Here’s a really cool story –
OK, so for all the years that I felt God pruning me, and calling me to hiddeness, I just kept saying to him, “God, you know my address. If you ever want to use my music outside of my community, I trust that you can come find me. I believe I can’t miss you on this.” It was just a simple way to be about the business he was putting in front of me without having to anxiously work in worry towards the stuff he wasn’t blessing – like promoting myself.
Quick side note: If you know me at all, you know that I am a huge fan of the authors Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. Their books the Shaping of Things to Come, Re-Jesus, and The Faith of Leap have advocated things I’ve cared about for a long, long time.
While reading Alan and Michael’s books, I’d have this thought, “Now, if this conversation ever turned into a conference, I would DIE to lead worship for it. This is a conversation I feel God’s been preparing me for.”
Few problems: 1. I didn’t know one single person in that movement 2. It’s not a real “conferency” kind of movement 3. I wasn’t gonna’ go make it happen for myself. Jesus knows my address. He knows where to find me. Put that away for a sec…
STORY: Months ago, Alissa and I finally bought a home in KC. We’d been searching for over six months. If you have ever bought a home you know that it can be a grueling and tiresome process. We found it to be particularly difficult as we were hearing the Lord tell us to “think like missionaries” in regard to where we lived.
Well, the home we purchased is not in the greatest part of KC, but to be clear, it’s certainly not in the worst either. The front of our house faces Brookeside, a yuppie-ish part of town. Behinds us – we sometimes hear gun-shots. The yuppie part is what had us confused as we felt the Lord call us to buy this house as “missionaries”.
We bought the house and I began to remodel it with some friends. In the second week of the project, my next-door neighbor, came over to introduce himself. Lance Ford would be his name. In the course of the conversation he asked if he could help me finish the remodel. Of course I said yes, while I had a suspicion that he was a follower of Jesus – cause who does that, right? I wasn’t sure he’d come through, so I just let him keep talking so I could really get him on the line to help me finish:) I needed all the help I could get!
Over the next few minutes, as we started to talk a bit more, stuff started to unfold. Turns out he’s a missional strategist for the C&MA (a very missional denomination) and I mentioned that I work with the Gathering Network’s to plant missional communities. In the first 10 minutes of conversation we both came to realize that we were called to the exact same place to plant missional communities in Kansas City! As if that’s not enough confirmation – he had just co-authored a book called Right Here Right Now – with Alan Hirsch!
Two weeks later Lance asked me to lead worship for a missional conference in KC called SENTralized even though he had never heard me lead worship. Michael Frost was slotted to speak at the event and so was another author named Hugh Halter. I was stoked.
Well, as it turns out, the “missional” speaker/author community is pretty small, and pretty tight, apparently. Once everybody heard that Lance, Michael, and Hugh were doing a conference, they all wanted to come. So now, SENTralized has become a conference hosting a veritable who’s who of the missional conversation – and yours truly is humbly going to lead worship for it.
Jesus knew my address – quite literally – and He knows yours….
All of this is to say: LET JESUS DRIVE! If you are a worship leader – He sees you. He hears you. He knows how good you are! You don’t have to go searching for significance and adventure. He’s got it for you! If you feel like you are called to more, you are probably right. Here’s my suggestion – relax and begin to give yourself to the stuff that is right in front of you. Begin the discipline of saying yes to the small stuff, and say yes every time.
As cool as this conference will be, I KNOW that the real call on my life is to make disciples that make disciples that make disciples. All of us share this primary call. Leading worship, or whatever it is that you do, is secondary to that call (Matt. 28: 19-20).
I’ll be writing more about that very soon, because I believe that this is the missing piece of the puzzle for the church – and for worship leadership. Discipleship. We don’t have much that will last on this earth without it.
I have a great deal of passion about leading worship, writing songs, leading bands, and gatherings…but my great love is making disciples and planting missional communities that manifest the Good News of Jesus in the city.
PLEASE come see us in KC for SENTralized. It’s turning out to be a very big conference, and more importantly, a significant “watering hole” for those in this conversation. It’s gonna be a great time!
