This weekend is one of the biggest opportunities for worship and production teams to share the good news, that by His wounds we are healed! I believe it’s so important for our teams to keep that at the forefront of everything we do this weekend and beyond.
I know it can be easy to get caught up in it all. This weekend is likely to be your highest attended service for the year and you just want everything to go perfectly. That can create pressure for anyone involved in leading or serving on a team this weekend.
This year, I started looking at Easter a little differently from a programming perspective and that helped calm some anxieties I had as a Technical Director. I told myself that this Sunday, we’re just going to do the best worship experience we can do as a church. Reframing it in that way helped take some of the pressure off me. There was even a point right before our Wednesday run-through where I said that it feels so calm for being our last run-through before the service.
This Sunday, we’re opening with Son of Suffering by Bethel Music, and Isaiah 53 connects really well to the lyrics.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
ISAIAH 53:3-5 (NIV)
Those verses are a reminder that He did it all. It’s by His wounds that we’re healed. His punishment brought us peace. He’s already done it all. He fulfilled every requirement for us. All that’s left is for us to respond with worship.
In order to lead worship, whether on the platform, in the tech booth, or wherever you’re serving, we ourselves need to be truly worshipping. As a Technical Director, I know that can be hard. Your job is to make sure that all technical elements are working properly. That might mean you’re running around a little during worship to fix something that broke or jumping in to help someone on your team during the service. My best advice is to find those moments during the service where you can pause and focus on giving Jesus the worship he deserves. Being intentional about finding those moments where you can focus on Jesus, while still being prepared to respond and paying attention to the service, is important for anyone serving during a worship experience.
This weekend, in the midst of new guests, services that might run over time, and everything else that Easter brings, I hope you’ll make time to respond in worship.