I led worship at a conference called Mobilise in 2012 with a guy called Simon from Brighton. After one of the talks he stood up and said “My primary calling is to be a missionary to my city and then a worship leader on Sundays”. 

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Simon was talking about his passion not just for the church to enjoy God in worship (although that is key) but also to live life as an evangelist who’s wanting to communicate what we sing about on Sundays to the world around us who don’t know Christ.



So how can we be both worship leaders and missionaries? Having been involved in worship leading and evangelism (with UCCF: The Christian Unions) over the last few years and also training many worship leaders in CUs (which are mission teams on campus) I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts.



A worship leader:

1)  Having a heart not just for playing music and being on the stage but for people in your town/city and those that come to your church. Being concerned with how visitors are doing and not how good we are as a band.
2)  Spending time during the week with people outside the church as well as with the musos from your worship team.
3)  Praying with their worship team for guests on Sunday to come to follow Christ and not just for each other.
4)  Picking songs that are theologically rich but also ones that are understandable to guests visiting the church.
5)  Explaining some things that guests might struggle with understanding during worship ie Biblical words such as “holiness” and “righteousness” and also explaining why we do certain things (singing a new song, praying, reading scripture etc.)
6)  Giving guests an opportunity to respond in their hearts to Jesus during the worship time.

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In John 20, Jesus says to his disciples “Just as the Father sent me so I am sending you out into the world”. I’m convinced that the more we see worship leaders being trained in how to communicate the gospel with everyone and the more we see worship leaders getting out there into the world and having influence in their city’s music scenes, the more we will see guests coming to church and trusting in Jesus.



Written on 15/05/12 by Olly Knight