Worship - its a lifestyle thing

In Christian lingo, "Worship" or especially "Praise and Worship" generally refers to the time when we are playing music and singing at the beginning of a service. Well it is much more than that, it is worshipping God... but to keep things simple I'll just say it usually refers to the "music" portion of the service.

But if you speak to pretty much anyone about worship, who is into worship, or a "praise and worship team", etc., inevitably the phrase "Worship is much more than just playing music on Sunday (or whenever), it is a lifestyle." Teresa has been teaching on worship lately, and God has been giving her some really incredible stuff to talk about. The Thursday before last was pretty cool. To paraphrase:

So all week, I've been like, "God... what do you want me to speak about this week" and I've been getting nothing! I've probably prayed more than I have ever have. And nothing. I've been doing word studies on worship, and nothing. So today [which would be Thursday] I'm cleaning Pastor Joe's house, and I'm scrubbing the toilet, and all of a sudden I hear God say, clear as can be, "This is worship". WHAT??? "This is worship". And so I start thinking about it and I realize that what He is saying is that SERVING IS A FORM OF WORSHIP! And so that's what we, as a worship team, are going to start doing. We are going to start serving.

And she went on to talk about how ministries in the church really need to come together, and we need to start serving each other, etc. Roger and Rachel have taken over as the youth directors, and they need their new office painted. (Pastor Rick had it super man colors, which was cool, but not for everyone). So she said the next Thursday, instead of practice, we were going to prime the walls for them. Given the size of our team, it wouldn't take much time, but it would really bless them.
And it did. They haven't seen it yet ('cuz they are out of town), but they were so surprised that the worship team would want to do something like that for them. And it was great fun. It wasn't hard work or anything (so many people, we didn't do all that much work), and we all went and have pie/coffee afterward. It was just a good time of hanging out, fellowshipping, etc.
As as Teresa said, God will honor this so much. "Seek first the kingdom of God", "You'll reap what you sow", "God will honor you when you do something for someone else", all those principles. Rather than viewing it as we are missing a practice, view it as we are doing something for God, and He'll reward us so much more when we do practice. Its just a God thing.
Teresa is so psyched about this stuff. And for good reason. It is sooo cool. So many times a worship team can get to a place of "we are a worship team and we do music", and not do anything else. Serving is just going to rock. And its just a cool indicating of where we are going as a team and as a church.