Last Sunday was my first time back on the worship team. It had been about 2.5 years! I love singing and playing music, but I had forgotten how challenging it can be for various reasons.
Of course in my rose-colored memories, we would just show up and "get our praise on," singing our hearts out in perfect harmony. The reality though was that we had no sound equipment, few songs in common, and we practiced in a shared flat, which the neighbors must have loved! We worked hard then too, but I think there was a unique pleasure in having a worship team where there previously hadn't been.
Now the worship team is huge and we have so much equipment it doesn't really fit in the room...if you still want to fit the people in, that is. It takes a lot of time to carry around and set up and sometimes the singing sounds all wrong if one person's microphone isn't working right. We have a huge list of songs now but each one is disliked by at least one person in the group. Some people sing too loudly and others sing too softly.
There will always be something to complain about, but I realized that one of the biggest challenges of it all is relating to everyone. I wish we could just do our thing and not have to do conflict resolution. As I go home, I feel stung by Person A's criticism, resentful of Person B's inadequate song choices, and guilty about my own selfish reactions to it all (these are just hypothetical, but you get the idea).
It is hard to be in fellowship, and I pray, "Thank You, Lord, for helping us to sharpen one another." That's what it's about. We come expecting to be used and to make something beautiful, but we have to go through a lot of "stuff" first. Humility sometimes seems like an unreachable aim!
Oh, dear..... I can't think of anything quite parallel in my experience, but I really AM having some interesting challenges with my YM intern. We are an odd couple for sure, with gifts that really do compliment one another perfectly, but he struggles with humility; I struggle with confidence in some areas....and it is the first time in my life I've had to think about "being old" compared to everyone else. Yipes. I do feel like it is a sort of dance, and will only be beautiful if we are constantly trusting to the Holy Spirit to provide LOTS of assistance. I expect you must feel somewhat the same.
ReplyDeleteThat is a lot like what I was talking about! There is so much character development involved and just the need to acknowledge that we are all different and need to complement (and compliment) each other.
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