This was something I had been looking forward to for a long time. What a great honor it is for us to be able to pass on our own knowledge and experiences as worship leaders! It has been exciting to see the progression people have made since the first Friday we worked together. There is a passion and desire for worship in the YoungLife group that is just waiting to jump out and express itself.
Each friday starts with a few games, and then transitions to a time of testimony and teaching, usually including testimonies from our short-term team. The music teaching component concludes the night. Every week, our team records a worship song in Japanese in order to teach it to YoungLife. We split into our respective instruments and work on different techniques while the recorded song plays on a loop. After some practice with individual instruments, we then play the song together without the practice track!
Two weeks ago, we worked on the song "We Fall Down" by Chris Tomlin. This was a definitely a new song to most of YoungLife and they worked really hard to play it. With such a diverse range of skill-levels, it is difficult to know what to teach in order to get everyone playing and worship together. Simplicity is often the key with playing worship music and YoungLife played the song simply but confidently so that the glory of the Lord could shine through the song. At the end of the night, we just wanted to keep playing the song over and over again! There was a deep sense of accomplishment, but also an overarching feeling that everyone felt the holiness of God fall in the room. It brought tears to the eyes of our team members and we could see these young people one day leading this church to the presence of the Lord through music. The night was so encouraging that we all walked over to the Itoku and bought ice cream for everyone!
The following Sunday, our Canada team was leading worship and called the YoungLife group up to play "We Fall Down" with us during the service.
Our team still has one week left with YoungLife before we head back to Canada. We are SO excited about what God wants to do through all these young people!
~Colin
Each friday starts with a few games, and then transitions to a time of testimony and teaching, usually including testimonies from our short-term team. The music teaching component concludes the night. Every week, our team records a worship song in Japanese in order to teach it to YoungLife. We split into our respective instruments and work on different techniques while the recorded song plays on a loop. After some practice with individual instruments, we then play the song together without the practice track!
Two weeks ago, we worked on the song "We Fall Down" by Chris Tomlin. This was a definitely a new song to most of YoungLife and they worked really hard to play it. With such a diverse range of skill-levels, it is difficult to know what to teach in order to get everyone playing and worship together. Simplicity is often the key with playing worship music and YoungLife played the song simply but confidently so that the glory of the Lord could shine through the song. At the end of the night, we just wanted to keep playing the song over and over again! There was a deep sense of accomplishment, but also an overarching feeling that everyone felt the holiness of God fall in the room. It brought tears to the eyes of our team members and we could see these young people one day leading this church to the presence of the Lord through music. The night was so encouraging that we all walked over to the Itoku and bought ice cream for everyone!The following Sunday, our Canada team was leading worship and called the YoungLife group up to play "We Fall Down" with us during the service.
Our team still has one week left with YoungLife before we head back to Canada. We are SO excited about what God wants to do through all these young people!
~Colin
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