Our regular worship leader at church was out this week, and that meant things were going to be a little shaky. As I have the next longest tenure in the group, folks look to me to at least feign complete confidence in my abilities. 🙂 This morning was a familiar set of “God of Wonders,” “Breathe,” “Blessed be Your Name,” “I Will Rise,” “Beautiful, Scandalous Night,” and “Beautiful News,” so I did not have to try too hard to feign confidence.
Practice was a little sporadic this morning, but we managed to get through okay. The problem was that we didn’t have time to get everything squared away – particularly the order of the music – by the time the 9:00am start rolled around.
By the time one of our worship team announced
“Good morning!”
into the microphone, I was frantically trying to figure out the first song for the morning. When I realized it was “God of Wonders,” I was relieved because I know that without having to look at the music.
No problem. I immediately “capo 2’d” (guitar-speak for the device that allows us to play easier chords up and down the fretboard when it might be a difficult key), and went to work for the Lord.
But, then, during the song I started to get uncomfortable, because I couldn’t remember what song was next.
When we finished, I sorted through the music and couldn’t find our next song – “Breathe.” I remembered that it started with the A chord, so – with all looking at me because I was on the acoustic which was to start the song – I started hanging on the “A.”
I couldn’t figure out why everyone else sounded so strange, and I was trying to make sense of it all while the electric guitarist was searching for the music which never came. So, I moved over to our “apprentice” guitarist, and she was playing completely different chords.
So, here we were in this musical disaster (the joyfullest NOISE you ever heard) about a minute in when (and I know you worship leaders out there already know what happened) I discovered that in all the frantic scrambling, I forgot to take the capo off.
I was playing in the key of B. Everybody else was playing in the key of A.
So, the singers were all singing in B, while the rest of the band was frantically trying to make out what I was doing.
The fact is that the longer I play for the Lord, the more confident I get, and I feel that I can “mail it in,” if you will.
I thank you, Lord, for the reminder of your expectation that we be humble… and I needed a reminder that what we do as participants of the worship team is all for you, and we should – in humility – properly prepare no matter how well we think we can manage on our own accord.
1 Peter 5:5
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
