Worship Central for the Regions...

Last Wednesday Worship Central came to Central Hall to kick off their 2010 Tour. As always, it was a huge pleasure to have Tim, Al and the team with us and it was a great night! I'm one of the ten Regional Coordinators for Worship Central - if you were there you'll have seen Tim introduce me to everyone. Now, here's the plan - to arrange three dates for 2011 when we will gather locally those who are involved in the provision of musical worship in our churches. This could be you, or you know the person or persons in your church who do this. We will come together to worship, pray, share the highs and the lows; to fellowship together on our journeys.

Right now we are largely doing our own thing in our own places - what I can see is us becoming ever more one church and Worship Central has a part to play in this as a naturally ecumenical platform. Very exciting!

So, if you are involved in the musical worship side of things in your church or CU (or something I've left out) and want to be involved in this vision for the Southern Region then drop me a line in the comment slot below, or email me to say hello.

One thing I've found is that I can't do this alone, it'll be a team effort.

Just imagine (closes eyes, gets dreamy look on face...), from across the Region worship leaders are gathering under the Worship Central banner to glorify Jesus with one voice, to Encounter God, Equip the worshipper and Empower the local church!

Awesome!

The name game...

Rammed!

I'm trying to work out in my head what the Christian celebrity thing is all about. I mean, we can fit around a thousand people into Central Hall and we regularly do - but only when "famous" Christians come visiting. Be it Worship Central, Soul Survivor, Jesus Culture, Rob Bell we are sold out - the photo is the recent Jesus Culture meeting. We come to see Tim, Al, Nikki, Ben, Mike, Kim, Rob...so is this a good thing? A bad thing? Or just a thing? To what extent do we need a name to get us to attend a meeting? I reckon, on the one hand, some of it is that we know what we're going to get. On the other hand, we'll have come a little bit closer to the stars of the show. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as vulnerable to this as anyone else but I'm trying to examine this within me and ask myself, "Mark, why are you impressed with people you deem to be "famous"?"

With celebrity the international zeitgeist, we see a reflection of this in the church and this is tricky stuff to work out! It's not about what the famous think about themselves, it's much more about what we think about them. Do we have a built in need to imagine the stars as different to us? Somehow better? Holier? Set apart? I think we do. Otherwise they're just the same as us and what we want is not someone like us but...a hero! Oh, that would be...Jesus! Hmm, are we in danger of looking to the Christian famous to provide what only Jesus can?

I have an album that I'd like to be uber successful. I believe that God has put stuff into those songs that will bless people, that He will speak through these songs to anyone who takes the time to listen. But, my dark heart (Jer 17:9) also wants to be worshipped.  So I can easily catch myself thinking that I'd like to be as well known as such and such, to have as many Twitter followers as so and so, to be as respected etc., etc...

So, I guess that the challenge is to do what we believe God is asking us to do, as well as we can, and stay as unaffected by the zeitgeist as is possible.