In this post I would like to introduce you to Keith Adams. Keith is our worship leader. We are very excited to have Keith on our team at Life Church. I wanted to let you get to know him a little bit. I recently sat down with Keith and asked him a few questions. 

How has worship affected your life personally? In the beginning of humanity, our father would visit with us, in the same way we like to spend time with our own children I surmise. We destroyed that relationship with sinful disobedience. The remedy required bloodshed. And finally, the permanent remedy required perfect bloodshed. That is the blood of Y'shua Mashiach, who we call "Jesus"... nothing less than the prize of all the universe, no? He's our saviour and living hero! He fixed the problem for good. We can, once again, visit with our father. We can WORSHIP him.

Here is the answer to your question (finally): Worship *IS* my life. To say that it "affected" my life doesn't say it well enough. It has become the thing that my life is about. It is "correct" living. Paul discussed this in Romans 12. The worship of our maker, is the answer to the question "Why are we here?" And this mentality is certainly not supposed to be limited to "worship leaders," no sir, this is Christianity 101.

AS Worship Leader at Life Church, what is your vision for what worship will look like at LCWM?   As far as music, and congregational singing go, I just want to honor God. It needs to be "excellent" (by his definition, not ours). Yes, I want it to sound great, and yes, I want everybody to have a good time, but those things aren't the important details. The point is that this part of the service is for HIM... not us. It should be God's people, in unison, turning their affection and attention to him. I want to teach it, demonstrate it, and see it happen.

I'm really not interested in using a worship service as an outreach. That's secondary at best. While that may draw people to Life Church, the simple fact is that Life Church cannot save their souls. Jesus told us, in John 12:32, that if we lift him up, he will draw everyone to himself. I certainly love Life Church and I want to promote it, but I can't stop there (or start there for that matter). Let's promote the love of Jesus first! We aren't the necessary ingredient, He is!

 I recently heard you say that you can’t worship God however you want to. Could you elaborate on that statement a little? Yup. When you look at Mosaic law, you'll find countless (ok, not countless but an awful lot of) examples of God being very specific in the ways that one was to go about the practice of his worship. It's spelled out, with the big crayons, very clearly. Elsewhere, throughout the old testament, you can find examples of God's reaction to improper worship. This includes his rejection of Israel's worship in Malachi.

In the new testament, Jesus taught us that we're to begin worshiping in "spirit and truth." So now it's internal. It's attitude and motive instead of rote action. The action, should be the result of the heart condition. Otherwise it's all moot. Again, Paul teaches us, in many of his letters, live "upright" lives without blame, and to be respectable citizens.

Many will say "Lord, Lord, we did this and we did that blah-blah-blah..." and he'll say that he never knew them (Matthew 7:21-23). You can't worship God in just any old way you want. He has spelled out his requirements clearly. Matthew 25:31-46 is a GREAT place to start. The fact is, I don't care how holy you act, if you're rolling your window up in your Escalade so you don't have to speak to that guy begging for food, you might as well go back home and watch Bonanza reruns.

 In closing, share anything from your heart that you would like to say to everyone who reads and follows my blog... Anything? Well, I think that Sammy Hagar was a better vocalist, even though Roth is more entertaining! LOL! ok, I'll get back to a related subject... Seriously though, I definitely would like to say that Life Church West Monroe is a refreshing surprise here in the "bible belt." This church is worshiping in Matthew 25 kind of way. We're serving our community, reaching out to folks who need a hand, and allowing our love for the master, to drive our actions. We're imperfect, messed-up people serving a perfect God (I fit right in).