Looking like a worship leader

Last night I was reading Luke. I came across something, among other things, that has really had me thinking about the way we all do worship.

So what is a worship leader, or a musician at church, supposed to look like? I think if God had something to say about it, he wouldn’t really care what we do on stage-the style or any of that- I think God would really care how we live. He has a history of only caring about how we live.

But in Luke a group of people come up to John claiming righteousness because they were  ’children of Abraham.’ But he tells them to repent, and they ask him what to do. John the baptist says:

“Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food should do the same” (Luke 3:11).

This should hit us all to the core. So many times we forget the sin of coveting and greed. I do. I think as worship leaders we have flipped it; I think we have missed it sometimes. It is not about looking supper cool so that people will come watch us. It’s about ”living our lives as a living sacrifice, for this is our spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1).  John goes on to say that one day someone will come to help us with this, and he will baptize us in the Holy Spirit, and change us from the inside out. We sing that all the time, it’s a lot harder to live it.

Applying this is challenging. Recently I have been convicted by numorous verses that show how the  early Christians kept what they needed and gave in their excess – this is very contrary to the American culture. But specifically with clothes, in order to attempt to live my life for true worship leading, I have made a commitment to only buy clothes from thrift stores, and hopefully buy no clothes at all. So just to let everyone know, if I don’t look as “trendy” anymore, that’s why – if I ever even did at all.

But a good example is my best friend Darren. He has walked around for the past 2 months in a pair of Levi’s with a patch on the back. That’s awesome. Clothes are clothes, and there are some people without them; and when we clothe them, we clothe Jesus (Matthew 25).


This idea of giving is a lot deeper than just clothes, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

We have two choices. Look cool now and look back on it later and think how stupid you looked. Example, Journey picture above;
or, clothe Jesus and have an eternal impact and reward. Not much of a choice.

-Ty