“O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water”
- Psalm 63:1
What happens to a worship leader's own worship when he becomes responsible for everyone else's?
It is a good question. And perhaps a painful one. At least for some.
Worship leaders often spend much of their lives thinking about the worship of other people. We choose songs. Plan services. Prepare musicians. Rehearse choirs. Coordinate teams. Work through transitions. Think about Scripture readings, prayers, sermon themes, technology, schedules, and a hundred other details that somehow find their way into Sunday morning. And somewhere along the way, something can happen:
We can become so responsible for everyone else's worship that we stop worshiping.
David gives us another picture. “O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). David is in the wilderness. There is no congregation mentioned in that opening verse. No choir. No musicians. No set lists. No sound issue. No service to plan. No people whose response he is evaluating.
There is simply a man who needs God: “My soul thirsts for You.” Before David says anything about leading anyone else, he recognizes the thirst of his own soul.
Worship leaders can forget that. We know how to prepare a worship service. But preparing worship and worshiping are not always the same thing. We can study a song without singing it to Jesus. We can read Scripture looking for something to use on Sunday without allowing Scripture to speak to us. We can pray publicly while neglecting prayer privately. But eventually, thirst begins to show.
Certainly, there are seasons when ministry is genuinely exhausting. Faithful servants need rest. Sometimes circumstances, schedules, conflict, grief, or physical weariness take their toll. But sometimes our weariness is telling us something about our souls. We are thirsty. So what do we do? I would suggest three simple things.
1. RETREAT from the Responsibility
Jesus said, “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place” (Matthew 6:6). Go into your room. Shut the door. For a little while, get away from the responsibility of everyone else's worship.
Perhaps the worship leader needs a place where no one is listening, nothing is being rehearsed, and there is no service to prepare. A place where we are not evaluating whether a song will work or looking for something we can use on Sunday.
Go because you need Jesus. William M. Runyan understood that. We know Runyan primarily as the composer of the tune for Great Is Thy Faithfulness, but he also wrote a beautiful hymn prayer, Lord, I Have Shut the Door. He writes of coming apart from the noise so that the heart can hear again:
“Hushed now my inner heart,
Whisper Thy will,
While I have come apart,
While all is still.”
I love that picture. The worship leader shuts the door. The clamor remains outside.
And inside, there is Jesus. There must be a place in my life where I am not responsible for anybody else's worship … a place where I am simply a worshiper.
2. RECEIVE from Jesus
Once the door is shut, what do we do? We drink. David said, “My soul thirsts for You.”
Jesus once sat beside a well and spoke to a Samaritan woman who had come looking for water. He told her, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst” (John 4:14). Go there. Go to Jesus, where the water never runs dry.
Open the Word without looking for Sunday's sermon illustration. Sing without wondering whether the congregation will like the song. Pray without preparing to pray publicly. Sit quietly long enough to listen. Let the Holy Spirit turn your attention toward Jesus again. This is not another technique for recovering ministry enthusiasm. It is the recognition that before I am a worship leader, I am a worshiper.
Runyan describes what happens in that quiet place: “Here in Thy presence dwells Infinite peace.”
That is what the thirsty worship leader needs. Not another resource to give away. We need to receive.
This is something I am seeing more clearly the longer I serve the Lord. We cannot continually give from a soul that is no longer drinking deeply from Christ. The Holy Spirit works within us where no congregation can see. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus. He brings the truth of God's Word home to our hearts. He convicts. He assures. He awakens and renews our desire to obey. Sometimes the worship leader needs to stop trying to awaken everyone else's heart long enough to let the Holy Spirit work in his own.
3. RETURN to the People
But we cannot stay in the closet. Sunday is coming. The praise team will rehearse. The musicians will arrive. The congregation will gather. There is still a task waiting for us.
Runyan's final verse captures that movement: “Yonder awaits the task … I share a part.”
I especially appreciate those last four words. “I share a part.” I have a part.
But I do not have to carry the whole thing. Hebrews gives us an extraordinary picture of Jesus standing in the midst of His brothers and sisters: “I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You” (Hebrews 2:12).
Jesus is already in the midst of His people. Jesus is already leading. That means I do not have to carry the impossible responsibility of making everybody worship. I cannot awaken a human heart. I cannot manufacture hunger for God. I cannot produce conviction. I cannot create surrender. I cannot transform a life. Only The Holy Spirit does what I cannot do.
My responsibility is to follow Jesus faithfully and help His people follow Him. That changes the way I return to the platform. I can prepare carefully without believing everything depends upon me. I can lead faithfully without trying to manufacture a response. I can look across the congregation and remember that the Holy Spirit is working in hearts I cannot reach. And perhaps most importantly, I can worship too.
I do not have to stand outside the congregation managing everyone else's encounter with God. I am one of the brothers and sisters standing in the midst of the assembly with Jesus. I can join the song.
So what happens when a worship leader becomes so responsible for everyone else's worship that his own worship begins to disappear? Perhaps the answer is simpler than we imagine:
RETREAT. Shut the door and get alone with Jesus.
RECEIVE. Drink again from the water that never runs dry. Let the Holy Spirit renew your heart. Then …
RETURN. Go back to the people remembering that you are not the Worship Leader.
Jesus is. Follow Him. Join His song. Help others follow. And when you become thirsty again, you know where the water is.
