Our worship team was desperate this last weekend. You always know they are desperate when they ask me to play drums. It means every last available possibility has been exhausted, and they need to settle for me. I do have my fans though, mainly amongst the older folk. I tend to concentrate on keeping the beat with clean base and snare beats, and don’t go travelling very much around the rest of the drums in case I take a wrong turn and put the whole song off.

Another great aspect of my drumming is that I play a lot softer than the others. I see drumming as a foundation on which the music is built, rather than a lead instrument. Oh yeah, I don’t wear black jeans, my Doc Martins are lost at the back of my wardrobe, I don’t have a Zildjan T-shirt either and I don’t have long black hair and stubble or any body piercings [or none that I'm telling you about].

Getting back to the topic, I was horrified this Sunday morning at practise before the service to discover that my colleague [who was leading worship] had chosen a jazzy song to open with. It’s a Chris Tomlin song called ‘God is on our Side’. There were a few problems with this song:

• we had over 50 women away on a women’s camp. This has dire consequences meaning that the men of the church are carrying the singing. Oh no!!!!
• I was on drums. My jazz rhythms are a bit rusty.
• We have been struggling with ‘deadness’ in our morning congregation. Our night congregation has an entirely different atmosphere. I can’t explain it but some mornings before you’ve even started you can sense this pervasive ennui in the building. It sends worship leaders to the brink

This is where my genius colleague stepped in and changed things. Before worship started he encouraged the congregation to contemplate the words and declared that it was impossible to sing it without being excited and celebrating, after all if “God is on our side” then we have something to sing about.

The song started well and the congregation sans women made a good effort. After the first verse my colleague stopped proceedings and upped the ante. He demonstrated a minimalist typical Aussie male dance, which was pretty much a transfer of body weight from one foot to the next, with a lean this way and that, and a few little arm movements. You know the dance, most males do it at weddings after being dragged onto the floor by their wives. They stand their sheepishly trying to join in on the dancing but feeling consciously incompetent.

We began the song again and by now their was a growing sense of joy, mirth and genuine celebration. My colleague picked out a particular man and busted him for not moving which prompted him to start and and this caused even more mirth.

I sat their behind the drums looking at a transformed congregation. All it took was a good worship leader who had the awareness to know that he needed to do something to avert a disaster. All it took was some well led encouragement and a bit of cheekiness to snap people out of their Sunday morning middle class funk. the site of the whole congregation moving and dancing whilst singing the first song was a truly memorable one. I hope to see it again soon and we intend building on that.

Only a few weeks ago I stood in a church in Bulawayo, watching, listening, participating in worship that was truly a celebration of God. This was at least part of the way towards that. I realise that the culture of the people that attend our church is not a very expressive one [except in road rage or sporting allegiance], but there is no excuse for being the walking dead.