A worship leader by definition is one who leads by modeling a life of dedication, purity, and unusual devotion to Jesus Christ.  A right valued life is a worshippers life.  Since the church does not see a large portion of our relationship with Jesus Christ, the purest expression of worship is found in the deepest attitudes and motivations of the heart and also in the quality of life that is lived while no one else is watching.  God’s power will not be manifested regularly through individuals who live duplicitous lifestyles.  Disingenuous leaders spread hypocrisy and spiritual death like a virus among the congregation in which they have been entrusted by God to lead. E.M. Bounds was correct when he wrote: “The prayer less preacher stands up before his congregation and speaks a cold spiritual frost over all who listen”.  These leaders have reserved for them the most severe rebukes and disciplines of God.

Spiritually lackadaisical leaders also greatly hinder the churches they lead. They have no platform to challenge and exhort their congregations to higher living because their fleshly appetites have stifled much of their own hunger for God.  Extravagant lives of worship often grow from persisting with God through difficulties and sufferings.  Marginal Christian leaders are not willing to accept the personal loss that an extravagant dedication to Christ will bring.  As a result they never encourage their followers to take steps of discipline that might propel them beyond their own meager levels of commitment. These leaders often inadvertently protect themselves by painting pictures of the common Christian experience as something far less that what God intended it to be.  As a result Christians in this setting are stilted in their development as mature followers of Jesus.

The world changing worship leader is one who lives a life that is full of God, a person who has determined that life has nothing to offer that equals the satisfaction of knowing and obeying Jesus Christ,  and a person that is desperate for more of God and is willing to do anything to have an ever maturing moment-by-moment experience of Him.  A world changing worship leader is one who takes the struggles of life and uses them to propel him towards God instead of towards substitute gods.  He is a person that has an ever growing love for the truth found in scripture, who has solid accountability relationships with other followers of Christ,  and who keeps a clear conscience daily by confessing all wrong doing to God. Finally he is a person who is very aware that spiritual maturity is not a by-product of human effort but is a gift from God realized only in the context of an abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. This type of person, although far from perfect, will be used by God for noble purposes. (2 Tim. 2)

“Anything creative, anything powerful,
Anything biblical, insofar as we are
Participants in it, originates in prayer.
Pastors who imitate the preaching
And moral action of the prophet's without
Also imitating the deep praying
And worship so evident in the Psalms
Are an embarrassment to the faith and
An encumbrance to the church.”  Eugene Peterson