Just before the next praise night

by Wale Adenuga

Time and again, I have been approached asking if Fountain of Praise would be available to minister at one musical concert or the other. However, on account of some experiences, I am pushed to ask the organizers what the vision for their programme is.

Without mincing words, I have been to many praise nights and musical concerts and have come away with the feeling the meetings were organized just to do something. The truth however is anything we set out to do without a plan and purpose is not likely to have impact.

If you have decided to organize a meeting that is essentially musical, the first thing you must determine from the onset is what direction it is going and also have clearly articulated expectations of what you would love the Lord to do. Doing this will make it possible to judge all you have done by specific parameters rather than waiting to weigh the impact of the meeting on account of people telling you they had a nice time or otherwise.

For instance, your meeting can be an evening of worship focusing on such themes as restoration, worship His majesty with focus on believers etc or it could be a meeting that includes the performance of different music forms in order to have an evangelistic bent.

Secondly, once direction has been determined, you need to ask yourself how do you get there from where you are. Who are the people to minister? Would your choir suffice? Instead of inviting 7 other groups or artists in town, you could challenge your choir to do something creative, asking them to express and interpret the greatness of God through different art forms, music (solos, duets, men only, women only, instrumentals) dance, drama, poetry etc. These are probably things they don’t do normally on Sundays. You might be amazed with what you will come away with by challenging the choir to task their heart and the creative part of their brain. This could very well push your choir’s resourcefulness to the next level.

Alternatively, your choir may need to be rested and therefore there is the need to invite a guest artist whom you know will minister with impact in the direction you desire. Sometimes, we choose too many guest artists. Imagine lining up 8 artists for a 2 hour programme! Obviously, all of them will not pull in the same direction and what you have at the end of the day is a flow that goes back and forth. Music ministers have different strengths and you will do yourself a lot of good appreciating what strengths each minister possesses and then decide if that is what you need to be expressed in the meeting you are planning.

Aside from human resources, you need to ask yourself, do we have the necessary equipment to prosecute this performance or do we need to hire additional gear from a  sister church or do we need to consult a sound reinforcement outfit. Most times you want to have better sound output than you normally have because of invited guests. Praise Foundation for instance hires out equipment tailored to individual requirement at reasonable prices.

Content development is also key. In our church we organize evenings of worship once in while. The goal of this meeting is to create an opportunity where God’s people can spend more time worshipping God simply, sincerely and without inhibitions. So we expect people to go away with a fresh perspective of the person of the Lord. And in practical terms, we expect that all who attend will be eager to seek God’s face the next day and always.

In a couple of these meetings, we have had Kunle Ajayi involved because we know he has of worship and is a great facilitator in terms of leading people in intimate worship. We usually start on a bright note, celebrating God’s goodness, say for about 20 minutes. Sometimes we have had a dance performed for the sole purpose of giving description to a song of worship we had learned. It is our believe that in viewing such a dance, a deeper meaning of the song will evolve in the hearts of people when they sing it afterwards. In short the song now has a sight and sound experience to it.

Testimonies are also a vital part of our evenings of worship. We usually focus on one person and he or she recounts how the Lord has turned around a circumstance. Once we even had Free Gift International do a drama presentation that exposed people’s attitudes as they approached God in worship. After these, we enter into a season of intimate worship. At every of these meetings, without the word being preached, we have had scores of new converts.

Of course the challenge for us is to remain creative and fresh. And this is such a challenge because the natural thing for us to do is rework what worked the last time. Like Lamar Boschman said, “We seem to fall into an inevitable cycle: a new thing fall out of heaven on us; and we rejoice in it. Ultimately, we decide to settle there, we buy land, build houses and plant gardens. Sadly, over time, the neighbourhood declines.” This is such a powerful truth that will help us in determining whether we are organizing programmes or leading worship based on experience or doing same with the fresh breath of God.

The amount of time to be committed to the event should be well thought out. The same old rule applies: it’s not how long, but how well! Our praise nights do not have to be vigils. I turn down virtually every invitation that has to do with a all night praise session. I prefer to minister 2 hours on a Saturday or Sunday evening rather than spending an hour coupled with using some nuggets of psychology to keep the people awake after a hard day’s work on Friday!

To bring a little unusualness to the atmosphere, it might be a nice idea to re-work your decoration, back drop and even seating arrangement.

Prayer is key. What I love to do in prayer is ask God to make us realize and experience what is recorded in scripture. The scriptures talk of songs of freedom and songs of deliverance. My prayer is God, let the songs we sing become songs of deliverance. Also Paul’s assertion of the unbeliever coming forward, acknowledging that God is present is something I deeply covet (1^st Corinthians 14:24, 25). And I know God is eager to answer these types of prayers.

I trust that as we refocus our praise nights and move to push their purpose beyond just gathering people to have a nice time, we will experience a new thing falling out of heaven upon us.