But just as often we struggle with our own hearts:

• No one seems to appreciate or even notice that on top of a full-time job you put in at least ten hours each week for the worship team.
• The last time you taught a new song was eight months ago, and CDs are piled on your desk that you still haven’t listened to.
• You put off confronting a guitarist whose critical and proud attitude is affecting the whole team.
• You can’t remember the last time you prayed more than five minutes, and you feel like a hypocrite as you lead on Sundays.
• You never have enough hours to plan, prepare, study, practice, or work with the music team. Which makes you wonder what in the world you’re doing with your time.

And yet . . .

Despite these and other difficulties, you believe the joys of leading worship far outweigh the challenges. You wouldn’t think of giving it up.

You just want to do it better. More effectively. More skillfully. More faithfully.

I’m guessing that’s why you picked up this book. I hope so because that’s why I wrote it.

But I have to confess something.

I didn’t write this book simply to help you be a better worship leader. There’s more at stake here.

After thirty years of leading worship, I’ve realized that worship isn’t just an opportunity to use my musical gifts. It’s more than a heightened emotional experience or a way to make a living. It’s way more than what we do on Sunday morning.

Worship is about what we love. What we live for.

It’s about who we are before God.

This book is filled with practical ideas for leading worship. But we don’t start there. These initial chapters are about the way we think and live. I want to challenge, encourage, and inspire you to live your life for the glory and praise of Jesus Christ. Holding nothing back. Giving no ground. It’s the only kind of life that makes sense for someone who leads worship.

But first, a little background.

HOW I GOT HERE

My first experience of music in a church context came as a Catholic, when I played the organ for Masses, weddings, and funerals. There wasn’t much “leadership” involved. I just played what I was told. When I could, I’d sneak in “sacred” versions of Beatles tunes, college fight songs, or nursery rhymes to make it interesting.

In the early seventies, I majored in piano at Temple University in Philadelphia. I became a Christian during my first year and started visiting a Baptist church on campus. When my friends and I noticed we were the only people in the church under sixty, we tried starting our own church in the dorms. That lasted two meetings.

Then someone invited us to a charismatic church in Center City Philadelphia. We heard the meetings were pretty lively, especially when they broke into line dancing around the pews. I helped with the worship team there and eventually was asked to lead, to use the term generously.