The Lord Our Companion by C.H. Spurgeon

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy Rod and Thy Staff they comfort me"   (Psalm 23:4).Sweet are these words in describing a deathbed assurance. How many have repeated them in their last hours with intense delight!


But the verse is equally applicable to agonies of spirit in the midst of life. Some of us, like Paul, die daily through a tendency to gloom of soul. Bunyan puts the Valley of the Shadow of Death far earlier in the pilgrimage than the river which rolls at the foot of the celestial hills. We have some of us traversed the dark and dreadful defile of "the shadow of death" several times, and we can bear witness that the LORD alone enabled us to bear up amid its wild thought, its mysterious horrors, its terrible depressions. The LORD has sustained us and kept us above all real fear of evil, even when our spirit has been overwhelmed. We have been pressed and oppressed, but yet we have lived, for we have felt the presence of the Great Shepherd and have been confident that His crook would prevent the foe from giving us any deadly wound.


Should the present time be one darkened by the raven wings of a great sorrow, let us glorify God by a peaceful trust in Him.

Getting To Know Him: This Week's Question for Pastor Chad

What are you truly passionate about in church life? 

PC: Serving Christ and people.  Pasionate and authentic worship.   Creative worship planning. Team ministry.  Equipping the saints for works of ministry.  Seeing God’s people grow in their personal worship and devotion.  Teaching and training groups for ministry.  Bible teaching.  Personal mentoring of leaders..  Doing ministry with excellence. Developing relationships and building community.  Administrating well.  Encouraging the saints.  Integrity in ministry.  Edifying the Body of Christ.  The great commission through local and world Missions/outreach.  Visionary leadership.  Creativity and outside-the-box thinking.  Communicating the Word of God through effective Bible teaching. Glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ!

Worship Leading In The Spotlight

Stay Focused While Leading Worship

Due to the rise of popularity in "worship music" as a radio genre, leading worship has been romanticized to the point that we expect it to be a completely sublime arena experience, where we as leaders are transported from our solid human form into a vapor floating around in the heavenly places, only to condense back into solid form after "worship" is over, metaphorically speaking, of course. While that might happen sometimes, more often here in the real world, it is like spinning plates while riding a unicycle. We're usually just trying to keep our balance while keeping all of the elements of worship from crashing to the floor.

Obviously, the larger a program gets, the more elements we have to complicate the worship experience: congregation, pastor, tech, singers, choir, band, banners, dancers, etc., etc. On top of all this, we still have to be sensitive to God and the movement of the Holy Spirit or we'll miss the point altogether. With all of these things going on, the natural tendency is to let our focus shift each time something happens that requires our attention: a singer or player is out of tune, the drummer is rushing, or the graphics person is on the wrong slide. A former pastor of mine once said, "No matter how hard we try to keep him out, Murphy always finds a way show up."

Not all complications are bad, however. There can be some exceptional musical, visual, or even technical moments that, if we're not careful, can also distract our focus from the sublime worship experience we desire.

In my experience, there is no way to avoid being distracted by elements that vie for our attention. After all, we are human beings entrusted with divine responsibility. In order to stay "centered", however, we must:

1. Understand that leading worship is a service unto the Lord. The needs of the corporate body are more important than our own worship experience. Worship leadership is a priestly (ministry to God), pastoral (caring and shepherding people), and prophetic role (communicating God's truths to people). We, as worship leaders, sometimes have to set aside our own notions and desires in order to serve our pastor and our local congregation.
2. Understand that the weekly service should not be our first and last encounter with God for the week.Our daily time in personal worship should be the map we use to lead the people of God to the throne of God. When that personal time is lacking, we can easily find ourselves groping around in the dark, looking for the door to the throne room, all the while tripping over the trappings of worship, but not really worshiping.

Obviously, we have all experienced those times when God has blessed our worship in spite of our lack of preparation. However, we should try to error on the side of preparation, both musically and spiritually, as if it were possible to error in that direction. Our attitude should be like that of David when he said, "I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." (2 Sam 24:24)