The story of Warring thru Worship
Warring thru Worship was born out of my musings in the weeks leading up to Halloween 2013. Our pastor at the time mentioned in passing about the increasing darkness he always felt the days and weeks before Halloween. It set me on a trail of thoughts that I couldn’t get away from.
I felt both sad and angry that so much darkness and pain has been allowed to rule a whole portion of the year. Why were God’s people okay with that? I wanted something to change. And then God planted a seed in my mind about a small part that I could play in bringing about that change.
He gave me a vision of hosting a big worship service on Halloween night. On a night when most of the country is quite literally worshipping Satan, I wanted to bring together a group of Christians to tip the scales in the other direction by focusing on God and bringing glory to Him. I wanted to do my part to start taking back stolen ground.
Even though I had this vision, I didn’t know what to do with it. I talked to mom and dad, and they encouraged me to pursue it, but I didn’t know how to go about that. I was 14 at the time and heading up something like that felt big and scary. But even though I tried, I couldn’t get away from feeling like it was something God wanted me to step out and obey in. I tried several times to push it off on mom and dad. They were very supportive and helped me every step of the way, but they always came back to the phrase “whoever gets the vision gets the job”.
So, with lots of prayer and lots of guidance and encouragement from my parents, we started planning the first Warring thru Worship.
And till the end of the night, it felt like an absolute fail.
We got so much push back and faced so much spiritual warfare and I felt hurt and disappointed. I did what I felt God wanted from me and I wasn’t interested in doing it again.
But God wasn’t done with the vision, and through many battles and prayers and probably some tears, we decided to plan to do another one the following year. And once we decided to follow through, the vision began to grow. And it continued growing over the next few years.
Instead of a one-night worship service, it became a multi-day youth event. We had times of worship and connecting and ministering to each other mixed in with activities, community service, and lots of food. Morning worship, times of teaching, prayer ministry, hay wagon rides, raking leaves for people in need, and volleyball were just a few of the things we did. We filled bags with candy and tracks and on Halloween we split into groups and got out there with the trick-or-treaters and passed those bags out while praying for the town we were in and the people who lived there. After a couple of hours of that we would all gather back together for a night of intentional worship and intercessory prayer. And then we closed out Halloween back on the streets prayer walking. It was amazing. God did so many things for us during warring thru worship. So many lives were changed because of being touched by God throughout the event.
2017 was the last year we hosted a Warring thru Worship. Halloween 2018 was shortly after I married my best friend. <3 We didn’t feel like we could adequately plan and prepare for it with so many other things on our mind. And for some reason, it didn’t feel like something we were supposed to pursue for the next several years.
But last year we feel strongly that we were being called to pick it back up. God wasn’t done… The vision wasn’t over yet.
And it still isn’t.
It will look a little different this year, and we don’t know all the details yet. But God has been giving us the pieces, and I am so excited to be hosting Warring thru Worship 2023! I know God has good things in store for us, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.
Brooklyn Kauffman