Real Worship

Wednesday night is our normal weekly prayer meeting night.  This week was the launch of the once-a-month “P5″ prayer meeting (which stands for power-filled, prophetic prayer & praise party).

Musically, it was a lot more intimate, with just me leading the worship – using my acoustic guitar & amp.  The style and flow of the worship were intentionally different to our Sunday service; on Sundays we plan for it to be more of a “shop window” (as widely accessible as possible) – with set arrangements etc; whereas the plan for this night was to leave a lot more space for there to be more free/spontaneous worship & for God to speak.

The songs on the set list were:

• You Are Good (Israel Houghton)
• Here I Am To Worship (Tim Hughes)
• I Will Worship You (Mike Ellis)
• We Bow Down (Viola Grafstrom)
• Facedown (Matt Redman)

The first four songs were all played in the same key (E), which meant that the flow between the songs & times of free worship was effortless.  There was such a very real sense of God’s presence – with worship, prayer & prophecy intermingled, all the while the music was continually being played.  I find that grouping songs together in the same key really helps to provide a secure environment where people can easily focus on worshipping God and not be distracted; it provides the space for worship to carry on between songs and for the dynamic flow of conversation between God & man to continue.

There was a short powerful teaching from Pastor Mark about prayer and then we went back into worship.  I began to play the chord progression for Matt Redman’s, “Facedown” (this time in F); the worship & prayer began to flow again; we had an extended time of free, prophetic prayer & worship and eventually sang the song to end.

We had met with God, heard His voice, declared His truth, advanced His kingdom and had a truly awesome time doing it!  It’s going to be interesting to see what God does with these meetings over the coming months.