Seay emphasized Everett’s point that one of the primary goals of The Worship Initiative is to help “men and women, not just lead a song, but actually know, love, [and] value God’s Word.”
“We actually believe,” said Seay, “that great worship leaders—and not just the worship leader but all the musicians that lead our churches—great worship leaders are great worship teachers. And that means first they need to be taught.”
One resource The Worship Initiative offers to help with that need is a daily devotional. “Shane and I still travel around and sing songs and lead worship all over the country,” Everett said. “We still write music, but we didn’t have anything that really kind of fostered a daily rhythm for people to join in with us.”
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“When we would go and play music, Shane Barnard has a gift of sharing Scripture in a pastoral way and then singing a song,” said Everett. That led them to think, “What if we had this little daily devotional?”
So they created one and launched it last December. “We just pray, we read the Word, we talk about it for a couple minutes, and we sing a song,” said Everett. “And this daily rhythm has really become helpful to us as a team because we were like, we’re up here all the time. We need to be singing together.” Now, over 100,000 people are participating in the devotional. “We’re seeing Colossians 3:16 come to life,” Everett said.
One of his favorite stories from people who have started participating in the devotional is from a man “who has been going to church with us for years” who told Everett, “I never thought singing was for me because I have a horrible voice.”
The man would be in church and observe other congregants. “People would sing, raise their [hands], maybe close their eyes. People looked like they were really affectionate with the Lord,” said Everett. “And he said, ‘I just thought I didn’t have that gift, that it wasn’t for me.’”
However, the man joined The Worship Initiative’s daily devotional, although he secluded himself from his family so that they wouldn’t have to hear his voice. “I’ve been singing to the Lord,” the man told Everett. “And just like you guys say…the Lord has given everybody a voice with a specific timbre and texture, tone and volume. Everybody has a voice made to glorify God with.”
“I’ve been doing it and it’s changing my life,” he told Everett.
“And he gets teary,” Everett said. “He tears up and he’s just like, ‘Singing is for me.’ And I’m like, ‘We’re doing this forever.’”
Another resource The Worship Initiative offers is called Community 316. Seay shared that while The Worship Initiative serves some of the biggest churches in the country, most of the churches the group serves have less than 200 people. Many of those people don’t have community with others in their same roles.
