Jeremy Taylor
The son of a music minister, I grew up surrounded with musical influences. I was raised in Southeast Alabama and graduated from Troy University with a degree in Computer Information Systems and now live in Atlanta working in the IT field. Outside of work my interests are almost always connected to music and how it relates to congregational life. From Sunday morning services to Hymn Sings in someone's living room I pursues a Gospel-centered worship philosophy that strives to be reverent and participatory.
I am a member of East Point Church in East Point, GA and I try and help with the music by singing and playing the guitar.
I am engaged to Christy Norwood and we are to be married in November, 2011.
“I have taken my good deeds and my bad deeds and thrown them together in a heap. Then I have fled from both of them to Christ, and in Him I have peace.” - David Dickson
Posted in: Worship Glue: Sticking the Pieces Together
The way I think of worship practically happening is that it is a response to a revelation. Specifically in the context of a church service, it is a response to God's revelation. Worship starts with seeing Him. At my church, our typical order of service has four songs before the message and two songs after. I explain this because what often happens to me is I'll want to sing after the message in a way I didn't before the message. After sitting under around 45 minutes of the Word being expounded and the Gospel being proclaimed, I am compelled to respond to God in a way I wasn't at the beginning of the service. After thirty minutes of prepping before the service (running copies, setting up music stands, etc.) I am a little less focused than after sitting still and listening to a carefully prepared message. The same could be said for parents who just arrived at church after wrestling with ill-tempered children or an argument with a spouse. They are likely not coming to worship believing that God is our superior and that He sees us as morally offensive without Christ. When we come to worship believing THAT, it will change the way we worship. Preaching, though it is an act of worship, is more of a "revelatory" activity, at least when I compare it to singing and music which is more of a "responsive" activity for the congregation. This being said, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have more elements such as music after the sermon than before. While listening to the sermon I'm usually thinking of a number of especially relevant songs I wished we had planned for the service. Perhaps this is a result of poor cohesion. Regardless, even with good cohesion and coopoerative worship planning between all of the church leaders, I often weigh the potential benefits of placing the sermon closer to the beginning of the service and more responsive elements, such as music, toward the end. To play devil's advocate, perhaps planning too many elements after the sermon better enables the congregants to be distracted from its points. Just some thoughts.