Day 1 of the Integrity Seminars 4 Worship was great! Actually, day 1 is really tomorrow. Today was the pre-seminar Worship Labs. Extra fee but worth it. They offered multiple all day tracks.

Tracks included: 1) Worship Leading & Songwriting, 2) Worship Space, 3) Audio Excellence, 4) Worship Vocals, 5) Worship Band (separate breakouts for guitar, bass, drums, keyboard), 6) Worship Next.

I chose the Worship Leading & Songwriting. I was between this one and the Audio Excellence because they were talking about a lot of sound tech tips, discussion on wireless mics, etc. post February 2009, and digital consoles (with 6 Yamaha M7CLs). As much as this would have been beneficial for me to bring back some info for our sound team and fun to be a geek, I opted to hear some insights and experiences in my primary job area of worship leading. I’m also somewhat interested in the writing although I’ve never had much success here.

I made a good choice and got to hear some great and inspiring thoughts on worship leading and songwriting from three different, annointed worship leaders. Joel Auge from Toronto, Canada, Freddy Rodriguez from Las Vega, Nevada, and Paul Baloche from Lindale, Texas (East Texas baby!) shared a variety of their ideas and experiences. Joel and Freddy are fairly new to the Integrity family and to the global worship community. It was nice to hear some new voices and some fresh ideas. Paul is of course a seasoned and proven resource and wealth of knowledge to the worship community and it is always good to sit under his leadership.

What was most interesting to me about these sessions was the differences in perspective and approach that these three men brought to the table. In all honesty, this at first frustrated me. How could they talk about the same topics and yet have such different things to say. There were even moments when they seemed to contradict one another. Sidebar: I’ve noticed that this seems to occur often in various seminars around the various topics of Christian leadership.

In the end what I realized (and in fact am still chewing on), is that at the macro end of things they were all pretty much in agreement. Worship leading and songwriting is all about magnifying God, giving Him glory, and bringing people to a place where they can draw near and giving them a voice to express their praise to God. Their differences seem to be more a product of their personal experiences and of the cultures of the churches they have served.

I’ll try to recap their presentations on these topics in a follow-up post.