Worship on Wheels

Our First Worship Night!

Imagine this… a group of 40 high schoolers moshing at the edge of a stage, reaching up to touch the hands of the performers. Everyone in the room is entranced and the only people on their phones are recording the performance.

Who do you think is performing? Kanye? Maroon 5? Imagine Dragons? How about… a high school worship team?

This was how our first worship night started. It was a Wednesday night, taking the place of our normal youth service. We chose 10 songs to play and had a pretty high attendance. There were quite a few faces in the crowd that had never come before. When we started our first song, the energy was amazing. You would never guess that a year ago everyone would get on their phones when worship started. Even once we transitioned from the fast songs into the slower ones, the mosh pit dissolved into prayer pods of students worshipping together and praying for each other. It was an amazing thing to see.

Our Setlist

I am beyond proud of my students for what happened this Wednesday night from an on-stage perspective. Except for a couple of logistical issues, their performance was amazing. It gave me chills being a part of it. Their stage presence and fan base would be the envy of every starting band. Their professionalism was astounding from a group of high schoolers.

But I am so much prouder of the things that led up to this night. In normal high school services, we design worship so that the “unchurched” among us will still engage. My worship team gets a little frustrated with this, because they want to get deeper in the worship service. Needless to say, they were ecstatic when they heard we were doing the worship night.

My kiddos worked their butts off making a setlist and practicing it so that we could do five out of 10 songs live, with all of them being student led (we usually use tracks). They totally owned this worship night. When some of the songs weren’t up to snuff, they were the first ones to gently call out their fellow team members and practice the song again. More than that, when a song hit the mark, the song was barely over before they encouraged each other.

We usually use background tracks, but one of my girls pioneered the playing of most of the songs live. This allowed them to make their own sound out of the songs they had chosen. It also made them completely responsible for the success or failure of the song. There was this immense maturity that came over this group of high schoolers. I had never seen this level of dedication from my students.

The thing that amazed me most was the reason they had banded together: to worship the Living God. There is no natural way that the worship night could have been so successful without God. The way that these kiddos prayed and worshipped brought me to tears.

In our second practice, we had a significant hiccup. The students had a snow day, so they were full of energy. No one could focus and practice had hit a rough patch. Instead of trying to work through the brick wall, we stopped practice (to pray, as suggested by a student). We took five minutes, got in a circle, and prayed as we felt prompted. I started, but most of the students contributed. Two things came up over and over again: gratitude and a focus off of the performance.

The students were grateful for being able to worship God at all. And that God was a god so great to be worshipped. They decided of their own volition that the God we talk about is worth their worship. Worth their lives, even. The amount of time the students put in for this night showed me that. The coolest thing was that I realized that it was a personal decision for most of my kiddos.

The students understood that what they were doing wasn’t for them. It wasn’t to show off their skills or earn their friends’ approval. They surrendered their performance to God and wanted Him to work through them. They proclaimed that they wanted to put themselves out of the equation so that God would work in their classmates hearts.

There were so many stories that I could tell about the past two weeks, but I won’t get into all of them. At the end of the night, I couldn’t contain my pride for what had just happened. Not just for the music, but what God is doing in the lives of these students and how they are surrendering their lives to Him.

Photo credits to Julia Haber.

My Starting Point

I have been on a youth worship team since I can remember. Once I figured out who Jesus really was, I jumped in.

I started when I was 11. I was already involved in music at my middle school, so it just felt natural. I started out as a struggling back up singer. It took me seven months of regularly attending practices to be offered that position. If that isn’t humble beginnings… By the time I was 13, I taught myself to play keyboard, and quickly became our only keyboardist.

I loved it. I absolutely loved it. When high school started getting busy, I arranged my schedule around worship team practices. To destress after a long week, I would alphabetize my song binder. Being on the team was, hands down, my favorite part of youth group. It kept me going through some rough pastor transitions and when all of my church friends walked away from the faith.

Fast forward to summer 2017 (age: 16). The worship team hosted a summer-long program to teach younger students how to play our instruments. That program was important to my personal development in its own right, but it was paired with a class about what worship really was. It was called “A Worshipper’s Foundation” Two college students and I watched the video series with the same name by Pastor Zach Neese at Gateway Church and read the book, “We Who Worship” by Cheryl Salem. I didn’t think much of it going in, because I already thought I knew what worship was.

Boy was I wrong!

