Interview with Joel Hanson, worship leader

- What are some of the challenges and benefits of leading worship for young adults? 

Challenges and benefits?  The challenge to leading worship with young adults is reteaching what worship is.  If we use Romans 12:1 as a helpful scripture, then we need to "take your everyday ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering.  Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him" (The Message).  Praise, adoration, and petition are all part of worshiping God, and music is a helpful practice for expressing those things.  But what else?  How do we bow, serve, and follow Jesus with our everyday life?  That is the bigger challenge of leading the next generation.

The benefits to leading the next generation are that they really do want to belong to something that matters, something that can change the world. 

- What would you tell a church that wanted to attract young adult and young families to worship with them? 

I would encourage a church that wanted to attract young adults and young families to start paying attention to the issues that face that group of people and become actively involved in the community around those issues. I think if our churches acted on things like the Prayer of St. Francis we could really become what we (the Church) were meant to be.

- What would you say are some of your biggest transformations as a singer/songwriter/worship leader/Christian in the last decade? 

The biggest transformation for me as a singer/songwriter/worship leader/Christian in the last decade is summed up in finding my identity in Christ.  It sounds churchy but it's absolutely the most formational thing I have done. I'm a sinner saved by grace, for sure.  But in Christ I'm also forgiven, beloved, righteous, holy, reborn and remade. As the truth of that takes hold of you, you can't help but find yourself transformed.