Worship Leader Wednesday #8

worshipleaderwednesday Worship Leader Wednesday #8

Terry Foester

Biographical Information

Spouse’s name: Libby
Years married: 11 years
Children’s names: Elias (5), Eden (3) & Silas (9 months)
Years leading worship: seven years
Church name and location: Hockessin Baptist Church (HBC), Hockessin, Delaware
Church website: http://www.hockessinbc.org
Denomination: Southern Baptist
Years at current church: 10
Instruments you play: Acoustic guitar (Alvarez 5030 & Epiphone Hummingbird - both through an L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic D.I.)
Electric guitar (Fender Telecaster)
Blog: http://greylias.com
Is your role full time, bi-vocational, or volunteer? Volunteer, engineer by day.

What are you listening to right now?

Ampersand EP (Derek Webb & Sandra McCracken)
God of This City (Passion)
Trumpet Child (Over the Rhine )
Unearthed (Johnny Cash) – borrowed this set from the library
Give Yourself Away (Robbie Seay Band)
Eat, Sleep, Repeat (Copeland)
Trouble (Ray LaMontagne) – If I could swap voices with someone, this is who I would pick.

What are you reading right now?

The Organic God by Margaret Feinberg
The Valley of Vision (Puritan prayers compiled by Arthur Bennett)
Acts
The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein) to my kids @ bedtime.

What’s your musical heritage?

While growing up, my dad was a truck driver. Every year I would take a week off of school and ride from the east coast to Kansas City, Missouri and back in an 18-wheeler (every kids dream). We’d listen to country music the whole way, and stop for BBQ in Ohio . The whole trucking/country music thing had a bit of an influence that I’m just realizing in my 30’s. When I hear Kris Kristofferson or Emmylou Harris I get all sentimental and what not.

While in college, I followed the alternative Christian music scene a little too closely. I used to go see bands like The Prayer Chain, The Violet Burning and The Choir (Derri Daugherty & Steve Hindalong).

Over the Rhine and Bill Mallonee (Vigilantes of Love) have also been big influences.

My wife taught me to play guitar in college, she rocks.

Describe your journey to becoming a worship leader.

In one word: gradual. I led worship while involved in youth ministry in the 90’s, then started playing guitar for the worship band at church. It wasn’t long before I was leading an adult congregation. God willing I plan on leading for a long time, it’s too rewarding to stop. I can say that worship leading has been one of the most challenging things I’ve faced. It’s a blessing and an offering at the same time.

What’s the “DNA” of your church:

Our “DNA” is a pretty good mixture age wise, with a large committed group of young families. On any given Sunday, we have a ton of kids running through the halls of our church. The church is 25 years old. We just renovated our building, we have an old brick school that was built in the 1930’s. We refinished the pine and maple floors with our latest project. We worship in a multi-purpose room.

The people tend to be really friendly (yes it’s true that people can be friendly in the northeast – surprising but true).

Describe for us your church’s worship “style” (both musical and nonmusical):

Musically, we have two contemporary worship bands that rotate each Sunday. We have two identical services. To give you an idea, we’re teaching Remedy (David Crowder) this week, and will teach God of this City (Chris Tomlin) in a couple of weeks. Both of the songs will tie to our sermon series “Jesus of Suburbia”.

We recently taught Our God Saves (Baloche) and When I Think About the Lord (Shane & Shane style).

But we also have a core of 20 or so classic hymns that we love and also want our children to learn as they grow – so we work these into our contemporary worship using both traditional and updated arrangements.

Non-musically, like I mentioned above – we are a friendly place where people can be real with each other and worship, serve and reach out together. We have two young pastors and there’s a lot of exciting things happening right now.

How has worship leading changed you?

I was like the shyest kid in high school. Worship leading has pushed me to be less introverted, less inhibited and has really helped develop a sense that God can use me for his purpose. After leading worship for a few years I finally had this revelation that God himself put me in this role and he wants to use me. It seems obvious, but it took a few years for this idea to set in. Probably like everyone else, I tend to be a self-doubter. Once I had my role better defined, there was more confidence in what I was hearing from God about leading others in worship.

But beyond that, I would say that the greatest benefit from leading worship is the sense of the Spirit that I’ve experienced as a worship leader. I kick my butt to prepare, but once I let go of the preparations I’ve learned to really lean on the Spirit and be led by the Spirit while helping others look towards God. Yeah, so I would say that without this worship leading I don’t know if I would have engaged the Spirit with the depth I have. It’s been a real blessing in my life and I wouldn’t trade all the hours I’ve put into preparing for worship. I probably would’ve been watching TV instead, so it’s all good. TV is lame.

Describe the make-up of your worship leading team:

We have some really great musicians. We learn from each other and we have a pretty open environment for pushing ourselves and trying new things musically. We have two worship teams that rotate and share the leadership. On any given week we’ll have 2 or 3 vocalists, acoustic & electric guitars, piano, drums and percussion (djembe/congas/shakers). At times, we’ll work in a penny whistle or trumpet or extra keyboard. We’re still waiting for our violinist…

What’s the greatest “worship risk” you’ve ever taken?

Each year we have a men’s conference at our church. We bring in a speaker that has some name recognition and the event is promoted pretty well in the area. I remember 3 years ago when I was asked to lead the worship for this event, I wasn’t sure if it was something I could pull together. I agreed, and it was certainly a risk for me at the time. It turned out to be a great event and each year it has helped push our worship band to new levels.

Any risks you wish you had taken but did not?

I wish I had started leading worship and singing into a microphone while in college.

I also have this desire to incorporate children into worship, so I think there are a few risks in that area that I’ll be taking soon.

I also want to lead through some of the non-singing aspects to corporate worship more often, such as prayer, posture, silence and liturgy.