Downloading tracks.  Downloading charts.  Finding the right song in the right key.  Shooting videos for social media.  Setting rehearsal time.  Changing rehearsal time.  Your drummer cancels on Friday.  Lead female vocalist gets a throat infection.  The smoke machine breaks down at stage left.  Endless chase of the latest gear.  Planning time with the team.  Meeting with pastoral staff.  Budget cuts.  Time restraints within the service.  Cut a song.  Cut two.  Your prepared remarks between songs were criticized in the staff meeting.  Don’t say anything anymore – just do the music.  You’re told: You’re not a pastor, just a musician.

Congregants don’t see these frustrations behind the scenes.  They come and watch each week as you pull it off seamlessly like a pro.  Yet you feel you have to hold it all inside.  Keep it together.  The pressure and frustration of what you once felt was your calling has become a job – or worse, a machine; predictable, produced, even pretentious.  You are noticing you haven’t been alone in God’s presence for quite a while.  You catch a prayer when you can.  Your fuse is becoming shorter.  Things that used to not bother you, bother you.  That “sin that so easily besets you” emerges again.  You confess and move on but it comes back anyway.

Sound familiar? Where is God in the worship grind?  What is described above used to be exclusive to larger churches.  Now, with social media expectations – a worship-music industry driving its images and products – and church growth formulas nipping at our heels – is it any wonder why churches of 200 or less are experiencing the grind as well?

Jeremiah 33:3 serves as a benchmark to busy activity, massive scheduling, goal setting, and strategic planning.  “Call to me and I will answer you, and I will show you great and mighty things which you do not know.” (NASB).   So, what is it we don’t know, that we need to know?  Our gear is great, our media is moving, our following fantastic, our image immaculate, and our hearts are humble!

Consider the context of Jeremiah 33:3. For the first 32 chapters, God is using Jeremiah as His mouthpiece to speak prophetic words to the people of Israel and their leaders.  Though the book is not laid out chronologically, it is apparent this far into the story that Jeremiah is still in need of knowing “great and mighty things” which he hasn’t yet discovered.  God requires His “mouthpieces” to call to Him, and then listen.

Finding God in the worship grind will either happen by our own choice or by His choice.  God will be found because we are awed by His sacredness – or – we are stopped in our tracks because the gears of the grinder have come to an abrupt halt.  I have experienced both.  I prefer the former not the latter.  Believe me, you do too.

Recommended books:   “Letters To The Church” – Francis Chan.   “Abba’s Child” – Brennan Manning

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash