Wild worship

Anna Hamilton leads worship at St Paul’s, Hammersmith – the church she’s been based at for three years: “I’ve always been someone who wants to be planted in a local church”, she says. Having come to faith in her early teens, she’s passionate to see the Church at large worshipping wholeheartedly: “If this isn’t about God and for him and to him, then I don’t understand the point.” 

Facilitating spontaneous worship

St Paul’s hosts regular worship sessions for people to attend on Monday nights and Wednesday lunchtimes in its ‘Worship Room’: “so that we can orient ourselves as a community around the presence of God”. The sessions have no agenda: “we just worship and love him [and] look for the thing that God is revealing, and then out of that begin to pray and see what happens”. It’s different every time, and Anna feels that God is inviting them to partner with him: “It’s really been the discovery of prayer, worship and intercession; [working] together with God to see his kingdom established in Hammersmith.”

God seems to be drawing people to St Paul’s who share this inclination: “he’s called a lot of people [here] at the same time with really similar hearts – real Levitical hearts for worship”. In the words of Psalm 27: “to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple” (v4). 

God is awakening genuine love again

Creating an environment for fluid, spontaneous worship requires trust and unity, so the team have learned to submit to one another. For Anna, it’s definitely a case of ‘we’ and not ‘I’ as they explore with others what it means to be a ‘worshipping community’. “We’ve been discovering what it looks like to minister to the Lord first and foremost, and then have everything else that we do as a church flow out of that.”

A wider impact

The impact is being felt in multiple ways. When they started the Worship Room, people would report weeping from the moment they arrived, even though “they didn’t really understand why”. In the local area, people have come back to faith, or found Jesus for the first time: “totally unchurched [people] dreaming about this church, and being like, ‘I have to go [there]’”. A former drug dealer, newly released from prison had walked miles specifically to reach St Paul’s. He knocked on the vestry door and ended up giving his life to Jesus. “He’s now our verger, which is wild,” Anna says. When members of the congregation were inspired to give away Bibles on Hammersmith Broadway, it impacted people of different faiths, and none. “We had some amazing salvation stories from that.” One man went straight to their Sunday afternoon service: he “dropped to his knees as soon as he walked into the building…as we were singing, ‘you made a way for me to enter the holy place’”.

Anna is aware of something special happening: “[We’re] coming back to [Jesus] being the main attraction and nothing else.” Being intentional about embedding this renewed focus into their church culture, she says: “we have this phrase; ‘he’s the most important person in the room’, so whatever we’re doing [we’re] trusting that out of that, he will minister to people…touching people’s lives, transforming, renewing”. Lives are being changed, but “not by lots of programmes…we’ve tried to learn to rely on the Holy Spirit and the presence of God…rather than what we can build in our own strength”, she says.

Anna believes this is a significant moment for the wider Church: “God is calling the Bride back to the Bridegroom and he’s awakening genuine love again.” This means a Church that “wants to spend time with him, that knows how to speak with him, that is open and ready to be with him”. She’s already noticing it around her: “I’ve seen him wake that up in our community for sure, [in] people who’ve been journeying with God for years and years, or who’ve just grown a bit cold, or a bit apathetic, or not as expectant as they once were.”

Wild and untamed – yet costly

It feels different to the familiar worship models. Anna shares that as a child her family would visit a local forest, which in the spring was carpeted with bluebells. When God reminded her of this, it prompted her to look up ‘bluebells’ on Google. The definition it gave said: “‘bluebells are a wild flower found in the forest and it’s illegal to uproot them from the ground and sell them for profit’. I felt God say to me, ‘that’s how I feel about worship’. Worship is supposed to be wild and it’s supposed to be untamed. And it’s actually illegal to take the thing that God said is for him and is called holy and sell it for profit. That really stuck in my heart that day.”

But ‘selling for profit’ isn’t just about money: “We’ve actually made worship about what we can gain from it…it became this platform for displaying our gifting…I’ve just increasingly felt God saying, ‘No, no, that is not the way that this worship thing works. It’s a precious, holy thing that’s meant to be wild.’” As they lean into this principle at St Paul’s, they’ve become less concerned about making worship sound polished. “Our stuff is very rough around the edges a lot of the time. We never use [worship] tracks anymore…Not to say that we never will, but we’ve put that stuff aside for a season.”

If my heart isn’t burning for God; if I’m just going through the motions and it’s not costing me anything – it’s not the expression that he intended for us to have

Anna shares that Psalm 84:10: “I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God” has defined much of her journey so far. Even literally – at St Paul’s she’s the church receptionist. However, she’s now expanding into new things; including preaching and ministry trips in the UK and Europe. Her goal? “To encourage people to love him basically. I’ve loved doing that as I’ve visited churches and got to spend time with their worship teams.” As she increasingly finds her ‘voice’, her values remain firm; to worship God, and lead others into his presence. “If my heart isn’t burning for God; if I’m just going through the motions and it’s not costing me anything – it’s not the expression that he intended for us to have.” 

She emphasises that worship is surrendering our whole lives, as well as the songs we sing. Anna feels personally challenged by this. “We are meant to be fully alive to God but in that process there has to be a dying to some things. [That’s] been the hardest part of my journey but it’s also been the most beautiful. And the place that I’ve met God in the most profound way.” She quotes singer-songwriter Steffany Gretzinger: “The further into the glory we go, the less we can take with us.” 

For Anna, being a female worship leader provides much-needed contrast to the many male worship leaders out there. “There are things you can bring as a woman that are totally unique and distinct”, she says. And she’s grateful for the men in her life who recognise this, who’ve “made space and really brought me alongside”. Meanwhile she’s embracing those tender or ‘fragile’ parts of herself, as powerfully God-given: “I’ve loved learning how to show up authentically as myself.” And rather than needing to assert herself, she finds that she can express these qualities “in a way that beautifully enhances and supports what God is doing”. 

An opportunity for spontaneity

Anna will be leading worship every evening in The Pursuit Celebration at Spring Harvest Minehead this month. The venue creates space for extended times of unstructured, spontaneous worship: “It feels like a real gift to get to do that with the wider Church and to see what God wants to do as he pours out his presence.”

So what can people expect each evening in The Pursuit Celebration? “Real extravagance for God, no holding back”, she says, excited. “I’m really believing that God will meet with people in profound ways that will mark their lives and shape their story.” In anticipation she reflects that “there’s something about our hunger which God is so attracted to…so do whatever you can to cultivate hunger in your heart before we gather together. And just believe that anything is possible.”

Anna is based at St Paul’s Hammersmith in London, where she is part of a worship community that seeks to build a house of worship; a place where God is honoured, his Presence rests and lives are touched by his transforming love.