Church Unscripted

Have you ever wondered what would happen if we didn't script our worship services?

A core principle of our praise and worship group is allowing God to lead the group. The only agenda of the group leader is to allow God the freedom to take us where He wants us. During worship, the leader is asking God what He wants next; what song he wants to hear, what to say, pray or maybe sit in silence because that is what He wants. The leader's only job is to please Him, follow Him where He is leading on that particular day. Unscripted, I want to jump into the flow of the Spirit and go where He leads me. There is a freedom to follow without hurrying from one activity to the next, and in the process, unexpected things happen. I have seen people get healed. I have seen badly damaged relationships become whole. I have seen addictions stop and hardened hearts soften.

An agenda is made up of what worked in the past to connect with God. An agenda is like having the same conversation with my wife over and over again, or doing the same thing over and over again to please her. Her needs change and so does God's. He wants to tell us what He wants so we can give Him what He wants.

When we allow God to lead, we experience the presence of something greater, a deep love and warmth of knowing what we cannot know, of changing what we, ourselves, can not change. As control slips from our hands, we fall into the hands of the creator.

Sometimes, religious agendas are a path to manage what we can handle while ignoring what we can't. Some use church like a tourist on a bus, visiting, but never being a part of that which they are observing. Detached, they watch from their double-decker bus window, observing that which they can not comprehend . Some become spiritual window shoppers, moving on to the next window when they find the price is too high.

Do our religious agendas keeping us from having our souls touched, without feeding our starving spirit? Are our agendas like drinking whiskey, instead of Living Water, to numb our senses instead of facing our fragility with humility and courage? What is the price we pay for following our own agenda?