It was good to revisit the church where we had once worked, and to see how far they had moved on in their quest for creativity in worship. It was a New Winey, lots-of-worship-songs kind of church, but far from following the music books slavishly they were being dead creative by starting songs not necessarily at the beginning, as is normal, but with the chorus. Coming out of one song, they struck up, without a pause, the rousing chorus:

Be to our God for ever and ever

Be to our God for ever and ever

Be to our God for ever and ever Amen.

This chorus was repeated a few times, then a few times more, with ever-growing intensity, and then without warning we started the next song (from the chorus, of course, not the beginning). Sadly we never did find out exactly what should be to our God: we knew exactly for how long it would be to him, but never what it actually was.

But my favourite piece of musical inanity in worship took place when we were being led in ‘Over the mountains and the sea’ a song, which incidentally, was my nomination when a friend asked via the gift of Facebook what our absolutely worst song was. My immediate response was ‘The one which expects me to sing the line “Oooh I feel like dancing”. I don’t!’ We were being led by an enthusiastic band who seemed particularly to enjoy the line ‘I could sing of your love forever’. Round and round we went, with all the highs and lows of volume and intensity which good worship leaders know instinctively how to handle.

I could sing of your love forever

I could sing of your love forever

I could sing of your love forever

I could sing of your love forever …

After what seemed like about 20 minutes of this, my son (in fact he of the random icebreakers – see below) leant over and whispered in my ear ‘Do you know? I really do believe they could!’

Steve’s Random Icebreaker No 3

Another to add to your collection of questions to get your group’s discussion going:

What’s your favourite thing about a horse?