Join in as Kris Peluszak, one of HOPE's worship leaders, shares how he worships, not just in music, but in his life lived every day. This episode is not just about songs on a Sunday; it's about the rhythm of a Christ-centered life.
NOTES & RESOURCES:
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
Join in as Kris Peluszak, one of HOPE's worship leaders, shares how he worships, not just in music, but in his life lived every day. This episode is not just about songs on a Sunday; it's about the rhythm of a Christ-centered life.
NOTES & RESOURCES:
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to the Meet Hope podcast. My name is Andrew, I am the worship arts director here at Hope and I am so happy to have my brother, chris Poulousac, here with me. Chris is one of the volunteer worship leaders at Hope, man welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm very flattered to be here.
Speaker 2:We are honored to have you truly, so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure, tell us about your last name, for us Never mind. Chris says yeah, tell us a little bit about you?
Speaker 3:That was a great question. Yeah, so I'm Chris Poulousac. I live with my wife, caitlin, and our four boys, who are a delight. Thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Can you name?
Speaker 3:all four of them. You can say that Sean, josh, oliver and Graham, our dog Brinkley and our cat Nana. Nice, I'm here for you.
Speaker 2:Very cool Today and we're kind of talking about a couple things today. But first I want to get to know a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are today. You are a brilliant worship leader, my friend. Thank you. I don't know if I'd tell you that enough.
Speaker 1:It's kind.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you're welcome. I just wanted to be able to talk to you a little bit about your story and how you view worshiping your everyday life, because I know you and I talk about worship as an extension of our lives. I'm going to start from really wherever you want, but what about you? How did you get?
Speaker 3:to where you are today. Sure, I mean, I think it's at least for myself. When I look back, it's really interesting because it starts very early.
Speaker 2:It starts.
Speaker 3:at about four years old, my dad was in a. What you would look at now is a worship band, a traveling worship band but back then they didn't really have them right, because we're still doing the choir and the hymns and he was in a band called New Creation and they would travel around and do worship on Sundays and from the time I was from four maybe to about nine or 10 years old I went along with him. When I was four, my parents got me a drum set for Christmas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people don't know this because you are a drummer like that first, yeah, trained yeah. One of them. I didn't know that right away when we first met. Yeah, and then you went to school for drums right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in performance from Kutztown, studied under Will Rapp and, yes, I got my percussion degree.
Speaker 2:So was music for you, always like an expression of who you are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very much. So I think I think the older I got it kind of changed, but it was always most definitely a way to express myself yeah, yeah, even from early on Nice.
Speaker 2:Very cool. So then, how did you sort of come into your relationship with God?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my dad did that and then and that was great, because I love that music it was. You know they were doing things from the Imperials and Dallas Home and you know it was just during the time Amy Grant's age to age album had just come out. So she young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it was really 82.
Speaker 3:And Michael W Smith's project album came out, and so that was really kind of my first experience to Christian music. But you know my mom was a huge, huge influence in my life with secular music and she.
Speaker 3:She used to listen to the radio all the time and that was just really great. But really my big sister was probably a major influence in my life and we have an age difference of eight years, so it was great because she would be in her bedroom listening to the radio and she just kind of had me in there and I would just be with drumsticks pounding on pillows all the time, so you know. So I got some background there and then when I was 12, I started playing guitar. My dad was a classical guitar player, along with kind of the contemporary Christian music, so there was guitars laying around the house so I'd just pick some guitars up and full around with them and then eventually that called on and I had always was singing School plays, that kind of thing. So I went to college. I got my music degree. While I was in college I met some guys and we wanted to start a band.
Speaker 3:So, we started a secular rock band, nice, and we did a lot and we did our own stuff along with covers. We recorded an EP and that was really. When I look back now, that was really interesting to see how kind of the faith path played through all of that, to realize that was in my 20s and life wasn't really that great back then. So a lot of the writing and the songs I look back on, our cries out to God, really leaning on God, really asking some hard questions and that kind of. We did an EP that kind of fell apart and then I didn't know what God wanted me to do at all.
