Something's brewing in the atmosphere...

 

A month ago tonight I found myself preaching in a church in Nelspruit to an audience that rounded out at just over 600 in an atmosphere which had nearly close to everyone present believing that anything was possible and that we were truly born to change the world. That night, huge faith stirred between preacher and audience as the life of God rose up within us in a significant way. People turned their lives over to Christ without much human prompting, repentance ran true, tears of joy and acceptance flowed strongly, blind eyes, deaf ears and other various healings of physical ailments were heralded without laying on of hands, and an uncommon unity that bypassed racial, economic and social lines was caught as something that looked extremely like the revivals of old was happening before our very eyes.

 

After 31 days of pondering this earth shaking night and the JobiJol camp as a whole, my heart has settled on five ingredients that contributed to what God did and is continuing to do. This is not an attempt to conjure up a recipe, but more just recognizing the fingerprints of heaven that are quickly becoming stronger and stronger.

1.       Missional friendships

-represented at this 4 day camp were multiple churches and personalities that came largely from the greater Johannesburg area but also from Nelspruit, Durban and Cape Town. This wasn’t a forced attempt at unity but rather the result of different layers of friendships that have been built over the last 4 to 5 years (and some longer). The camp, which happens every year in the December/January slot has gathered a momentum not because of strategic meetings, an organizational mandate or clever marketing but rather because of men and women whose hearts beat for the same thing, devoting themselves to building intentional friendships with the King and His Kingdom at the centre.

2.       High value of the bible

-What we are learning more and more these days is that God is faithful above all else to His Word. And with that as a cornerstone in our belief system we are beginning to have the audacity to believe what He says! So high on our agenda is to follow Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “preach the word” and to do so with a faith, knowing that “his word does not return to Him void."

3.       Recognizing the anointing of the Holy Spirit

-We didn’t all fast for days on end leading up to the camp. In fact, I came straight from holiday. But we are quickly understanding that the heavens were opened not by our pleas and rain-dances but by Jesus’ blood, never to be shut again. When Jesus declared that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you”, he might as well have shouted the child-hood adage of “OPEN GATES!” That Sunday night, a friend (Craig Herbert) and I met at our parked car to change shoes for the meeting, but quickly recognized that the Holy Spirit was stirring something special in our hearts. The shoes were abandoned and we prayed. Bold prayers. Open heaven type prayers. The Holy Spirit was with us, and we expected “to receive power.”

4.       A response of worship

-In every session of the camp, including the last one, the preaches culminated in us landing in worship. Or should I say taking off again in worship. It wasn’t a pre-camp decision but God so shifted our hearts from looking to push people to an emotional response, or to a manipulated altar call moment, but rather to recognizing that God was present and he was at work in the hearts and lives of the people there. It was in the worship that healings happened. It was in the worship that hearts were saved, that rejection was broken off, that the Holy Spirit filled people, that sin and addictions were broken, that lives were forever changed and commissioned. When Christ is lifted up all men will be drawn to Him.

 

 

That weekend in early January has left me indelibly changed. Grateful but not satisfied.

I love moments like these.

I love doing high ministry moments with mates like these.

But more than that, I love the momentum that these four days up country have created in me, in my peer group and in a generation who are beginning to respond to the something that is brewing in the atmosphere. 

Can you feel it?

NCMI SA Equip (Part four)

3 things that may have escaped your attention during worship at this years SA Equip:

1. Jono Warmington forgetting to switch on his amp
-picture this...opening night, Cornerstone Church bursting at the seams, the masses pushing right up to the stage counting down (almost to the state of delirium) with the countdown on the main screen, the kickdrum and bass come in right on queue, crying babies go unnoticed, every eye is excitedly rooted to the stage AND...worship leader Jono Warmington realises that his Vox AC 30 amp which is being mic-ed in the backroom had been forgotten to be switched on!

2. Stage dives on Night two
-On Friday morning, Grant Crawford and a panel of interviewees attempted to ask the question, "what does success look like?". Probably a more pertainent question after Thursday night's wild worship would have been, "what does a successful stage dive look like?". And I would have been the first to put my hand up in shouting out the answer, "anything except Werner Derckson's!"
After the usual fare of Bruce McAlpine and 5 excited teenagers (averaging 50kgs each) leaping off the stage into the outstretched arms of the seething crowd, a moment of pure joy was when Werner (not the lightest guy) prepped himself like an olympic athlete for his assault on gravity. The corporate groans of apprehension from the rest of the worshippers was only matched by the fear in the eyes of those who were going to have to perform a modern day miracle in catching the jump. That not one of them backed away shows that Tyrone Daniel's message of being Partners and not just Friends had truly hit home!

3. The red-hot worship of the Son of God
-for three days, over 5000 hands were lifted and +-2500 voices were raised, as together we exalted Christ Jesus. From all cities and towns from around Southern Africa, from churches big and small, black, white, rich and poor, young and old, the worship of our King became our common language and theme. This is the heartbeat of our lives and our mandate. Worship, that is not contained to a moment, to the church walls or to a certain key or style, but discipling nations to bow their hearts and bend their knees to the One and Only.
"Mission's exist because worship does not" (Matt Redman)
We've always known this, but something of this was recaptured in our hearts this past week.


Flight tickets to Joburg from Cape Town and back: R1800
Food for the week: R450
Buying that pretty girl a coffee: R10
Moments like these: priceless

NCMI SA Equip (part two)

3 things to bring you up to speed about night one...

