My Story
Hi my name is Dave Smith, and I am the Worship / Creative Arts Pastor for Mid Atlantic Community Church (MACC) in Gambrills Maryland. I decided to start this site as a way of sharing my experiences as a onetime non-paid volunteer worship leader to the paid worship/creative arts pastor of MACC. This has been something of a journey and I feel like my experiences could be helpful to those in the midst of negotiating their own journeys
I will probably jump around quite a bit when telling you about my story, but throughout the confusion, I am hoping that some part of my experience will speak to you and give you some hope in where you are today in your story.
It all started around 2003 when the church that I was attending had a split and after much prayer and time, my wife and I decided God was leading us to search for a new church to call home. At the time when we left, I was an active member on the worship team as a harmony singer, stuck deep deep in the background, which was fine with me.
After quite a bit of looking around at different churches in the area and the odd week of being lazy and not going to church at all, one of the former lay leaders of our previous church, along with 6 couples prayed about, planned and planted Mid Atlantic Community Church. My wife and I knew the church planters well and therefore concluded that this was NOT the church that God had planned for us, and we continued to look elsewhere.
Fast forward to the inaugural service and where do you think God put us? Yep at the first service of Mid Atlantic Community Church. Now being who we are and the way God made us, we are both helpers. I mean we like to help, almost in an unhealthy way sometimes. So that first service was not only our first service attending, but also our first service of getting involved. I was, you guessed it, in the background singing harmony to a volunteer late 50 year old worship leader with an acoustic guitar and harmonica. We also had a trumpet playing bass player, a piano player and 5 other random singers all lined up in a row. We were not only a sight, but we were not very good either, as you can imagine. Now I know God wants us to make a joyful noise, and that is what we were doing, but to everyone but God we were simply awful!
That first service had around 100 people, most of whom were attending out of respect for our former lead pastor. That first year was interesting, my role as a harmony singer was my comfort zone and that is where I liked it. As I said earlier, I had cut my teeth on the worship team in my former church, but to this day, I am still not sure how I got the courage up to even try out for that team, much less why I was accepted as a member. I learned a lot from some very talented singer who took the time with me to show me the ropes and teach me what harmony really was. Now I am not saying that I did not have a bit of talent, I could carry a tune pretty well, but I did not know the difference between melody and harmony until they taught me. The years on that team helped build my confidence enough to know that God had equipped me to be in the background and that is where He wanted me to stay. Little did I know what He had in store for my future.
So after the first service was under our belts, the praise leader did his best to help us get organized and come together as a team. He recruited, well maybe recruited is the wrong word, it was more like if you wanted to be on the team, then you were on. There was no audition process or bar to which a person had to reach or maintain in order to be on the team. To his credit, he was doing the best that he could with who he had to work with. I cannot remember exactly, but I would say within 6 months or so we had all of the elements that a “band” should have, but it was very unrefined and rough.
After that first year the current worship leader got reassigned in his “normal” job so he was going to be moving to a different state by the end of that year. Since I was the only other guy singer in the band and was there every week anyhow, I think that is where they started to plot against me. So in comes my lead pastor who casually asks me out to diner to “talk”. Up to that point, I had no ambitions to do anything more than I was doing. I did not play the guitar or any other instrument and I think I had only led one song…Did You Hear the Mountains Tremble. I was currently working 40 hours a week, making a pretty good living. My wife was able to stay home with our infant son and we were making it relatively good by anyone’s standards.
At dinner, my pastor explained what was happening with the current worship leader and then casually stated that God had been talking to him about me and then he asked if I would like to take over the job of worship leader. Ok…so has anyone ever done this to you? “God has been talking to me about you…” What am I supposed to say? I mean God, The God, has been talking to my pastor about me! I mean that is quite an honor, I mean really. Right? Ok so remember I am much more comfortable in the background, that is where I feel I do my best work. I do not particularly like to even be recognized for what I do.
So when he asked the question, after all of that was spinning through my head, I literally said without hesitation NO! I don’t even think that phased my pastor, I almost think he was expecting it. Now I know what you are thinking, how could I have said no so quickly to a man who said God had talked to him about me. Well, let me just say up until that point, God had not said a word to me about it. In fact, I do not think that thought had ever crossed my mind, until that very moment when my pastor asked the question. I now know that God used Pastor Lew to help guide me to being MACC’s worship leader. Now obviously after some very serious prayer and discussion with my wife I eventually said I would give it shot, or at least until someone else could be found.
We made that decision over 15 years ago. Since that time I not only continue to be the worship leader, but in an evolution that only God could plan and execute, I am currently the ordained Pastor of Worship & Creative Arts at MACC.
These past 15 years have been one heck of a ride that continues to challenge, excite and motivate me on a daily basis. There are hills, valleys, twists and turns, but through it all God wins the day and my heart.
So those challenges and excitements is what this page is going to be about. Now I know there are many resources out there for Worship Leaders and I am not going to attempt to replace them. I just want this page to be a place for honest talk and reflection from my own experience. I feel like my story has some unique perspectives that many volunteer or even paid worship leaders can relate. Allow me to even offer some insight to those that are on the fence about what God may be calling them to do by giving you a glimpse into l how I got to where I am today.