Speaker 3:I went through a really hard time in my late 20s and just didn't know where the Lord wanted me. So, things being things, I kind of just left that area, just left music in general, left the church. There were some things that happened in the church that I wasn't happy with. I kind of just moved out of everything of my life and I guess what you could say is I just wanted to be normal for a little bit, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I do get that and I ended up meeting Caitlin and I moved to Philadelphia and we got married and we started a family and after, while she was pregnant with our twins, which are our youngest, she really wanted to find a church that had a lot of youth, where the kids could be raised. Yeah, we tried a lot of different churches I'm not a real church person and we came to hope and we loved hope. Yeah, and I never thought about music at all. And we were sitting in service one day and she looked over at me and she said I think God wants you up there. And I was like I don't think you're right, I don't think I should be doing that, I don't want to go anywhere near that. I just that's not me, I don't want that anymore.
Speaker 3:And every week we'd come in and she say you know what? I really think God wants you doing, that I think you should do that. So that was. We started coming here in November and then by April she had kept saying it and it was very diligent and finally I said fine, I'll talk to Steve, hopefully, who was the worship pastor at the time, and we talked. It was a great conversation and I ended up coming on and playing drums, Nice, and you know, it's kind of interesting to watch that full spectrum from going all the way back to four being with my dad through his time going into the secular world, going through that, having the bottom kind of drop out of that, going into nothing, and then coming back to the church. That's cool.
Speaker 2:I mean, I asked this question or I think about this a lot because I did the secular band thing for a little bit too, and everybody, once in a while someone will ask me well, what's the difference between secular music and worship music? Because I think it's not as far apart as I think some people do, especially if you listen to some of U2's stuff, and that's very highly spiritual questions. But for you, thinking about your secular band days and your worship, what's the difference for you in that?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, there is a different reason for doing it.
Speaker 3:I think that's the biggest thing that comes out is playing secular music. You're not, or at least I wasn't really thinking about an act of praise. It was more for the art of it than anything else, and I think that, for me, is the biggest difference, where worship music is more like jazz to me, where, when we do worship music, every time that we're doing it, my soul is searching for the truth and it's one of the reasons why I love that we do live stuff on a Sunday, right, like we prep during the week, but then Sunday morning, however, the Holy Spirit moves us and you know, that is a really great way for me to be searching for the truth, with the Lord leading.
Speaker 2:So then, when did in your story? So you're playing drums? How did you go from playing drums to being, I mean, one of the handful of volunteer worship leaders? Like that's a.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's interesting. So I think Steve knew that I played guitar and I sang and I started in the worship team as a drummer and then it wasn't long after that, I think I started in June and then by the following fall or even winter I can't remember quite when Hope started Mount Laurel campus and we were really stretched for worship artists. So I remember Lonnie Mitchell, who was the worship leader at Mount Laurel, saying, would you come up and maybe do a week at Mount Laurel and play guitar and sing? And I was like, oh yeah, I can do that, sure, no problem. So that's kind of that was the shift. And then Mount Laurel too was you know if Lonnie couldn't make it and ended up sometimes just being me and Susie up there. So there was kind of that slow transition into what do you think you learned about yourself?
Speaker 2:Because, like, being a worship leader is a weird thing, because, like, when you are leading worship, you are leading in some ways you're leading the band. I mean sometimes there's there's a difference sometimes between a worship leader and a music director, and we kind of blur the lines there and those are kind of inside terms. But you're kind of facilitating this worship experience along with a bunch of other people, but you're also inviting people into worship. So, like, what was the process like for you kind of? I mean, seems like you're kind of just thrown to the world and said figure it out. I mean, I'm sure you got. You got, you know, walked up alongside by other people with Steve and Lonnie, I'm sure but like what was that like? To kind of figure out, like what it means to be a worship leader and how is that different than just leading a band and a bar? You know, because there's big differences but also big similarities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, you know I had grown up in the church so I had a background of what corporate worship was and you know, if you love Jesus and you get in a room full of Jesus people, the Holy Spirit does amazing things and you know you can't help but be there in a in a worship posture, right. So you know you and I always agree about this external adoration of God yeah, and you figure that.
Speaker 3:I think for me anyway, like I figured that out really quickly, right, like that's, you know, wasn't? It's not a show, like I knew I wasn't there to I'm not, I'm not performing, you know I'm not there, so people can hear me sing a song.
Speaker 3:We're there to praise the Lord, right like this is this, corporate worship is amazing, right like it's just the coolest thing, and I think that's the part that makes it different than saying, okay, well again, you know I'm out in the secular thing and I'm leading a band and I agree with you that there are parts that are very similar because we do have to make sure we're we're hitting the correct mood of the music and we're telling a story and yeah yeah, but there's also this, you know, very spiritual part that it's just not about us
Speaker 2:and this is so cool. Yeah, the simplest way I've ever heard it and I've stolen it and made it my own many times over, and I've sure I said it to you in the past is, like the difference between like performance and worship is where the adoration goes. Yeah, if I'm performing, it's hey, everybody, look at me, yep. And if I'm if I'm worshiping and I'm leading worship, it's hey, everybody, look at God. Yeah, one of the first and I've I'm definitely I'm sure I've told this story on the podcast before, and we talk about a lot about remembering to duck.
