Worship Leading or Worship Assisting? (Updated)

Just got home from the pub with Pete and a few mates, as Pete made a cheese spread and thousand island dressing sandwich (nasty boy) I started playing 'Lord I lift your name on high' in that slight reggae style that I've heard. Pete started singing so I ended up fumbling my way through the following:

'Majesty' the Chorus
The splendour of the King
Hungry / On Fire
Jesus (Holy and Anointed one)

and afterwards Pete prayed for a bit. It was all good and I liked the impromptuness of it all.

Though, I have to admit, I didn't really sing much. It was mostly to help Pete know what I was playing then I'd follow what he was doing...

More than a few weeks ago I was at a delirious gig in London.

After I got over the fact people were really rude, I managed to find a good spot near the front. It was all good, rude pushing guy had moved on, the guy who said my hair was sticking in his face and said "so are you gonna move then? Off you go!" was now about two people away from me and I was settling in for a good show. The only problem was the south American kids behind me. I think they were from Brazil, they seemed like they had heard of delirious before, they even knew the tunes, but unfortunately, that was as far as it went.

They 'laaa'ed they way through most of the worship and totally killed it for me, and it really wound me up. I can remember thinking "this is stupid, I need to do something about this" and was half temped to tell them to zip it in a not quite so polite way. However, I had an idea, I got the words from the song up on my phone, turned around and gave it to them. After showing them how it worked they (about 5 of them) crowded around my phone and sang their hearts out. What stuck me though was the moment that I gave them the phone, as I passed it to them I kinda, I dunno, uncontrollably blew out air, it was like the Holy Spirit came upon me and it felt like a "ah, you're getting it now aren't you!?".

Going back to sitting in my lounge with Pete, seems I'm learning about this whole worship leading thing and what it means...but I prefer the idea of worship assisting.

MORE THOUGHTS

I was reading Three Chord Wonder the other day and he linked to an article on Ragamuffin Soul. While I suggest you read it, he summarised it like this: "The gist is that it's no good to be passionate in worship yourself if you don't teach others how to do it; that's the difference between Leading Worship and Leading the band."

It was an eye opener of an article and gave me lots to think about (like "how do you teach sincerity or passion to a group?"...or have I just totally missed the point?) but I think how it differs from assisting people in worship is that the people who need assisting pretty much know what they're doing. That said, in the living room of a terrace house it easy to find out where someone is at, in a sports hall in front of 140 people this isn't the case.