Several years ago, Children Desiring God had the wonderful privilege of doing a conference in the Dominican Republic. One lasting impression of that conference was the conference worship team, which was mainly made up of children and youth. They were extremely gifted and dedicated. After the conference, we had the opportunity to sit down and talk to the pastor who led this student worship team. This was not a worship team brought together just for our conference. Rather, this pastor had a vision for the next generation of worship leaders and musicians and, years earlier, he had begun to intentionally train these students. He had a systematic plan in place. Does your church have such a vision and plan? Read these words from Bob Kauflin:
Where do the next generation of musicians in the church come from? One option is to hope and pray that young musicians will get trained in the world, get saved, and use their gifts in the church. That certainly happens frequently enough.
A more faithful option is to figure out what we can do to influence, inspire, and train the young people in our church to develop and use their gifts to serve the church for the glory of God. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in a church of 50, 500, or 5000, we can begin to think about how we can pass on what we’ve learned.
(“Preparing the Next Generation of Musicians”, www.worshipmatters.com.)
(Image courtesy of zirconicusso at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)
