Why She Said She’d Never Worship with Us Again

Over the years, I’ve been able to lead some incredible worship gatherings.  Whether I was singing, preaching, or organizing the services, I have valued putting a great deal of intentionality into every offering.  As a result, I think a lot about the prospect of a person only coming to one worship service and never returning again.  What would we portray to that individual during that one service?  

This kind of thought process causes me to strive for a level of intentional excellence in the way we lead worship gatherings at every opportunity. One day, I was forced to think of another important scenario with far deeper implications.  Instead of concerning myself with an excellence in the way we led, I was forced to think about an excellence in the way we lived.

In one ministry season, I bumped into a casual acquaintance and realized that she had been absent from our worship gatherings as of late.  I knew she loved Jesus and was very ministry-minded, so I immediately became concerned that I had not seen her in a while.  Was our band getting stale?  Was the production lackluster?  Was there a better option in town?  Was the preaching off?  While I try not to think that technical, I understand people, and so my mind wandered all over the place.

“Hey, I don’t want this question to be awkward, but I have to ask you something.  I haven’t seen you in a while at our worship gathering.  Is everything OK?”

“Yeah, I’m doing great, but I will never come back there again.”

“OK.  Can I ask you why?”

“Sure.  I can’t come and worship with a group of people who allow one of the worship leaders to continue in an adulterous relationship.”

I was shocked.  I was confused.  I was defensive.  Whoever she was talking about, I knew her information had to be wrong.  There is no way something like this could be happening in a ministry I was watching over.  I tried to assure her of the unreliability of rumors but promised that I would check into it myself.

While I needed to investigate the situation, I was regrettably wrong about my assumptions.  The confrontation was a painful process because I discovered that this person (and probably many more like this person) had a legitimate reason to avoid our worship services – we weren’t taking leadership integrity seriously.  When I confronted the team member, the allegation was denied but the defendant seemed very uneasy when I started probing.  

I couldn’t let it go.  Eventually, I got to the truth, which wasn’t pretty.  This event and others in the surrounding months caused me to believe vehemently in the phrase, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”  When I looked back over the recent months, clues were all around.  My intuition told me something was off, but I remained naïve that someone like this could do something like that.  In reality, this team member was transgressing in more than just the original claim.  

I realized that if there is smoke in the ministry, there is most likely a fire blazing nearby.  

For a few weeks, we led worship with an incomplete band.  Some of the congregation probably knew that I had to confront one of the band members, but many others never gave the changeup a second thought.  During that time, our musical quality wasn’t as sharp as it had been, but our honorable quality was never more on point.  Honestly, while the technicalities seemed more labored, the spirituality felt more natural.  Why was that?  I think God takes the character of worship leaders more seriously than we can imagine.