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I’ve Been Thinking About Telling The Story (Essentials Blue)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

Well, we’re the through the first week of Essentials Blue, and I’ve truly been challenged by the learning community that is journeying together across the world. There have been several little nuggets of insight that have hit me on a micro level, but what has really come to my attention has been what is going on within me on more of a macro level.

I’ve been leading worship in some capacity for almost 9 years now, and for most of my journey throughout I’ve been frustrated with two things. The first was my inability to define and understand what my role was in the Church now and in the future as a “worship leader.” There’s something completely unsatisfying about just being the guy who plays the newer songs for the cool Church down the road. The second is that I’ve never truly been able to find any sort of mentoring/teaching/training that helped me in discovering and answering my first frustration. There are very few seminaries that teach what I do, and those that do are astronomically expensive. And so for the majority of the my time leading worship, I’ve felt like I’m on my own, for the most part.

One of the beauties of this class is that both of my frustrations, as I see, are coming to and end. Dan Wilt’s article “The Worship Artisan” is a powerful exposition of the present and future role of the Worship Leader in the Church, and reading it has opened up a new way of thinking about how God is shaping me as a leader. N.T. Wright (who I’m pretty sure I’d follow around like a Hannah Montana fan) and his book “Simply Christian are more fully shaping my ability to tell and retell the Grand Narrative of Scripture.

This leads me to where I am currently – if there’s anything I sense from God in the midst of all the material and training taking place, it’s that I (and the rest of us Worship Artisans) are responsible for being gifted Storytellers. He’s calling us to use our Art and Music and Culture-Shaping Influence to tell the Story of God in new and fresh ways for our ever-shifting world. Theologians should be the best storytellers – they should be the ones who teach and tell the wondrous Story throughout history. Coming to an understanding and knowledge of God is in many ways the culmination of understanding His Story, and our part in it. 

So as the year begins, I ask God for the heart to not only be a great leader, a great pastor, a great worshiper , a great songwriter – but to be a great storyteller.

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