Again I need your wonderful advice as I am a beginer.

I love praising and worshipng so want to render my services to the Lord through prais and worship.

I had the privilege of attending The Vineyard in the early 1980’s. Not only did they have wonderful worship but God seemed to have given them a ministry in healing, both a legacy that remains prominent in the Vineyard values. One thing that I learned from John Wimber and Eddie Espinosa; that spiritual things are easier caught than taught.

I see this over and over. When I pastor asked me to emphasize lifting hands in worship, I spoke and taught about lifting hands in worship with only mild response. It wasn’t until I put my guitar down, let the worship team finish the remainder of the set and I lifted my hands. As you can imagine, hand lifting became accepted because it was modeled. I also notice that the vocalist raised their hands from waist to chest high to over their heads, I think because that is what they saw me and the pastor modeling.

I had the same experience with dancing. I am clumsy and was concern that if I tried to lead worship, lay guitar, and dance it would overload my cerebellum and I would fall on someone. At 6’6” and 285 Lbs, that can be major concern! So I asked for dancers from our congregation to join the worship team rehearsals. One of the dancers had a little experience in choreographing dance in theater and she was willing to do it for praise and worship. After a while, the dancers became familiar with about 80% of our repertoire, they started add a sense or worship and praise in our practices. At that point we started to schedule them to worship in dance during one of the services. At first they wanted to dance in the aisles and in front by the stage but the congregation did not seem to join in. I asked if we could have two or three on stage dancing in a simpler form, one that most the congregation could do. That seemed to be the ticket… a model of worship dance that was simplified so others could join in.

However, in that congregation, dance never took a firm hold. I think it might have been that a non-dance message was so ingrained in the people that worship dancing became a cross-cultural issue. Therefore, I think that it is important to consider you congregation’s culture when considering new worship expressions.

Thanks for you article,