Dr. David W. Manner is the Associate Executive Director for the Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists. He blogs at http://kncsb.org/blogs/dmanner . You can follow him on Twitter: @dwmanner.
If I sing like my favorite worship artist, but do not have love, I am just a loud kick drum or cheap crash cymbal.
If I have the gift of creative verbal transitions and understand the mystery and knowledge of chord charts and choir scores, and if I have the faith that can move the emotions of an entire congregation, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give the old sound system to a poor congregation, install the new one all by myself, and then post it on Facebook so all my friends will know, but do not have love, I won’t get any likes.
Love is patient with a congregation that is slow to change,
Love is kind to the tech team.
Love doesn’t envy the size of another church,
It doesn’t brag at the worship pastor’s lunch meeting,
It doesn’t incessantly promote itself on YouTube.
It doesn’t publicly complain about its players or pastor,
It doesn’t use its present ministry just to climb the ladder toward a future ministry
It doesn’t lose its temper when the lead guitarist misses the bridge
or keep track of the times it has happened before.
Love is not happy with worship team spiritual apathy
so it encourages a culture of mutual accountability.
It always protects confidentialities,
always trusts the team members,
always hopes biblical worship is central,
and always rehearses just one more time.
Love never coasts.
But where there are creative verbal transitions, they will cease;
where there are beautiful voices to sing amazing songs, they will be silent;
where there is musical knowledge, it will pass away.
For we kind-of know and can kind-of talk about worship,
but when Perfect Worship occurs, the kind-of will disappear.
When I was a child, I sang childish songs.
When I became a man, I traded childish songs for adult songs…but still just songs.
For now we see hazily, as through the mist of a fog machine. But soon the haze will evaporate and the room will be completely clear.
Now I kind-of know; Then I will fully know, even as I am fully known.
Until that time, until we fully know, we must do three things: Have Faith that God will help us; Hope that we are getting it right; and Love God and each other
As a worship leader, love often seems to be the hardest…but it is also the greatest.