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Worship - with John Wimber |
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Written by Joe Randeen
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This is excerpted from an interview done by worship leader Stuart Townsend with John Wimber several years ago in Worship Together magazine. It was written during the height of a wave of renewal activity in churches around the world.
John, what’s your perspective on how works of God relate to the worshipping life of the church?
Historically, every move of God produces new music. Often the new songs were simple style and used contemporary settings – the popular music of the day, if you will. God raises up teachers and leaders who have emphasized the importance of praise and worship, and this produces the dividend of hearts ready and receptive to the work of God in the lives of God’s people. Just as back in California we dig waterways and ditches to prepare water to flow through them, so the teaching and leadership can develop a readiness and hunger for works of God.
How should writers, musicians and worship leaders prepare for what God wants to do?
The difficulty will not be so much in the writing of new and great music; the test will be the godliness of those that perform and deliver it. In that sense some of our worship community is not well prepared. Many have been allowed into worship leading because there is a need for their worship and musical skills. But little has been said to them about the need for godliness, spirituality and depth of maturity in their individual and family lives. Quite frankly, many of our musicians are just not steeped in a daily spirituality.
We learned a lot from our own experience of God’s initial revival in the Vineyard in 1979 and the years that followed. In that period we had both blessing and destruction.
We had people who were just not ready to be used of God in a highly public way, although you would have thought they were from their gifts of teaching, ministry or music. They were very gifted, but they just weren’t very godly. We need to be aware that in times of great blessing, there is also the potential for great testing and trial. With the blessing goes great pressure.
What kind of pressure?
It’s easy to become so enamored of some aspect of the outflow of God, that in trying to protect or champion it, you will find yourself out of line with orthodoxy. As leaders we need to remain congruent with orthodoxy and orthopraxy, to maintain our focus on the ‘main and the plain’ in Scripture.
How do we practically go about it be ready to be used by God?
We need to remember that seeking God for experiences and gifts is superficial; we are simply called to seek God. I’ve preached many times that we are called to a reverential serving of God with our whole heart and being, and that nothing is guaranteed except for God. I can’t guarantee that your children will be happy, or that your spouse will love you forever…but I can guarantee that if your desire is Jesus, you’ll get Jesus.
When I went through cancer a year or so ago, I was astounded when people from my own church asked me, “Weren’t you afraid you were going to die?” After about the fiftieth person, I realized that I hadn’t really taught my congregation very well. I had to get before them and say, “In June 1963 this man died. And everything from that time to this= has been Jesus.” I’m not trying to hold on to my life; I gave my life up.
When I became a Christian, I was a musician with two U.S. top ten albums I had produced [for the Righteous Brothers]; it was the establishment of my career after thirteen years of hard work. But God spoke to me in the two-line parable of the pearl of great price: “I want it. Give it to me.” He didn’t say “Give it to me and then I will give you a career as a pastor, or I will give you music that will go all over the world.” He said, “Give me everything. Liquidate all your assets, and I’ll give you the pearl.”
Now the pearl isn’t a new career, or the opportunity to make a name for yourself as a worship writer or leader. It isn’t even the ability to sustain yourself in that profession. If your motivation as a worship leader involved in local church worship is to make a full-time career of it, you’ll probably be disappointed.
The pearl is Jesus. And if He is your focus, you’ll have to face things, but you will come through in a godly fashion. So this is not the time for secret sin; this is the time to pay attention, to sober up, to focus on the things of God, to get rooted in the word of God and in the church community; to give yourself wholeheartedly to God, and deal with any weakness in your armor. If you do that, glorifying God in your personal private life as well as your public, professional endeavors, your shield may get a little dented, but you’ll come through. END
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from the archives: wimber on worship CUTTING EDGE magazine - http://www.vineyardusa.org/publications/cuttingedge.aspx
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John Wimber 
