October 28 2008
Most uncomfortable worship ever: mutiny at The Call
Tagged Under : Chris Lizotte, funny, Kevin Prosch, Mike Pilavachi, One Thing, The Call, Waterdeep, worship
When I recently interviewed Chris Lizotte I asked him about his most positive memorable worship experience, but what wasn’t on the video was I also asked him about his worst or most embarrassing worship experience. Chris couldn’t think of any but bad memories were flooding my mind like church goers to Olive Garden after service. I mean I had so many to choose from it was really quite sad. But one stands out as hands down the absolute worst, most awkward, worship experience I’ve ever been a part of. Thankfully I wasn’t leading it, I just happened to be there.
In December of 2002 my wife and I along with some of our friends went to The Call/The One Thing Conference in Kansas City. Mike Pilavachi was scheduled to speak, I’d never heard him at the time but heard great things(which were all true) and I was really excited to hear Kevin Prosch lead worship. This was Kevin’s return to ministry after his much publicized sexual sin and divorce from his wife. One of the most painful, disappointing, frustrating periods I can remember as Kevin was someone I looked up to as a man of God. You’re probably thinking Kevin’s set was the experience I’m referring to, but you’d be wrong, his was amazing.
Waterdeep was scheduled to open the conference. I had heard a few tunes that I liked from them, didn’t matter though I was just excited to be among thousands of other people eager to praise Jesus. As the time was drawing near for the conference to kick off people were getting more and more impatient. Finally Waterdeep came out, everyone is ready to sing, jump, lift hands, people were pumped!
I don’t recognize the first song, in fact nobody does, it’s not really a worship song. Nobody is singing and everyone is just kind of looking around like, “this is weird“. We all just kind of hum along, still hopeful for some great worship. Song #2 comes along with the same kind of soft, meandering melody that is talking about their college days. What the heck is happening??? Now people are annoyed, I’m annoyed, this is a worship conference for heaven’s sake, probably a good idea to actually play some. Song #3 comes and they introduce it by saying something like, “this is a song we wrote about not having any money and some old car…” The crowd is visibly upset, I’m upset, this feels like a joke, like we’re getting punked. All of a sudden people in the front rows start yelling at the band, “PLAY WORSHIP!!!“. Lead singer of Waterdeep yells back in the mic, “THIS IS WORSHIP!!!” Oh nooo.
Now I have retarded tingles all over and I want to hide, I can’t look anyone in the face. There is a worship mutiny taking place, people are booing, there’s a full out revolt in the conference. I’ve never in my life experienced anything like this. And in the 6 years after this, I’ve never again experienced this or even heard of anything like this. I think finally after this exchange they played one song people knew and words were up so we got to sing a little acoustic worship song. God bless Waterdeep, they are good people and a good band and I’m sure if they haven’t blacked out this moment from their memory they’d agree it was not a good moment.
This was by far the most uncomfortable worship experience ever. I’d love to hear some of your stories. Feel free to change name and dates to protect the innocent. I didn’t change any but my story was 6 years ago and the statute of limitations is up. If your story involves me though, please change my name 
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I remember that experience, definitely take the cake for my most awkward worship experience as well.
Personally the most awkward was probably when I had just got a new multi-effect pedal and tried to use it for one of our youth services, lets just say accidently pressing the wrong pedal and switching to heavy distortion for the chorus of “Find me in the River” wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
Barrie: That’s awesome. Yeah I have had quite a few of those moments. Glad that you could back me up on the Call thing though, it’s almost too crazy to be believable. But folks, I have a witness!
Not really embarrassing for me, but awkward to be sure. We were in between songs in our church, and a lady began to speak in tongues. It wasn’t the speaking in tongues part that threw people off though…it was more that we really didn’t know the person it was coming from, as she had only been to the church a few times, and sporradically at that. We have a few rules in our church about that according to Scripture, so our pastor immediately got up to go over and talk with her, and we just carried on. I felt torn, because she may well have had a message for us, but coming from someone whose spiritual background was a mystery threw us all off, I think. Before the pastor got to her, she was saying “I have a message!” in between tongues…I was like “AAAHHH! What do we do?!”
Justin: Ahh yes, gotta love those moments. Glad to hear your pastor took care of business though.
[...] Rising Sound has a post on his most uncomfortable worship experience ever. It’s more brutally awkward than an episode of “The [...]
As soon as I read the title of this I knew exactly the story that would follow and folks, he is not exagerating. I too was there and it was truely the most bizarre and uncomfortable worship experiance I have had. I know I have been a part of a fair few others myself but must have done a sufficient job of blocking them out as I can’t quite remember any now.
I would love to have been there for that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kU3wfS333A
Alex: I love that the drummer was trying to play through. What a trooper. Sounds like that was the first song thankfully, at least it wasn’t during an intense ministry time.