It all started out one evening when I went to Church minding my own business, looking for a place to settle. The pastor said, “I hear you sing, we must get you up there on stage.” I was like, “Wow, they must be desperate!” 8 years later I had been involved in producing 2 full length albums and led worship in almost every charismatic church in Cape Town. Little did I know that was just the beginning.
God sent us to the desert. 4 years in Bloemfontein where songwriting slowed down to a trickle and everything I did was difficult and opposed by people who came out of nowhere.
I then got a phonecall after working 5 different jobs in 3 different industries and struggling to make any headway at all with my music, all the while coming to terms that I truly was meant to be a full time worship leader and pastor to a church music and media ministry. The phonecall came about two weeks after my wife and I made peace with that calling and how tough it would be to find a place to thrive since it appeared I wasn’t “fitting in” at our church (it’s amazing how we can let our perspective of reality go off track). The phonecall came after my wife and I decided God was releasing us from Bloemfontein and we wanted to move to Cape Town. I answered the phone and heard, “Adin we want you guys to move to George to be the full-time worship leader there. It will be a paid position.” I put the phone down and two minutes later we had made our decision, we were going to George!
What I want to focus on here is the desert time in Bloemfontein. Only after getting the job did I realize the skills I had developed while supposedly stumbling through my life aimlessly. Something I picked up over those years was drum programming: I program drum loops for every single service we do as a church. And I record all my new songs with very little equipment. And with all my working positions I somehow learnt a bit about my strengths and weaknesses in a very powerful way. I have avoided long term struggles for myself and my leadership by admitting my shortcomings and focussing on my strengths.
The lesson here is this: no matter what you are doing right now, it will all come together as a cosmic school of hard knocks for the plan God has for you. So don’t be afraid to submit to God’s leading in your life and to simply do the mundane to reach the spectacular.
Watching the Springboks briefly today got me thinking: we are at war. Some are more geared to the physical type of warring against an enemy, they’re the sort of people who would have been warriors or gladiators in the ancient times, guys like Pierre Spies and John Smit. You also get guys like me, who would probably have been a philosopher and poet. But all of us are at war.
I’m going to the Spur tonight. I am generally not a big Spur fan but I find myself craving their secret sauce (by secret I mean sauce, plus dirt and grime from their inefficient way of keeping sauce for far too long and sharing it amongst the containers, which effectively blend bacteria from hundreds of different locations) and chips (and by chips I mean potatoes mixed with grill operator sweat). Haha. Well, honestly, I am craving it. 