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2010, 2011.

 

 

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Jake LeFavour

Jake LeFavour has recently moved from Arizona back to his home state of Indiana to become the new worship leader at Harvest Fellowship.
He had barely enough time to settle in when I met with him to find out what his life had been all about recently, and how he ended up back in Indiana.
 

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bw:  Well, first, welcome back to Indiana!

jake:  Thanks!

 

bw:  Jake, were you raised in a Christian home as a child?

jake:  Yeah, from the beginning. In fact, my dad was a minister of music at a church in Marion for a number of years, so I saw him doing what I do now, leading people in worship. Then he returned to teaching.

I always enjoyed music, but when I was younger I didn't think that I had it in me to actually be a musician or singer or anything like that. In high school—I went to Blackhawk Christian and graduated from there—I was real big into sports, much more into sports than into music. In high school, my relationship with the Lord was kind of up and down. And I was always a good kid growing up, raised in a Christian home with great, godly parents, but I also had some pain in my life and disappointment, and I remember thinking that it was better to just not get my hopes up because it hurt so bad when I was disappointed or let down by people.

I dealt with anger when I was in my later years of high school, struggled with anger and bitterness and unforgiveness and really kind of put God on the shelf for a while. I was more concerned with myself than I was with Him, and pleasing myself rather than pleasing Him. That continued even through college. I wasn't really living the best life, and I was again putting myself first instead of putting the Lord first. But my sophmore year in college I started getting involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, and in my junior year I was involved in the worship team and God was starting to really move in my life, but I still had one foot in the world.

I had a friend named Barry Morton who had a profound impact on my life. He discipled me and met with me once a week in college, and he just shared the love of Christ with me I remember he told me that God hadn't given me up on me yet, and that had such a profound impact on me. He ended up being a missionary in East Asia for a number of years, and so I didn't hear from him for a while.

Later, in my junior year, I was contacted by an old friend from Indiana who had moved to Arizona and was starting a band. We had written some songs together, and I really thought that we had possibly something going there. But, more importantly, I knew that the Lord wanted me to go to Arizona. There were some things that I was having a hard time letting go of here in Indiana, things that weren't Godly, weren't best for my life. And I knew I needed a big change. So I moved to Arizona and pursued this new career in music. More importantly, I made some big decisions. One of the biggest decisions was to get in The Word every single day. I got ahold of a one-year Bible reading plan, and I got in the Word every day, and I fell in love with the Scriptures and just couldn't wait to dig in and read more. I was familiar with the Bible, obviously, but I never really, consistently read it for me. It was always for a project or an assignment or a church study or something like that. It was never just me, doing it just because I wanted to, without anyone else knowing about it...just because I wanted to dig deeper into the Scriptures.

bw:  So you were how old then?

jake:  This was when I just moved out to Arizona: 22 years old. I also made some choices to get rid of some of the vices in my life as well and I experienced freedom in those things, even from day one of moving to Arizona. It was a big risk moving out there. I only had one year of school left, and I decided not to finish college at Ball State. All my family was here in Indiana and I just left without a job, without a degree, without anything. At first, things were going pretty well with the band and recording and everything.

bw:  What kind of band was it?

jake:  It was a modern secular rock band.

bw:  You were doing covers?

jake:  Some covers and some originals as well. They were all Christian guys, good guys; we wanted to be a Switchfoot type of thing. It was good, and I was excited about it, but the thing I was really excited about was this new church that we started going to. The drummer in our band—we had found him with an ad that we posted at a Guitar Center—called us up and said, "If you want to come see me play, I play for my church at the college ministry at ASU." So we went out there and saw him play, and that was our first time going to this college ministry at ASU called The Rock, and I just fell in love with it. The college pastor's name was Cal Witmer, and he's the other man who had a profound impact in my life. I'd say, you know, my parents first, and then Barry Morton and Cal Witmer are the ones who really pointed me to Jesus and got me falling in love with Him.
So, I would meet with Cal on a weekly basis, we'd get in the Word together and just share, he would just show me Christ's love on a regular basis. I got very plugged into the church there and the college ministry and even the high school ministry, and I just couldn't get enough.

Well, the band ended up breaking up, but again, I knew it was of the Lord. I would call home and say the band broke up, I've got nothing going, I don't have a job, I don't have a car, I don't have money, I really didn't have anything. My parents were willing to have me come home and stay with them but they also trusted God had me there for a reason.

I ended up moving into my drummer's apartment and continued to go to the church. I ended up finding some work for minimum wage. I was taking the bus to work, but all this time being discipled by Cal and really falling deeper and deeper in love with the Lord. I started getting involved in the worship team there, ended up leading a small group, then ended up leading the worship team. Then, after just a year-and-a-half, Cal ended up moving to do ministry in Yuma, Arizona, and they asked me to step up and fill his shoes and to be the youth pastor and the college pastor there.

During all this time, my future wife, Kim, was also there, but we weren't involved beyond being friends. But one week we decided to get a group of people together to read through the New Testament in a week. That takes a lot of time each night: about five or six hours of reading each night. The first night, there were about 12 of us. The second night, there was about 10. The third night, there was about 8 of us, and it just kept dwindling down and dwindling down until the last three nights it was just me and Kim, and that's when I fell in love with her. What a great way...we got to fall in love reading the Bible together! We ended up dating and courting, and were engaged and married shortly after that. It was a very fast process. I called home the day I found out that she was even interested in me at all, and said, "Hey, you've got to come out here because I know who I'm going to marry, and you need to meet her!" They flew out soon after, and fell in love with her and her family as well.

Things went well in ministry. I was at The Rock for four years and did ministry there, but, my last year there, there was a big church split and things started kind of going downhill at the church. It ended up going under, so there were a couple weeks there where we were really struggling, but also just trusting the Lord, that He knew what He was doing.

We ended up accepting a position at LifePoint Church shortly after that, and that's where I've been for the last two-and-a-half years. It's been wonderful! I've learned so much, I've grown so much; I've been able to see the church really grow. When I started going there, it was probably about 250-300 people, and when I left it was close to 1000 people. So really, in just two-and-a-half years, I got to see the church grow a lot and the Lord move in people's lives.

But I'd had this kind of tug on my heart for about six months that the Lord may be wanting us to come back to Indiana. My parents had started attending Harvest Fellowship and had fallen in love with the church and with Paul Mowery's teachings and with the people. They would go on and on about Harvest. When I shared my feeling about returning to Indiana with my parents, my dad said, "Well, why don't you put your resume together and just send it in to Harvest. You never know what could happen." I wasn't in a real big hurry to do it because there wasn't even an open position. But, when I got some time, I put my resume together and sent it to Paul. Come to find out, Mike Reese, the former worship leader here at Harvest, had turned in his resignation the night before I sent in my resume, and three days after that, we got a call from our landlord saying, "Hey, I'm so sorry I have to do this to you, but I want to let you know that I've started the short sale process on your house and you're going to have to move out." So after we got word of that, I called my parents and I said, "Hey, we're moving." And they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, "Well, we're moving. I don't know where, but we're going to be moving because we have to get out of our house.

So, on a daily basis, the Lord made it very clear that we should move back. So we've been just very, very excited and thrilled and we feel right at home here. We love Harvest, we love the people, we love the teachings, we love just everything about it. So we couldn't be more excited than what we are.

bw:  It's interesting, isn't it, when you look back on your life, how God does seem to move us along.

jake:  Yeah.

bw:  Even without our assistance most of the time.

jake:  Right.

bw:  We probably don't really even know what's best for us, but He seems to, and although things may not always make sense to us, in the end it seems like He is looking out for our best, for our welfare.

jake:  Yeah.

bw:  Your job here at Harvest will be primarily music ministry. Let me ask you a couple questions about the actual art of music and how it interacts with a church service and what role worship should play. My view of music as worship is that it is a part of worship, not the whole thing.

jake:  Right.

bw:  Worship involves obedience and a lot of other things, but music is also a very integrated part of worship in a church. It's one of the most physical manifestations of worship, and it seems to play a pretty key role.

jake:  Uh-huh.

bw:  Having said that, what is your view of how your particular gifts that God has given you relate to all that? I mean, what is it that you bring to the Harvest table in terms of your views on music itself, and how it plays out?

jake:  I think the thing that separates good worship from great worship—or the thing that defines worship—is the heart. First of all, as a preface, you were kind of getting to this. If you look at what the biblical definition of worship is, in Romans Chapter 12, Paul says, you know, therefore, in view of God's mercy therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. You know, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to attest and prove what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.

