John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is also an author, having recently completed his second book – “The Hour that Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be,” which you can read about in our book review section.
John is one of the leading thinkers in the area of Christian worship in South Africa, and so we decided to interview him to gain a little more perspective and insight into this vital topic. The interview will be released over two parts, and this is the first of them.
SW: John, I really enjoyed reading your book, and found it really helpful to me personally as a leader of worship. What inspired you to write this book?
John: I've been leading worship, and training leaders and congregations for a long time. I've had really good responses to my material, and I've given the act of worship a lot of thought and prayer, and done a lot of research over the years. Last year someone at one of my seminars asked me if I had put any of my material in writing, and I realised that I hadn't really done that yet, which felt strange to me, since I am a writer. So, this year I decided the time was right to finally put my ideas down on paper, and hopefully share them with a wider audience.
SW: Can you share a little about what worship means to you personally?
John: Personally, worship is the defining act of my life. It's not an escape from the world into a weekly retreat where I am "blessed". Rather, it's my primary spiritual discipline - a constant opening of myself to God's Presence, God's challenge and God's purpose. Worship is what drives and empowers everything I do. The act of encountering God defines me and leads me into my daily life with a desire to recognise God's work in every moment, every situation and every person, and then cooperate with that work in whatever way I can. I guess, worship is what "wakes me up" to the world and God's work in it, and it's what inspires and empowers me to contribute to the world in whatever small ways I can.
SW: Who has been the biggest influence on your life in terms of shaping and challenging you as a worship leader?
John: As a Methodist, the Wesley brothers have been a huge inspiration. Learning about the history of the Methodist movement, and how England was changed - some say saved from a bloody revolution like the one in France - through the early Methodists has been a huge challenge to me. Of course, the way they used hymnody and worship to impact their society has been a massive inspiration. Charles Wesley's hymns, and the high value John Wesley placed on worship was a very big part of the impact they had on their nation. In my own way, I pray that I can have at least some fraction of that kind of impact through my work. In addition, there are some great thinkers and writers today who have influenced how I think about faith, and by extension, the worship that expresses my faith and nurtures it. People like Brian McLaren and Matthew Fox - who both do incredibly creative things with worship gatherings - and others like Marcus Borg and, more recently, Peter Rollins have also had a big influence.
(You can visit www.sacredise.com to order a copy of John's book or for more articles by him, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts).
The second part of the interview will be released shortly.