If I were to talk about the praise and worship at our church and the many changes we have gone through, we’d be here for quite a while. So I’ll just give you a brief history of where we have been and where I believe God is taking us. I think it is very important to remember and take with us our past so that we never forget the lessons that we learned along the way while moving forward (sometimes kicking and screaming) in following God’s will for our church.

Let me first say that God has blessed us every step of the way in every transition we’ve gone through. Though at times we may have struggled to see the light, it was always there and so much better on the other side. He has provided for us so many times and in so many different ways that I would be hard pressed to share them all.

Four years ago our worship service consisted of three or four songs from the hymnal and maybe an old chorus every now and then. We had one pianist, one organist (sometimes) and one song leader. We would sing songs about God and to God but there was still something missing. Passion! Pastor Tim was looking for some inspired worship, something that ushered the congregation into worship, something that ministered to anyone that was willing to participate. Most of all he wanted a worship service that would draw people, both saved and unsaved, closer to God. So, it was at this time that our church decided to take a long hard look at the state of our worship and what we needed to do to insure that our worship is coming from the heart and not out of tradition.

We looked at many different churches around the city, state, and country to see how they led worship, what kind of music they were worshiping with, and how their congregation responded. We found that there was, and still is, a great mixture of contemporary and traditional styles of worship. We quickly determined that in order to reach today’s society and bring new disciples to Christ then we would have to change to this more contemporary style of worship. Our first worship leader, Malinda Thompson, took the reins and quickly started mixing our hymnal based worship service with some older contemporary songs. It was a slow process and tough row to hoe at the beginning, but once we took that step of faith and started stretching ourselves during worship services and focusing on God we started to see a great difference in the lives of the praise team as well as our congregation. As we progressed we slowly added more instruments to the stage while removing the organ. Now we have a full band with two guitarists: Shawn Keeter(Lead) Kenneth Halsted (acoustic/rhythm); bass guitarist: Eli Morell; percussionist/hammer dulcimer/singer: Kevin Atkinson; pianist: D.J. Lindsey; occasional trumpet/rhythm guitarist: Brian Vines; back-up vocals: Maira Morell, Xandra Sharpe, Kim Spear, Laura Mellard, & Amanda Burton.

As you can see God has certainly blessed us with loads and loads of talent in our congregation. Our worship style has changed and grown more contemporary but we still like to incorporate some of the old hymns. We are continually learning more and more songs that you hear on the radio or from the past (sometimes the extreme past). As I said before I believe it is important to carry your history with you so that you never lose sight of where God is taking you and where you’ve been.

As for our future, I feel that God is leading us to stretch ourselves in worship on a continuous basis, to stay in the word and to actively seek His face everyday. We are seeing some of the blessing from this in some of the songs that have been written by Kenneth Halsted, our guitarist as well as songs that have been written by our Praise Team. Some of the goals we have as a Praise Team now and for the future, is to write our own songs from our experiences with God and any words or thoughts He has put in our hearts or our minds. We believe that God is speaking to us on a constant basis, we just have to be willing to listen, learn and take the time to talk to Him.