As a worship leader, I can testify that selfishness seems to be one of the top detractors of the congregation moving deeper in worship. Not just selfishness on the part of individual church members, but worship team members as well. “We” need to sing this many songs, in this order, in this style, this person needs to be leading, etc. before “we” can “enter in.” (It’s now evident I like to use “quotation marks” to get my “point across.”) But unity in worship, followed by a tangible sense of God’s presence, comes when we lay our stuff down and instead focus on a shared vision. This… wait for it… *gulp*… comes largely in part when we submit to the leadership of those leading the service. God has placed them in charge and placed the vision in front of them, and when we submit to that vision and wholeheartedly support it, God blesses that. Even if we …*bigger gulp*… think we have a better idea of how things should run. (That’s when praying for our leadership is key. If our idea is God’s idea, He’ll give it to them. If not, He has amazing ways of refocusing our attention.)

Thanks for posting your thoughts on all this. It was fun to visit your blog. And if our friends wind up at your church, I’m sure I’ll meet you at some point. I mean, heck! They’re moving to Florida!!! I told them they better get a house with good guest accommodations, as it will actually be our second home. =^)

Anyway, the point I wanted to make here was that we have really been seeing the difference between the service oriented church and the serve-us church and some churches that seem to be stradling that fence. I’ll post more on my personal thoughts about this at http://www.someplaceinbetween.wordpress.com. But suffice to say we have really been discussing this dynamic recently so thank you for posting this. It helps as we learn from what we are experincing here.