I had the honour last weekend of serving with Ps Ray Badham as he led worship at Faith Community Church. Ray is a music director and songwriter at Hillsongs and currently serves as principal of Hillsong College. One of Ray’s songs, “Magnificent” has gone around the world and was most recently re-recorded on Darlene Zschech’s album Revealing Jesus.
Ray led worship with Fantastic Team 3, a great bunch of humble and capable musicians.
Whilst the rehearsal was gruelling (even more gruelling I suspect for Ray who had just arrived in Perth a few hours earlier), I learnt a lot about the hard work that goes into the preparation phase. Because we went over a lot of the details of transitions and turn-arounds, the delivery of the set went really smoothly on Sunday and there was a powerful sense of God’s presence.
Needless to say, our team really enjoyed ourselves (even Caleb our drummer, who shouldered most of the load).
We also got to ask Ray a lot of questions under the guise of taking him out for dinner and lunch!
I am really grateful to Ray for his servant leadership and for our amazing team for supporting him so well.
Last weekend, we also saw the return of Ps Yoy Alberastine to FCC’s worship team. Yoy and I have been close friends for some time even though we had served in different churches, but we both had a heart to see churches connect together through worship. So when I came to FCC, I had always hoped to serve together with Yoy with the team. Unfortunately, around that time, Yoy had just begun his itinerant ministry. Yoy has been a defining influence in my own ministry after I had met with some 8 years ago, and we continued to serve together in various capacities in inter-church events. So I felt a real sense of joy when we finally got to share the platform together at our home church last Sunday!
On a sad note, last week was one of our vocalist’s last day with our team. Tim Loy has been serving with us for some time and was one of the individuals I connected really well with early on when I first joined the church. Tim has just answered God’s call to go to Kingsway Christian Church and help with the pioneering work. I really admire his courage and conviction for taking the step of faith, especially when he felt that a lot of things he had been praying and hoping for in FCC was starting to come to pass. I was told that when Timmy first joined the ministry, he was a bit of a “rascal”. But five years on, he is passionate in his pursuit of God, a ministry leader and a leader in the marketplace. It is a testament to how people’s lives can change when you believe in them! We are going to miss you Timmy!
The Worship Revolution 