If I may, Jah...

I've played in worship bands for 25 years. Sometimes gtr, typically bass. 20 years charismatic, "spirit led" worship, 5 years otherwise, since finding the Lord for myself at 24, but raised in a conservative Christian Brethren church. Seen a great variety of skill levels in church musicians and worship leaders. On very rare occaisions, I've experienced worship so other worldly, I swear I've heard instruments playing that I know weren't there, and absolutely and-for-a-fact witnessed singers singing songs they never learned, accompanied by musos who never learned the accompaniment. These are however the exceptional peaks. Most church worship that I've been a playing part of has been generally more earth bound, more planned, more predictable. In fact, what I observe is that beyond a certain point, the more planning/technicalityscheduling/timeline we as worship team members bring to the occaision, the less likely it is that the Holy Spirit shows up and takes over from us.

A lovely old guy I knew from a few churches back called Harry Rudge (grandson of the founder of Rudge motorcycles!) said something to me when I was a young man that has stayed with me for years. He said to me that the Holy Spirit was like a kindly, exceedingly polite gentleman. Won't protest if he is pushed off to one side and out of the way, and will only move to the center of the stage and take control if you earnestly seek him, and insist he do so. That was the best part of 30 years ago and I still find a lot in that. My current church, a fairly mainstream, but covertly charismatic, large suburban Baptist fellowship, illustrates this. I have never been in a church or worship dept so organised, itemised, finely scheduled, with the services planned and usually executed literally to the minite. The next step up in internal organisation could only be a shuttle launch at NASA, basically. The worship and creative arts leader actually has a Grammy nomination for his production skills! Yet, although the meetings generally go smoothly, I am sad to say that I have only once in 3 years there caught a sniff of real Holy Spirit leadership in a meeting.

Jah, I'm familair, I think, with the Spirit led "fluid" dynamic of a charismatic/Pentecostal worship occaision, and it sounds like this is the flavour of worship environment you are dealing with here. Jazzmammal, Lawrie, Curmudgeon and Gary all make great points here in this thread. I guess I align with them on usage of computer based sequences having real train wreck potential in services, and I also have issues with incorporating players or singers in church worship on the basis of inclusion, or perhaps enthusiasm, rather than competence (as it sounds like your drummer has been recruited). It sounds a little like you want the computer soloution to compensate for the human frailty factor, actually.

But what I primarily want to say is beware of striving to simulate the moving of the Spirit. May I revisit this comment of Scott's, above:

Perhaps it's time for me to climb on my worship leading soapbox just for a moment:

Wrong definition of corporate worship: God is prompter, Band is performer, congregation is audience.
Right definition of corporate worship: Band is prompter, congregation is performer, God is audience.


And I actually think this is quite insightful , and I forwarded this on to the worship leader of my churches Sunday am services tomorrow (at which I'll be playing some acc. gtr).

Now, Jah, Is it possible that your going the sequencing route is at least partly attributable to the desire to deliver a smooth, polished performance to the congregation (+/- yourselves in the worship team ?) that in some way parrallels what we feel the Holy Spirit commonly does, or worse, should be doing, in your meetings?

Not that there's anything wrong with anticipating problems and preventing them before perfomance, but are we in any sense here striving to make up for an absence of true Holy Spirit leading by inserting our own impression of His presence and leading? Because just 5 minites of H.S. led silence in a meeting, if that is His will, is going to do more in our hearts than any number of musical items, computer sequenced passages of music, jazzy slide images on the overhead screens, drama skits etc. etc etc. if all these are, fundamentally, our own ideas rather than His.

But simply and quietly waiting on God in meetings, which is a prime way of showing the Holy Spirit we are seeking His leading, and we are willing to subordinate our will, our schedule, our timeline, to His, is one thing we are less and less willing to do in today's time conscious, busy and highly distractable church, I find.
And yes, of course sometimes those activities I mention above are His central intention, or at least within His allowable will for a given meeting. I would contend, however, that earnestly seeking Him within the context of meetings is not sometimes within His will, but always.

So Jah, I'm suggesting in conclusion: pray this propostition through, and I encourage you to hang out to hear something from God before going ahead with it. If the Lord is in it, then the risks various posters have spelt out will just have to be dealt with as they arise. But if it's His idea to do this, then give it a shot. However, if it's actually your idea, then although that doesn't mean that ipso facto it will fail (because God is gracious, loves us, and may well help out anyhow), be prepared for some issues that may mean it has to be discarded and put down to experience.

My take home message would thus be: Pray it through, asking the Lord for some direction. In the absence of hearing something from the Lord that affirms going the sequencing route, I'd personally be reluctant about it, for the reasons indicated above.

Best wishes in any case. I'll be praying for you in this today.

John