Worship/Life

Hi. I’m Phillip Hardy, the lead worshipper at Gladeville Baptist Church. I’ve been a member of this body of believers since 1995 and have been leading worship here since 1999.

I’ve been involved with “church music” since I was a teenager. Prior to coming to Gladeville, I spent about 20 years playing piano in church, providing musical accompaniment for hymns, choir specials, Easter cantatas, singing Christmas trees, the whole thing.

If you had asked me to define worship during those 20 years, I don’t know what I would have said to you. But my operating definition of worship was: “The songs before the preaching, the music used to prepare for the message, the ‘opening act’ for the sermon.” Practically speaking, maybe you are operating under a definition something like that.

When I first visited Gladeville in 1995, I encountered something different, something that I had been looking for but couldn’t name; something that required a new definition of worship.

I could see that people were engaged with God. It was more than songs, more than emotion. It was a group of people encountering God, responding to God. The people weren’t just looking into a hymn book, they were looking into God’s face. They were seeking Him and finding Him. God was present.

I realized I had to re-define and re-discover for myself what worship really was…

Download and read the full Worship/Life article (109kb PDF)