A few years back a small time worship leader named Matt Redman published a book entitled "The Unquenchable Worshiper : Coming Back to the Heart of Worship." In it he detailed an experiment in worship that his church participated in. Their thought was that worship in the church has become much more about musical progression and chord changes than about actual worship.

As you can tell by the blogs below that the youth group (at least the 52 that came) were able to participate in some serious worship services. Everything about them was dynamic and huge. Leeland was fantastic, bringing the Word and having a good time. He was fantastic. Matt Redman was his usual self with the good ole songs you have come to love and some you wouldn't expect.
The Desperation Band never has a dull moment and they were awesome also. The one thing I notice is that it is hard to follow that up.

The camp thing can be cyclical. It seems that it is an intense amount of emotion and then you return to reality that is not the same. If we are not careful, we can quickly begin to associate Jesus with those crescendo moments and think that when it doesn't "feel" a certain way that it must not be happening or that Jesus must not be as strong as He was in those epic moments.

Tonight, in theBURN we shut it down. Instead of riding the wave of emotional intensity, we scaled it back Matt Redman style. It was great too. As usual I spoke up front giving an idea of where we were heading and the students had a chance to brace themselves for what was going to happen. As I closed in prayer, the real work had to begin. With no band, no songs, no music, no sound, no lights, no nothing, it would have been easy for us to regress to quiet time and sit there. Instead, the students responded unbelievably and it began to set a precedent for where we will be headed. I'm so proud of you students of theBURN. When the conversations began to happen, it seemed that everyone was looking for it. Everyone wants to know Jesus' voice for themself. They don't want to hear about Him from you or me, but want to truly experience His voice on their own. Instead of manipulating that desire, or feeding it with cool musical progressions and melodies (not that they're a bad thing, but you know what I mean), we should allow every opportunity for people to worship in their own voice. When we got in to it tonight, it catapulted us into a new area...and it's really exciting.
----------------
Now playing: David Nevue - My Jesus, I Love Thee