And the interesting thing is, if you look what happens just before that passage at the end of Romans Chapter 11, the passage right before that is, O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable His precepts, His paths, beyond laying out, and we can look it up because I may be messing it up here a little bit. But you know, who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor, who has ever given to God that God should repay him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory, forever and ever, amen. And then that's where that therefore comes in. Therefore, in view of God's mercy, in view of who God is and what He's done, I urge you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. So that's what worship really is.

bw:  It sounds like more than music.

jake:  It's much more than music, and like you said, music is one way to worship, but you know, if you look at the rest of Romans Chapter 12, that is all it starts with, offering your bodies as living sacrifices. The rest of chapter 12 is how you can do that and different ways you can do that, and I don't think it even mentions music in that chapter, and yet these are all the ways—and it's not an exhaustive list of how to worship, but is all these great ways of what worship really is. It's giving yourself up. It's surrendering. It's saying, Lord, you are my Lord, you know, you are my God, you're my master, and I want to serve you. I want to live for You. I'm here for You. I'm not here for myself. It's really dying to yourself and living for Christ.

And so, when we gather together and we sing, like you said, that's one way to worship, and it's a great way to worship. I believe that music is one of the most powerful weapons on earth. I think it can be used for good, and I think it can be used also for evil, and if you want to learn about a culture, the fastest and easiest way is to look at their music. If you want to learn about a person, the easiest and quickest way is flip through their iPod and look at the songs they have, because we allow music to really define us. It almost becomes who we are. I think worship music is so powerful and so important because we associate it, again, with who we are.

So, Sunday mornings when we gather together, the main goal, the one thing we want to do is exalt Christ in all things. But then, not just leave it there, not just leave it on Sunday mornings but apply it throughout our daily lives. It's on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, when we go to work, when we're dealing with our relationships, that in all things we would give glory to God, and that's what we want to do, through music.

You know, Rick Warren's book, Purpose Driven Life, starts out with, it's not about you, it's all about God. And, if we could just figure that out, if we could remember that and keep our minds about that, it's not really about us. Our lives are not about us. It's so easy for us to get caught up in ourselves and what people think of us and how we look and how we present ourselves and the things going on, the circumstances that surround us, but if we could just remember it's not about us, it's all about God, then we'd we'd be looking at things differently, and I think understand why things happen in our lives a lot better and be able to deal with things a lot better.

bw:  I've always liked the analogy that if music and some of the things that we do to honor God are kind of like sacrifices in a sense, then to be reminded of the verse that says to obey is better than sacrifice, sort of prioritizes it I think.

jake:  Right.

bw:  It's like, yes, we do these sacrifices in worship and admiration of what God has done for us, but you can't leave obedience out of it. That's probably the greatest kind of worship.

jake:  That's right.

bw:  And probably most of us struggle more with just being obedient than doing the sacrifices.

jake:  Right.

bw:  It all works together, doesn't it? I agree with you. I think music can play a key role, but I know that people have very different reactions to music. What one person loves, another may hate. There can be a very visceral reaction to music.

jake:  Right.

bw:  Either good or bad. You have a reaction, you hear something, and you might say, I hate that.

jake:  Right.

bw:  I mean, it's pretty strong. Or you might say oh, I love that, it totally transports me. Music has that ability.

Something else I'd like to ask you is, you see lots of extremes in the church. You see the approach to worship being one guy with a guitar and a real bare bones approach, you know, not a lot of emphasis on the technical wizardry, no lights, smoke, screens, huge sound system...And then you've got churches that are very creatively driven, and they've got media everywhere, and it's very technical. I can respect both of these approaches if they're delivered with the right motive and with sincerity. What's your style? Lights and smoke or what?

jake:  Well, I just love to worship.

bw:  So whatever form it takes?

jake:  Yeah. You know, I'm coming from a church where we did have a bigger budget that allowed for some of those types of things, and I think that you can definitely use technology to help enhance the worship experience. The thing that you want to make sure you're not doing is making the technology a distraction from what you're ultimately trying to accomplish.

If you look at the temple that God wanted to have built, it was very elaborate, and they used the finest precious metals and woods and fabrics to build it. And this is what God wanted. So, I don't think at all that it's wrong to really put forth our best for God when we're creating the atmosphere of worship. I think money put towards good lighting and good sound is money well spent and invested into the kingdom.

