WORSHIP TEAM
August 10, 2025
Leading worship is a heavy responsibility. A worship leader must select the right songs that set the right mood, energy, and message and allows a large group of people to worship God in varying stages of life. Each week, a worship leader is an emcee, a conductor, a volunteer coordinator, and an event planner. There is a lot that goes through a worship leader’s mind during the service and during a song. We strive to give our best so that focus can be directed towards God and not our individual shortcomings.
The elders have decided to evaluate a Worship Team to assist the worship leader on Sunday mornings. This would be four singers on microphones – soprano, alto, tenor, and bass – who will compliment the worship leader and encourage the body to sing and worship with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength.
If you have a passion for singing and would like to participate in the Worship Team, please come join us each Wednesday night after class, starting August 13, in the auditorium. Each night we will practice upcoming worship songs, explore new songs, and begin planning the Worship Team introduction into our Sunday services. We also invite our sound and computer teams to join us in this process, ensuring we create an effective Worship Team that enhances, rather than replaces, our congregational singing.
If you are unsure and want more information, join us on Wednesday night and let’s learn together how we can best serve Austin Avenue in this way.
-Chad Benton
BORROWING WORSHIP
August 17, 2025
Can you borrow the intangible? Can you give away what was never yours to hold?
The answer is yes—it happens every Sunday. Ideas, words, connections: these are my native tongue. Singing? Choruses? Shape-notes? Not so much. And yet, every week, I borrow those gifts from you. I’m swept up in your harmonies; my soul soars on your melodies—even though I couldn’t tell one from the other. Those shape-notes might as well be hieroglyphs recounting the myths of the Pharaohs—they mean almost nothing to me.
Week after week, you share a gift that was never yours to keep. It is a gift realized only in the act of giving. Worship is rightly directed toward God—a pleasing aroma in the throne room, a veritable feast. Yet within that feast are crumbs, and like a grateful beggar, I’m overjoyed just to be at the table—even if my only vocal offering is the collection of scraps I’ve gathered from you.
Chad recently wrote about incorporating microphones into our worship service. You have no idea how thrilled that makes me. Some days I struggle to hear my part. Some days I don’t know when to sing my part. Most days, I’m not even sure what part I am!
Let me be clear: the microphones aren’t for the gifted singers (though they hold them). They’re actually for people like me—people who struggle to worship vocally. I’m deeply grateful to belong to a church family that so freely shares this beautiful, intangible gift.
So thank you—for lending what can’t be owned, for proclaiming what I cannot sing (well), and for sharing such a special moment with me and my family each week.
-Lance Havens
