Catch the sunrise and encounter God together

Catch the sunrise and encounter God together

What do a Caribbean sunrise and a Sunday worship set have in common? Sam Blake explains

Relaxing there on a family holiday, he realised the sun rising over the sea would be an unmissable sight and recruited his daughters to join him on an adventure to see it.

Alarms were set for 5.30, the trio pulled themselves from their beds and joined a small crowd at the beach armed with deckchairs, cameras and drones. It was worth the early start, says Sam. As the sun slowly rose, the sight was incredible.

Reflecting afterwards, it struck him that the experience echoes how our encounters with God through worship should be.

“We had to do a lot of preparation and planning beforehand, but God had already put the awe and wonder in place.

“When we saw the clouds changing and the sun rising it was an amazing moment, and God had done that for us.

“I realised it should be the same with worship – we’re meant to do the preparation then God brings the encounter, the awe and the wonder.”

As Elim Sound readied itself to host its fifth annual worship conference in November 2022, this understanding lies at the heart of the programme.

The event, which took place in London on 18-19 November 2022, offered a line-up designed to provide both equipping and encounter.

“On Friday night we had four hours of worship. That was very much about encountering God, experiencing awe in his presence and remembering that while we need to prepare for worship, it’s God who brings that sense of wonder.

“Saturday was about practically equipping creative teams to prepare great worship sets. There were seminars on how to do PA for small churches, what to do if you haven’t got enough people on the team, tips for musicians and so on.

“It’s not about us saying this is how to do worship, but rather creating space and saying let’s catch that sunrise so our churches can encounter God together.”

Different approach

Sam and the team took a different approach to the speaker programme at the 2022 conference. Where previous conferences had included guests such as Malcolm Duncan, Lou Fellingham, Dr John Andrews, Chris Cartwright and John Glass, the 2022 event had an in-house line-up from Elim Sound.

“We have a great team that widely represents different-sized churches from all over Elim, and we wanted to give them an opportunity to speak into the worship life of our movement,” explains Sam.

Guest speakers are amazing, but there is also a time for us to dig for the gold of what God is saying to us and to sing our own songs because Elim’s sound should be God speaking through us.”

It’s important to equip creative teams to serve because it’s often they who help forge culture and breathe life into it, he adds.

“We hope that this conference was the Elim tribe’s opportunity to get together, dig into what God is saying and do something distinctive.”

This opportunity was essential at a time when many churches are still recovering from the pandemic, he says.

“There’s something so important about us being together to worship. We did a survey which found 70 per cent of people said they engaged less with worship online, so now let’s take time to rebuild and breathe life into our churches.

“I don’t think we can or should try to go back to what we had three years ago because we’ve been through something transformational, but lockdown gave us the chance to evaluate what’s important and stripped us back to find new rhythms.

We wanted people to leave the conference feeling like wow, I’ve encountered God.

“I’ve got things to take back that I could use to prepare people in my own church to have an authentic encounter with him too.”

Future Elim Sound events

Were you are the Elim Sound Worship Conference in 2022? Or did you miss out? Save the dates for the next event on 10-11 November 2023. Visit elimsound.co.uk/conference for more details.

You'll also see Elim Sound at the Elim Leaders Summit on 9-11 May 2023. Visit elimleaders.org.uk for more details.