1.       It was FULL

-upstairs, downstairs, the side hall, the mom’s rooms and even the floor space at the back was filled with lines and lines of people crowding into Cornerstone Church. And this was only just  Wednesday night!

2.       It was LOUD

-it’s always a great indicator of the temperature of hearts when the band are being drowned out by the passionate voices of the rest of the worshippers. Fresh new original songs were picked up on quickly and belted out with gusto while old favourites stirred hearts once again. The floor and roof was rattling and our souls rejoiced.

 

3.       It was UNIFIED

-agendas, histories, regions, individual church issues were left at the door as from the get go we set our eyes corporately on the object and the subject of our worship, Jesus.

 

“What unites us is not just our purpose, but chiefly it is our captivation with our King”

 

And if you missed last night but want to sound as if you were there, then make it a priority to throw in the phrase “it’s go time” into as many conversations as you can.

Worship Leading: Song Selection (Part 3)

Third part of three blogs on the basic lenses we look through when choosing worship songs for our corporate worship times.

1. Theological

2. Congregational

3. Seasonal

-Songs that carry the life of God. It may have the funkiest bass line, or the most incredible groove, but if it is not carrying the spark of the life of God then jettison it fast. Be wary of the trap that says, “it worked in the past so it must work again and again”.

-Songs that serve the church’s season. Again we must make it a priority to work in team with our local church leaders in this regard. Learn to carry a heart for the church. David in the Psalms was a man very in tune with the seasons of God and the seasons of his own soul and those of the people he lead. We are not “ra-ra” cheerleaders. Our worship times are not therapeutic pick me up times. We lead from where the people are at, and LEAD them to where God wants them to be. Again I must mention that we don’t pander to man centredness or emotions, but we do not deny them. That is Gnostic!

Worship Leading: Song Selection (Part 2)

  1. Theological

        2. Congregational

-Songs that are not just personal favourites of ours. It is vital that we remind ourselves that leading worship means LEADING! Worship leaders have a tendency (another generalisation) to have a rebellious slant that surfaces from time to time as it becomes “their ministry” and they try to push through their agenda’s. This is unhelpful and prideful. Be involved in the community of the church, be submitted to the leadership. Have conversations with them often around the culture of worship in your local church. Ask for feedback.

-Songs that are easy to sing. On a very practical note, consider the keys you are singing in. Too low and the song hardly ever gets off the ground, too high and you alienate half the congregation. Again, remember the leading is about the people who are following you!

Don’t introduce too many new songs too quickly. Most people in our congregations only sing the songs we’re singing once a week, whilst we as worship leaders play them at practice, at home, in our cars all on top of our Sunday meetings. So we definitely will get bored of them quicker. But again we must remind ourselves that this is not about us! Our aim at a base level is to get the people singing, not primarily to get their feet tapping.

3. Seasonal

 

Worship Leading: Song selection

Here are 3 criteria/lenses that I find helpful when choosing songs for our corporate worship times.

1.       Theological

2 aspects:

-Songs that are God oriented, not “me” focused. The great error in the modern church (I’m generalising here) is getting stuck in an adolescent type phase where everything is all about me. Our Christianity becomes a roller coaster experience based on feelings, circumstances and emotions when we denigrate our worship of God to what Christian Smith (author of “Soul Searching”) calls “Christian Moralistic therapeutic deism.” Worship leaders, we are not attempting to become the soundtrack to our congregations lives! Count the number of times personal pronouns of “me”, “I” and the like crop up in the songs we are singing. Make sure we are not just adding to our prevailing culture of idolatry by presenting them with an Oprah-esque type God who can fit in their pocket.

- Songs that are New Covenant in nature. We need to keep forefront in our minds that worship did not tear the heavens open, the blood of Christ did! Worship does not take us into His presence. The blood does! It is again idolatry of the grandest nature when we elevate our worship to a status that is not biblical. So sing about what Jesus has done! Revel in His goodness. Songs that remind people that we have direct access to The Father. Christ is our mediator, not our corporate worship times!

2.       Congregational

3.       Seasonal

The other two will be outworked in the next couple of blogs.

The burning ones

Just sitting behind the sound desk at Life Changers, with my foot tapping and my heart singing along with the first band of a marathon worship session today. It's the 12 hour Burn Worship Event that has swung into town (or at least into Tableview). The whole concept of these days are to create space where we gather around the simplicity and at the same time profound nature of worship and "burn" together. Running with the concept that was birthed from an idea from friends of ours in America, they describe these moments as something like this:

The world around us is crying out to know and feel the presence of God. We
are a grassroots movement that plants furnaces of vertical worship and prayer
around the world. We are creating a dwelling place for God's Presence

The crazy thing is that last night, I lead worship at Cape Town United, our combined youth event that stretches across the city. We had somewhere between 800 and 1000 teenagers going absolutely crazy...the screaming voices, the crowd surfing bodies, the dancing feet were just the outward expression of what God is doing in our city. The tide of extravagant worship is rising!

Whether it is the quieter "soaking" times like today at the Burn is, or if it's at 100 miles an hour moments such as last night, the sound of worship over the Mother City is becoming louder and stronger than ever. Old and young alike, rich and poor, black and wide, the atmosphere is changing!

Add your voice to the sound.