I’ll have to admit, not in a thousand years would I have ever thought that I’d be recording a christmas album. Honestly, I’m a bit of a Scrooge. Most years I’d dread hearing Christmas music, especially any sooner then Thanksgiving, but this year something changed. For the last 9 years, maybe even longer, I’ve been leading worship at my local church and every year when November rolled around we’d start doing Christmas music. Now for those of you non-musician type I have to let you know, singing Christmas Carols is hard. At least to do it well it is. The range is always just a little to high, the notes are just a little to long. To be honest, I always dreaded it. Then just under a year ago it all stopped. I resigned from my position at the church, led my last Christmas song and moved South.

Now worship is a funny thing, especially in the american christian church. I think that when you repeat a specific act in a specific way long enough you start to believe that’s the only way it can be done, it’s called a habit. When I was at the church I talked a lot about worship as a lifestyle. I tried to encouraged the people around me to do it but no matter how much we talked about worship I could never pinpoint it in my life outside of sundays.

I think I needed to step out from under the worship pastor title to realize how to worship. There’s this passage in the bible where Jesus is talking to this woman who thinks he’s a prophet and she ask’s him where she should worship because she’s not allowed at the proper church. His response is really amazing to me because it has no reference to any place at all. He just says that the time has come where the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth because that’s what the Father is wants.

It made me start to think, maybe my act of worship has more to do with a sincere, honest turning towards God and less about a ritual that I perform once or twice a week. Maybe it’s about doing the work that my hands have to do in Spirit and in Truth with the people around me all the time and offering that back to God.

Right now my hands have a Christmas album to offer back. It’s five songs all about Jesus coming to the earth he created. About how he offered his life in spirit and in truth. It’s rough and raw and full of animal noises and manger sounds but it was one of the first times I learned how to worship with what I had, and for that I’m thankful in Spirit and in Truth.