipper of God is the path to greater joy, the path to greater spiritual strength to overcome sin, the path to a greater experience of God’s peace. It’s not enough to know that God is awesome in our minds. God created us in such a way that we will not experience that at a level in our lives that makes any practical difference unless we are faithfully and authentically expressing praise to God with a body of believers.

I plead with you to seek God as to whether or not you cannot move things around in your life so that you can serve in this ministry group. We need you. The benefit to this church body, this community and to you personally I believe will be great.

Here is the rehearsal plan for tonight

Seaford worship ministry,

I hope you are having a terrific Monday. Thank you for praying for me last Thursday. I don’t think my thesis defense could have gone any better than it di. I’ve got a little clean up work to do but no new writing to accomplish. I am relieved to be putting that project behind me. However, I am hugely grateful for the things that I learned through my work on this degree. I have never had a more fruitful or productive formal learning experience. It took six years. Many things happened over that time, some wonderful, some tragic and a lot of things in between.

I have wanted for a few weeks to show you an article that God used to redirect me into a focus on a worship choir. It is written by an arranger named Phil Barfoot and is called, “Are Choirs Still Relevant,” It is a short article, but I think you will find it motivational and encouraging. You can read that here.

Worship choir is rehearsing this week on Thursday evening! I didn’t think it wise for us to miss a week of rehearsal right now (there is a week off coming soon) and since Upward Awards Night is Wednesday evening, we would not be able to rehearse at our normal time. So we will rehearse in the multipurpose room from 6:30-7:30. At 7:30 I will accept all hands that are willing to assist in resetting the stage for Sunday morning. Among other things, I hope to set up four sets of choir risers. This work should not take long, everyone should be on their way by 8:00 PM or before.

Here is the agenda for this weeks rehearsal.