Keys To Becoming An Effective Worship Leader Chapter 4

Kraeuter starts this chapter by talking about his the Levites in the Bible were set apart. The Levites spent their lives serving God because they were set apart as an offering to God. Though we are not directly descended from the Levites, God has a similar set of guidelines for worship leaders that resembles the Levites requirements. Our main goal, like the Levites, is to give everything to God. Although talent is very useful for leading worship, God only requires our hearts to be fully surrendered to him. As worship leaders, both on and off the stage, we must be an example of living life fully surrendered to God. It is easy for worship leaders to become busy worrying about different things, that we forget to simply praise God. God does not care so much about what we do. He is more concerned about if our hearts are focused on him. The Levites did not serve God once in a while, but they served him with their whole lives. Our primary motivation in life should be serving God, not serving ourselves. God is not interested in how talented we are, he is interested in if we live our lives for him. If we do not live for him, he will not be able to do amazing works through us. We cannot think that we can put restrictions on God and what he can do. Kraeuter finishes this chapter with this question,  if God never uses us in a "big" way, will we still give him everything we are?

I liked that Kraeuter asks us if we are willing to serve God, even if it means we won't be standing in the spotlight. Especially as worship leaders, we get used to the idea that service is being on stage in front of the congregation. However, God does not always call us to be up front. Instead he may call us to serve behind the scenes, like in children's ministry. However, it is important for us to still praise him even when we are not in front playing music. Not being in front of the crowd should not change the fact that on and off stage, we are examples of Christ and we are responsible to follow him, even when he calls us to serve out of the spotlight.

Keys to Becoming an Effective Worship Leader Chapter 3

Most of the time, we focus on being the best musician that we can possibly be. Of course practice and the sound of the music is important, being humble is really important. David worshipped not in front of many people, but instead he worshipped God while guarding sheep. He was never recognized for his talent, yet God knew that he worshipped wholeheartedly. Sometimes as worship leaders, we try to focus more on if the sound of the music is top quality. But God doesn't need the best music in the world, what he wants is our hearts fully devoted to worshipping him. God wants our hearts focused on him and not ourselves.

As worship leaders, it is really easy for us to want to make worship sound amazing and do all the newest and coolest songs. However, the music is not as important as what we are saying to God in our hearts. We could be leading worship and thinking more about how great we sound or we can sing the words and sing them to God. Even when we are not leading worship, our attitude should be that God is first and not on if the music sounds bad or how we can make it better. We need to give our hearts to God in worship, on and off stage.