: : modern day levite - the worship ministry of mark swanson

| worship team |

we, as a worship team strive for a spirit of excellence in our musical talents...but more importantly, we are a unified body of worshippers with one goal: to exalt our Audience of One. when we worship, we realize that our objective is not to entertain, to "cheer-lead", to play what people want to hear or even to draw people into worship. our purpose -what we were created to do- is the same as the levitical priests in the temple...to minister unto the Lord. as we lift God up, He draws all men to himself...our job is to worship and His is to draw the people into His awesome presence. in the old testament, we read about the unfaithful levites and the sons of Zadok.

the unfaithful levites were ones that worshipped in the temple, but they did it in front of idols that had been brought in. the Lord told them that -because they had not been faithful to Him and had ministered in front of their idols- they had caused the entire nation of israel to sin...they could perform the duties in the temple and serve the people, but that they could not minister in front of Him. today, many musicians and "lead worshippers" (as matt redman calls us) bring envy, anger, discord, strife, competitiiveness, jealousy, sin, selfish ambition and other "idols" to the platform when they lead worship. we believe that the Lord's standard is the same today for worshippers that are called to take the stage and lead the people. He wants us to be sons of Zadok!

the sons of Zadok were found faithful to the God. the word says that they did not minister unto the Lord in front of idols...that they were faithful to Him and, therefore, allowed to continue to "minister in the presence of the Lord".

our desire is: 1) to be found to be a faithful Zadok priesthood, ministering unto the Lord and unto Him only...finding ourselves -often- in His presence and 2) to have the opportunity to impart and equip other worshippers and worship leaders to take up the mantle of the Zadok priesthood!

if this is your desire, please feel free to contact us...we'd be delighted to talk with you!