This class changed the trajectory of my life. This is not an exaggeration, and I am not being payed by anyone to endorse this. Our team as a whole was not focused on worship, we were focused on the appearance of worship. My leaders thought that if we chose songs that made people “feel something” and had the musicianship to back it up, we were successful. It makes me sick remembering the songs we played and how we operated. None of us students really knew what the point of the worship part of service was for. (That’s not quite accurate. We were told we did worship the way we did it to get students excited (read: “awake”) before the message.)

“A Worshiper’s Foundation” taught me that we worship to glorify our Creator. That it is not just the songs we play in service. That worship is a lifestyle, and that everyone’s defining purpose in life is to worship Jesus. My whole world quaked. This thing that I loved was a total sham. I was a worshiper impostor. It was like a punch in the gut. I am normally a very stubborn person, but this class made me immediately change my thoughts and actions about worship and what was happening on our youth worship team.

In all honesty, rehearsals got hard. It bugged my how our leaders ran the team. They consistently glorified themselves and put all of the students into a submissive position. I could see that they were doing it for themselves, and not for God. They were obsessed with the musicality over the heart. We had college students on our team who stuck around after they graduated even though their lives were leaps and bounds away from worshiping the Lord. All for the sake of a full stage.

Less than a year later, I was asked to be a set leader on our team. All that meant was that I picked the songs and sang lead vocals once every four to five weeks. I had been dreaming of leading songs on this worship team for five years. I was actually speechless when my leader presented me with this opportunity. I thought I had arrived. If I died that night, I would have accomplished everything my 17 year old heart dreamed about.

For a moment, it was everything I expected. I picked the music and the instrumentalists, but I was overcome with fear. The first practice that “I” ran was a little bit rough. At the first sign that I was nervous, my leader took over, which made me even more afraid. It made me see why I had waited five years for this opportunity: I simply wasn’t cut out to lead people.

I felt under qualified and misplaced into this position, and I spent the next three days physically nauseous due to nerves. That Sunday afternoon debunked everyone who told me that even though I was quiet, I could do something great. It sent me into a panic. My performance that Wednesday was okay, and it helped me shake the feeling of eternal failure at something I hadn’t even tried yet.

When I graduated high school, I stayed in my youth group as an adult leader. I started working in our middle school ministry as a small group leader (SGL) and was made a full worship leader on our worship team. I had mentors who supported me and my best friend, who quickly became my partner in crime. As I was learning how to be a good small group leader, I noticed a rift with how our worship team was operating.

As a small group leader, I was trained to create a safe place where each student feels safe and valuable. We learned every student’s name, school, family situation, you name it until they felt like they were one of our “few.”

One day I realized that none of the leaders were doing that with our worship team. Yes, we knew their names, instruments, and possibly their hobbies, but they were mostly just band members. Their cheer leading careers and honor roll aspirations were secondary to their musical abilities, a reason why they could never make it to practices. We were lazy leaders.

But there was a more sinister force at work in our leadership. There were four of us who led, and we had total control over what songs we played, who was scheduled, everything. We were all adult leaders. The students had nothing. They were scheduled when we wanted to schedule them, sang the songs we wanted them to sing, and showed up when and where we told them to. Our “youth” worship team was entirely led by adults, and it was crushing their spirits.

As adults, we were sending them the same message I got when I was in high school: “You can’t do this.”

This wasn’t acceptable. I set out to change it, and this is my experiment.

Welcome!

Howdy everyone! Thank you for checking out my blog!

My name is Emma Mucciante and I lead a youth worship team at Mount Hope Church, in Grand Blanc, MI, along with being a small group leader in our middle school ministry. Before we get down to business, I want to tell you guys a little bit about me.

I grew up in a Christian household, and joined the worship team in my Mount Hope’s youth ministry at age 11. I started out as a vocalist with no singing experience, but now I sing and play piano. For years I preferred staying out of the limelight, but I was offered a leadership role on the worship team in my senior year of high school, and I took it.

Flash forward to my sophomore year of college, I am leading both the middle and high school worship team by myself, under the direction of the worship team leader of my high school years.

Also in my senior year, I was offered an apprenticeship as a small group leader in the Orange ministry curriculum. After I graduated, I became a small group leader for our middle school girls.

Over the past two years I have been training in both worship team and small group leading, and I’ve found that they are often governed by different principles. Six months ago, my best friend and I started an experiment. We took the leadership responsibility from the adult leaders and shifted it to the students. As adults, we still lead, but our primary responsibility is to support the students in their professional development. It’s been a crazy ride, but every week I get to see my kiddos grow into the worshipers and adults that God made them to be.

I want to share this amazing experience with all of you. The way I am choosing to lead my team is not the only way and may not be the best way, but my team has grown exponentially since starting my experiment. Come along for the ride!

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