Production

Who’s The Distraction

When I was praying with our team a few weeks ago a thought occurred to me as one of our team members prayed something to the effect of, “Lord, please help the service to go well.” Why should it go well? What if it doesn’t?  What’s the worst that could happen?

Would you entertain a thought with me? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work hard to make our services and events beautiful and engaging. I’m not suggesting that we don’t care about how the service or event go once they’ve started. But I believe that sometimes lurking in our prayers can be the fear of man. I wonder if each of us have prayed that  because we didn’t want to look stupid; I know I have! Or maybe we didn’t want to get scolded by our supervisors. The problem is that we pray against distractions with ourselves in mind suddenly it becomes about us and we become the distraction.

What we need to do is put ourselves aside and fully submit our craft to the Lord and what He wants to do. There are two things we should do every time we are involved in any production.

Trust.

First we must trust. There ought to come a point when, after we’ve worked hard at creating something awesome, we decide to submit it to the Lord. Look at Jesus in the garden in Luke 22:42 “saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Humble.

Secondly, we need to humble ourselves with a good dose of reality. We may be very good at what we do. We may plan and execute events like none other. However, no matter how good we may be at a particular thing we cannot possibly know everything. We don’t know God’s plan. We might have ideas of how we think our event should go but ultimately they are educated guesses.

What if we considered the opposite of what we hope for our events. What would happen if the sound system died? What would happen if someone forgot their lines? What would happen if the band had to start a song over? What if the preacher had a Freudian slip? Would it be uncomfortable? Of course. But would it make it completely useless? I don’t think so. God sometimes uses the strangest things to draw people to Him.

When we don’t trust and humble ourselves we can tend to stress ourselves out and strive for a perfect event and beat ourselves and other up when it doesn’t go as we had envisioned.  As 38 Special said, “Hold on loosely.”  Humbly submit it all to the Lord and trust Him to make it fruitful for His Kingdom, because we are not the ones who will bring the harvest.  He is.

JOEL VAN MERSBERGEN
Pastor of Worship and Creative Arts
North County Christ the King | Lynden, WA
ncctk.com

Joel was raised in a Christian family and has worked hard to serve Jesus most of his life. He has always loved music, and from the day he bought his first electric guitar Joel has been involved in worship teams. Joel is passionate about communicating the Gospel to people in ways that are engaging, moving, and vibrant. Today, Joel gets to do this by serving as the Pastor of Worship and Creative Arts at North County Christ the King, leading a team of gifted people who are in charge of publications, graphic design, video production, stage production and music.