So You Want To Be In The Worship Team

I’VE BEEN IN THE WORSHIP TEAM FOR 5 YEARS. My mentors in worship leading have warned me many times about the seriousness of this responsibility. For some, worship leading is just a 20-to-30-minute stage opportunity to develop musical skills, confidence, or just to have fun or feel good. Throughout the years, I have heard many youths express their interest in joining the worship team and seldom (I repeat—SELDOM) do they have the right motive. (And this usually frustrates me.)

I’m not writing this to attack these people. Instead, I would like to share my knowledge and experience on the seriousness of being involved in a worship team. For those who have the burden to join worship teams, please take time to read this and check to see if you are making the right decision.  

Why Pray If God Knows Everything?

I REMEMBER ASKING THIS QUESTION to a group of young people I am handling in our church: ”IF YOU WERE A CACTUS, WHAT?”

They were dumbfounded.

And then I asked again, “If you were to save the world, so what?” They fell silent. With wide-eyed faces, they asked me to reveal the right answer.

Then I smiled and said, “The correct answer is I don’t know.” After that incident, they realized that I was intentionally asking questions that don’t make sense. They found it funny and took their revenge on other people.

In reality, we are sometimes like that. We ask the wrong questions. But what’s worse is that most people don’t even ask. They just go with the flow. Having a cell group full of passionate and curious youths throughout the last four years challenged me to help them ask the right questions in Christian living. And one of these questions was: “Why pray if God knows everything?”

We do not pray to inform God. As the Bible says, God is sovereign. He knows what we are thinking about, what we will say, and when we will do it. It is not for His benefit that we communicate with Him. It is, in fact, for our sake that He commanded us to pray. In the book Growing Deep In God: Integrating Theology and Prayer, pastor Edmund Chan emphasizes that prayer is not about using God, but finding Him:

It is not God who need our prayers, but we who need God- not as the cosmic answer to our questions nor the celestial solution to our problems, but for who He is and for who we are when we are in Him (Chan, 2008: 45).

We pray to develop our dependence on Him. Prayerful dependence helps us build a habit of seeking God, trusting God, and letting God be God. It is a two-way communication that enriches our relationship with our Heavenly Father. In fact, ”True prayer cultivates a deep spiritual hunger that draws us deeper into God. For spiritual intimacy is actually borne out of spiritual hunger” (Chan, 2008: 45).

I was once one of those who asked this question (because I was not fond of praying). But God taught me how.

A few months ago, I experienced a painful situation that made me question my faith. It drove me to lose all hope. I was lost. I never knew that I would question my 8 years of faith. But God sent me people to pray with me. Since then, I could not live another day without praying. It was my only life support during that period of suffering. I realized that it is not for God’s benefit but mine. It drew me closer to Him. It strengthened me. It helped me hold on to my faith.

God is indeed good. He knows that we are weak and we need Him. This is, perhaps, the reason why He wanted us to pray.

How To Handle Digital Crisis

Source: Google Images

NOT TOO LONG AGO, I was able to hear Ms. Eliza Uy talk about her role in handling digital crisis. It amazed me how such profession actually exists.

But what fascinated me more was the level of stress she undergoes to manage crisis that stemmed from their digital efforts.

According to Ms. Elaine Uy, a digital crisis occurs more or less once every two weeks. That is why, her lifestyle is completely centered on the management of her company’s digital reputation.

Want to Go Telecommuting?

WHAT’s Telecommuting?

It’s simply the concept of working away from the office. People engaged in telecommuting are part of the virtual workforce which is the human resource of the organization. Virtual workers perform tasks without a physical presence or with partial presence at the company workplace.

E-Commerce 101

Source: Google Images

ACCORDING TO A FAMOUS RESEARCH by the Morgan Stanley US Investment Research, it took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million people. It took 13 years for television to do the same. When computers were out, it took 16 years. And when Internet came, it only took 4 years to reach 50 million people across the globe. As of January 2011, there are about 2 billion internet users worldwide. One out of three surfs the worldwide web. That’s 30% of the entire population!

Principal Components of A Digital Culture

DIGITAL CULTURE IS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON that is observable online and offline. In here, people who are regular users create their own set of values (also called Netiquette–you can see more of this in my blog post Cyber Ethics in the Philippines). It is in our digital culture that we see an expression of an increasingly individualized society in a global world.

Today, I will talk about Cyber-culture according to Mark Deuze, the writer of the Principal Components of a Digital Culture. In his journal, he identified three major components that are present in today’s digital era, namely, participation, remediation, and bricolage.

Cyber Ethics in the Philippines

WHAT IS CYBER ETHICS?

Cyber ethics is  simply responsible digital behavior. It may also be used interchangeably with “Netiquette” or “Cyber Citizenship.” Once you become “irresponsible,” you resort to one or more of these three things: Cyber bullying, Cyber stalking, or Cyber harassment.