But, at the same time, it's important to ask, what are we really worshiping? Who are we really worshiping? Are we worshiping the Lord or are we worshiping things? Because if those things are a distraction to our worship of our King, then we have a major problem. But as long as the things and the types of instruments that we're using and the number of musicians that we use, as long as it's to lift up the name of Jesus and to worship Him passionately and enthusiastically, I'm all for it. More is better, as long as it's not a hinderance to magnifing the Lord.

bw:  To accent rather than to distract.

jake:  Accent, yeah.

bw:  You also probably have some audience consideration. In certain churches, a particular type of style or approach might be more appropriate than in another church.

jake:  Sure.

bw:  If you're in a church full of people who almost never go to church, obviously the approach there might be different than it would be in a place where people have been going all their lives.

jake:  Right. And my main goal is how can we—not just me and not just the worship team, but how can we as a congregation—best enter into worship? Whatever decisions there may be: song selection, type of band, style of music, what technology, AVL...how can we as a congregation best enter into passionate, enthusiastic, authentic worship. That's the goal and nothing else. Obviously the goal is not to have the biggest show or the biggest bang, the biggest lights, or even the best sound. That's not the goal. What does that accomplish? It doesn't accomplish anything. The goal is authentic worship for the entire congregation to be able to enter in and really let go and just love on God.

bw:  I've always liked this story. George Frideric Handel is one of my favorite classical composers. Probably The Halleluiah Chorus from The Messiah would be one of his most well-known compositions. For me, there is very potent worship in this work. Apparently, Handel said that he hoped that as time went by and as people saw the majesty in this music as it worshiped the Lord, that people, believing musicians, would adapt the music to more contemporary times as musical trends changed. He understood that time brings changes, and, centuries ago, he granted permission to musicians who would follow him, to adapt his composition to more modern arrangments.

jake:  Wow!

bw:  Regarding music and worship, what David started in the Psalms has been continued throughout the history of the church. If you look at what David did in the Psalms, the way he wrote and the things he talked about, and then you move on into the early church, through Gregorian chants, and then you move into Handel's time and the way he wrote and worshiped the Lord, and then into Jake LeFavour's era...the style of musical delivery has changed, but the message is still the same.

jake:  Right. Absolutely. Even David spoke of that when he said, I will sing a new song to the Lord. I think God is honored when we repeat music that already exists, but also when a new song comes out of our hearts. I think it means something extra special to the Lord—and not that he doesn't enjoy the old songs, too, obviously he does—but I think there's something special about new songs. Even Jesus said, you know, behold, I'm doing a new thing. God is into new things. He likes doing new things. He wants to do new things in each of our own hearts and lives. He wants to take us from glory to glory.

bw:  He seems to be a bit creative.

jake:  He is a bit creative. He is the creator.

bw:  To wrap this up, what would be the thing that you love to do in relation to your work and what are you looking forward to as you come into this new segment of your life here at Harvest?

jake:  I love to see people respond in worship to God. I love to see hearts unfolded before the King and just offering themselves to Him in worship, and just entering in to His throne room, and coming before Him, and just, really sensing the Holy Spirit just moving among us, and as we respond to Him, He responds to us. That is my favorite thing in the world, and that's why I can't wait for heaven, because it's just going to be more of that, just more of worshiping the Lord and seeing Him in all his greatness.

And then, just pouring ourselves out to Him. So I want to do whatever I can to make an impact and to help people to worship, to let go and not worry about whether their voice sounds good or not, not worry about what the person next to them is thinking or the person in front of them, because, again, it's not about us, it's about Him. So what's most glorifying to the Lord? And then, just having people really enter into that, to really enjoy worshiping God. And if we're not enjoying it, then something's wrong. I think God wants us to really enjoy worshiping Him. He created us to worship Him. So that's what I love to do, and that's what I know I'm created it do, to worship my king.

bw:  It's great to have you here, Jake. I'm looking forward to hearing a lot more of your music. And welcome back to the Heartland!

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Jake and his wife, Kim, along with their four children, live in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

His story is part of a series called Spotlight on the Harvest Fellowship website. As new stories are added, you can check out other people's stories on the archive page.

Story & Photography by Brad Wieland.

 

published 01/01/2011