{Day 15} School of Worship

Three or four days out of the week, we share a testimony or two at the beginning of the day. Today's was exceptionally fun, so I thought I'd share it.

This guy from Norway was a worship leader and brought his guitar to Redding. When he opened it, it was broken. He said he could see through it; I'm not sure what part was broken, but it was damaged beyond repair. And he was devastated (it "broke my heart, my second girlfriend, you know," and he didn't have money for another. His talks with the airline got him nowhere. So in worship, he finally went, "Okay God, You're provider. I need a guitar." That day or the next his insurance company contacted him and said they were giving him $2100. {I'm not sure if the insurance money was guitar-relaetd or not, couldn't tell.} He went to a Redding guitar store and found a beautiful Martin originally priced at $4000 that had been brought down to $2300. He left the guitar store and got a Facebook message the next day from a friend who had heard of his guitar woes and said he was giving him $400. {At this point you're going, that's cool, but not all that impressive. Or at least, I was.} Well, he decided to buy the Martin, and he went to get it. He had $2700. With taxes, the total cost of the guitar was $2699. Haha, yeah, that is my God. {Also funny, that testimony got the most impassioned response from the crowd over all the other testimony responses. Guess that's what happens when God gives guitars away to worship students.}

Worship was led by Matt and Hunter, and it was sadly cut short. For a minute we're all like, "What?" Then we remembered - we had a special Skype call today. Paul Baloche himself - writer of "Open the Eyes of My Heart," "Today Is the Day," among many, many others - was teaching us.

Paul Baloche taking a pic of us :)

Whoa. So wish he could have been here to do main sessions and workshops. Even Brian was so impressed that he asked Paul to 'come back' next week, which he will be doing. But here are my highlights from today:

• "Be faithful where God has you." - Paul Baloche
• Don't let God become a job.
• The number one responsibility of a worship leader is to "keep our own hearts fresh towards God." - Paul Baloche
• Sunday morning doesn't have to be a fireworks show.
• "Create an atmosphere that makes it easy for people to connect with God." - Paul Baloche
• The job of worship leaders {one of them, haha} is to gather all the generations and diverse cultures into one, which is a pastoral heart. {We also have a priestly heart.}
• When you co-write with someone, come with a bag of ideas.

Then we went straight into Christa Black's main session message:

• "You will live out what you believe." - Christa Black
• God never intended shame. {Genesis 2:25}
• "Shame will keep you from the intimacy you were created for." - Christa Black
• "Shame will always make you run and hide from the intimacy you were created for." - Christa Black
• You need to learn to contend for your promise - defend your land.
• People have 1500 thoughts a minute, and 1300 of those thoughts are negative. {You know the drill, and if you don't, you should: Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. Life and death are in the power of the tongue.}
• Shame --> Fear --> Control --> Shame
• Don't accept words from unqualified or uncredited sources. Unqualified/uncredited means they are not in agreement with what God has said over your life.
• Experience --> Belief --> Expectation --> Behavior
• "Do not go soul searching without the Holy Spirit." - Bill Johnson
• When God points to your struggle, He's not condemning, He's pointing to your next miracle.



Christa Black...and Anja's head

• "He's {God} never looked at you and seen a negative." - Christa Black

You may have gained this from the subject matter, but Christa is very similar to Dani Johnson {for those of you who know the awesome DJ}. They have a similar passion and boldness, carrying the same victory.

Lunch time! Had a quick meeting with my fellow 'Let's Thank Kathy!' project members. I am not in over my head, but learning how to wear the leadership mantle I so long cast aside is a bit like re-learning how to, I don't know, ride a bike. I know it's there, and it comes quite easily. But I'm working within that mantle in the Kingdom now, which is different, so it's like riding a bike in different weather conditions than when I learned. Anyway, it's going smoothly. And we have Dan McCollum in on it, too, so that makes me feel a bit better! :)

I had such a difficult time deciding which workshop to go to next. There were several that looked 'good,' but none that just grabbed me. Christa had one that looked interesting, but I ended up going to Joanna Finchum's class on background vocals. {I find out afterwards that Christa's workshop went to heaven. As did the next one. Dang it.} Joanna's class was really good though. It turned into kind of a Q&A, so I don't actually have any one-liner notes. Some great practical stuff that I'm eager to take home though, especially regarding bands and the relationships within them.

Then to Dan McCollum's class. My roommates are such Dan junkies. I admit to spacing a little during it, just a little, though not too much because he is awesome. Basically, he hasn't been for me what he's been for them - and that's totally okay. I have a ton of notes, but the 'whoa' for me came during impartation.

• "You will always worship at the level of your revelation." - Dan McCollum
• It is a sin to be bored.
• The beasts being covered with eyes around the throne of God means that they have an unlimited perspective of God.
• Praise is based off of what we know of God. "Worship is my response to Him showing up." - Dan McCollum
• "Do not get people to respond [in worship, in the sense of, 'you should be worshiping this way with this passion'] without a reason...that brings religion." - Dan McCollum
• Learn to worship at the level of warfare against you.
• "Grumbling, murmuring, and complaining are the praise and worship of the kingdom of darkness." - Dan McCollum
• The bigger the test, the bigger the testimony. The bigger the wall, the bigger the breakthrough.
• "You would be so bored if you didn't have anything to break through." - Dan McCollum

But the real craziness of it all came when he started doing impartation. The first one was for those who are going back to do worship at churches that...let's just say they need some worship breakthrough. And in the environments that I lead worship, like Saved By Grace and 4th Friday, I don't need that. So I sighed and didn't go up. Which saddened me, though my sadness made me laugh because two years ago I would have been out of there the way he was imparting by blowing on people's hands, and people were laughing, etc...

The next one he called was for breakthrough in personal worship, and I was like, "Yes! That's me! My turn!" So I went up. And didn't shake or laugh or fall over. Why? I don't know. I'm relatively un-phsyically-moved by stuff like that. I don't know why. It's kinda been driving me crazy since I've been here. But God and I have talked it over, and it's okay. :)

Then he started prophecying about the future of worship. There's a reason there's too many worshipers in churches. He prophecied that there will be worshipers with healing anointings, that when they release their music, people will get healed of all sorts of diseases. That struck a chord with me, because that's been told to me before about what I do. I never wrote it down, didn't really attribute it to prophecy, because I was kinda like, "Well, that's what nice prophetic people say. Instead of saying I have a nice voice, they say it heals." But I'm rethinking that position. :) I stood up for impartation for that {we stayed in our own seats this time}.

He talked about economic worshipers that will change the financial culture of areas through their worship. That's really cool, but it's not what I'm called to. And then he talked about a weather/land worship anointing. About changing the weather with one's worship. {I've tried that, yes, I really have.} About changing the land with one's worship. And then he said something to the effect of, "There are some here with a Native American heritage that have retained the relation to nature that the First People had. And we call that out and bless it."


Puzzle pieces started slamming together in my head. Whoa. See, I'm 1/4 Native American (partial US and partial Mexico). Jerry's talk last week on Native American worship sparked something in me, something I've been conflicted about for some time. I love the Native American culture. It resonates with me. I hear/see/feel it, and it calls me like I belong there. And there's a part of that that bothers me, because I'm 3/4 European. I mean, am I being disloyal to the majority of my blood? I still don't really have the answer, but I do know that when Dan said that, I physically felt the pieces collide. Because even though I'm the farthest person in the world from being a lover of the outdoors, I do have a connection with nature. I've told Mom before that, "When I worship, it makes the trees happy. I don't know how I know. But I know." I know. I can feel it. And that word from Dan freed me for...for something. I'm still working that out, working out where I belong. But that was good.