The heart of worship

My outreach group is amazing. When we were first put into outreach groups I really didn't know any of my group, however since being put into outreach groups we have spent a fair bit of time together, and now I love my team! We play silly games in outreach prep, all go to the same church each Sunday.
The most fun time I have had with them has to be leading worship. Some of the outreach teams have got fully formed bands from the worship school. We however don't have anybody from the worship school. Many of us don't have much, or any experience in playing in a worship band. However when we lead worship one Thursday in the school it was amazing! We were not a perfect band, we weren't always in time, we weren't always in the right key- but we worshipped! It was really cool because at one point everything pretty much fell apart musically, so we all gave up and just sang. However I have never seen everyone get into worship so much! Everyone was shouting and cheering and dancing and just having a great time with God. We then kept it together when we started the next song, and actually were pretty good- if I do say so myself :-P We had those members of the band who weren't playing, come forward and give hugs to anyone who wanted. We were singing "Arms of Love" and basically the idea is that although God shows himself to us in many different ways you can't reach out and touch him in the same way you can a person. So sometimes he asks people to be his physical arms. Our team was there to give a hug to anyone who felt they wanted or needed a hug. This is something we have done in the school a fair bit, but never during worship. People responded though and most of the school came forward- some a couple of times. I felt incredible privileged to have been part of that band as we just worshipped God regardless of what happened. Apparently the worship school all went into their class afterwards and said "See, that's how you let go of perfectionism and just worship". It was certainly a lesson I learnt, that God doesn't care how you sound, he cares where your heart is at.

After leading at the school, the next Sunday we lead worship again at our church. It was really occasion for God to teach us another lesson - "Never assume that God will work the same way twice". We used the same set of songs, but with a completely different group of people. The school are very really to jump and shout and really are open to doing anything as part of their worship. North's average age is a bit higher than the school's and some there find it hard to jump and shout, some just don’t feel comfortable and some might want to but just don't quite know what to do. So the reaction was very different, and the way that the Holy Spirit moved was different. We did the hug idea again, to see how that went down. Once Amber had explained that they were there to be God's arms of love and give a hug to anyone who wanted on, the others stood at the front. Apparently not everyone understood and this one lady came up to Amy and gave her a hug, thinking that she was there to receive one! Even so it was good and we had a chance to see what work with different groups of people, what looked like it had potential and what really wasn't so appropriate with the different groups. At the end of the day though, God showed up and really touched people- including us- so it was all good!