Ally the Intern (part 1)
If you know me, you know that I LOVE singing, I LOVE people, and I LOVE Jesus. Combine all these loves and you have an excited young woman on FIRE for God who loves to sing on the worship team and bring people into the basement of her favorite mill.
On May 19th, I became Ally the Intern. I am technically the worship intern under the guidance of John, but I have begun to learn that this staff is a TEAM who works together to get things done and now I am a part of that team. I have learned a lot about worship leading but I have also learned what it looks like to run a healthy, vibrant church.
The first weekend I was scheduled to lead worship (not just sing the songs but TALK…) I was nervous, anxious, and scared but also EXTREMELY excited.
Each week we begin with meetings to be sure our team is on the same page. In our communication meetings, Jed explains the main points he will be teaching about the next week. This specific week I frantically took down notes and then went to my little corner to start researching the scripture he was preparing to teach on and began picking songs for the following week. I looked at many different versions of the same passage to see how it is worded differently and looked up any unfamiliar words. Once I had a clear understanding of the passage I started to listen to songs and see which ones fit the message. One of the best feelings is coming across a song that fits PERFECTLY with the message. Once I had a list of about 8 songs I sat with John and pitched my ideas to him and we worked through the songs until we had a worship set planned.
Next we talked about all the spoken parts of the service. (It is interesting that I feel so comfortable singing in front of people but was feeling so nervous about talking in front of people!) I sat and wrote every sentence I was going to speak so there was NO CHANCE I would forget what I wanted to talk about. John and I then sang through the songs and planned out which keys to play the songs in. We plugged in the songs and their keys into Planning Center (the database we use to schedule our worship gatherings) and then I printed out the chord charts for the band. The last thing I did was e-mail the worship team explaining the song choices for the weekend, reminding them of practice times, and sharing my excitement with them!
Looking back on my first weekend of leading worship I can confidently say I LOVE leading worship. I had so much fun, everything ran smoothly, and it just felt right.
I led worship again the next weekend so I did all of this again (which I really enjoy doing!) but wasn’t as anxious/tense/nervous all week. On top of all of this fun stuff I have been reading articles about worship leading, watching sermons about worship, and watching videos of other worship leaders to see their techniques and styles. I am in the process of reading two books; Doxology & Theology by Matt Boswell and Reaching Out by Henry Nouwen, and I am excited to continue to dive deeper into these books.
I have absolutely LOVED working alongside John, Jeff, Jed, Mary, Christine and Kelly. This group of people is a team that works closely together and as we all know, walking onto a team can be a scary and intimidating thing. But walking onto THIS team was incredible. They have welcomed me with open arms, and I have grown to know each of them on a much closer level. They have included me in important conversations and planning and I feel valued as a part of this little (but awesome) team. I honestly could not ask for a better group of people to work alongside for the summer.
Through this internship I have met some incredible people, one of them being a woman named Jill who is in the 10,000 Fathers Worship School with John. She lives in Italy and is a worship leader for missionaries. (So cool, right?) We made plans to chat and since I couldn’t get a flight to Italy we decided FaceTime would work. Let me just say that she is AWESOME. Jill had a LOT of great advice to give me, but one thing that really stuck with me was this phrase that she lives by; “You create the space, I will fill it.” What this means is I, as a worship leader, create the space for people to worship but GOD fills that space. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. It is not my job to make people worship. It is my job to create the space for people to worship.
Another thing I have learned is that messing up is OKAY…in fact it is a GOOD thing! Messing up reminds us that we are human and we have to just smile and laugh. If you were one of the LUCKY people at the 9am service two weekends ago you would be able to say, “Hey, it’s okay if our worship leader prays, has us sit down, and then realizes she forgot a song and has us stand up again to sing it…” Yes, that happened. And guess what…I LAUGHED! And I thanked God that He doesn’t care that we forget a song, or sing a wrong note, or say the wrong thing. He loves us regardless of the silly mistakes we make.
So far this internship has been an INCREDIBLE experience. I have gotten to know the staff and the community in a much deeper way and have begun new friendships with a lot of great people. I have been learning SO much SO quickly and am excited to continue learning and growing and experiencing life alongside these crazy people.
I LOVE YOU HARBOR!!!
-Ally :D