Speaker 2:It was something that was like one of my first weeks here, as it don't forget to duck, and it was to go out there, be on fire for God, be even flashy, do do your music thing and then, at the right moment, duck out of the way and just make sure that the only thing that the congregation sees whoever, whoever's watching, whoever's a part of this worship that they see is the cross, and I think that for me and I think you do this so wonderfully that is, that is the essence of being a worship leader is remembering to shine the light on Jesus and to be this conduit for him well, thanks.
Speaker 3:I think that's. That's very kind of you and you know I also don't want people to to feel like churches this thing you do mm-hmm right, like it's Sunday, we got to go to church. We go to church, we do three songs, yeah, we listen to a message Jeff says and everybody says amen, yeah, and then we all go home. Right, it's, it's to me. It's not about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah we're.
Speaker 3:we're coming together as a congregation to praise the Lord, which is amazing, yeah, and it looks so.
Speaker 2:I mean it looks so much I think modern churches have have pigeon-holed worship and they don't I don't think they do on purpose to like music and preaching, right, but like and singing, you know, sometimes I'll even feel fun the pastor saying you know the words that we sing and like, that's one part of it, but also the posture that we take and the actions that we do while we worship. Like that is and there's I mean there's biblical references for that and David.
Speaker 2:He was a very he was character, but he, you know, he was a very physical.
Speaker 3:Dancing in front of the ark. Yeah, exactly, yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 2:How would you say so? You kind of have this worship thing that you've sort of come on to the past several years. What does that look like in your day-to-day life? Because worship, I mean, we are just Corporate worship is just one part of our worship experience. So when we come together on Sunday mornings, corporate worship, that's a group of us coming together, singing together, praising together. That's. But like what does worship? What does your worship look like as an extension of your life, meaning in your world, when you're at work? You know what is, what does that look like for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing in my life to this point was understanding that this portion of my Journey with the Lord is very short. You know, of course it's human to get attached to earthly things. Right, it really is. But I saw on a I don't know if it was Instagram or something, and we've and you and I have talked about this before, but there was a gentleman speaking about this and he had a rope mm-hmm and the rope like went down and out the room and and you know it was 400, 500 feet of rope and there was maybe an inch of it.
Speaker 3:That was read at the tip Mm-hmm and he said this inch represents your time on earth and this rope is your time with God. Yeah, and I love that and I always try to remember that throughout my day, to kind of Try to remember God has me here for some reason. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I'm here because of God.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm here because of the Lord and I Want to try to live my life In the image of Christ, right, like I want to try to do. Like you know, I read the Gospels and, and I've read them many times and I'm still blown away, mm-hmm, by the person Christ was. I mean, it's just mind-blowing to me. So you know, like, as we always say, hope you know, conformed to you know, in the image of.
Speaker 3:Christ for the sake of others. Mm-hmm, to really try to do that can be challenging, but if if I use that as a whole as a guidance, then that's kind of how I bring that into everyday life right. Like I, I think sometimes for myself I get too worried about things that aren't gonna matter tomorrow, you know, or you know Things that aren't gonna matter in a year from now. Yeah, why am I worried about that kind of thing? And I think really that's kind of the Lord settles into that and it's like Stop, yeah, knock it off.
Speaker 2:I love the way you talk about worship and in the conversations we have it's a very active thing, yeah, on Sunday mornings, but also in, you know, in our life, and we kind of you had talked about Alma, this sort of Following the spirit you had talked about that a few minutes ago that like and then we talk a lot about it in the worship team that we need to listen to each other and also listen to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is sort of our guide, and when we tap into that, we're kind of we're tapped into the Spirit. We do things that are greater than we could have accomplished on our own, and I think that like it's a great parallel for, like what, how we lead our lives, like can I see how you are a father to your kids? That I think that like they are crazy, I love them but they're not.
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, you're being kind, yeah, but.
Speaker 2:I think that, like I see a patient in you that is otherworldly, and to see like a patient's in a, and that it, like transcends this understanding of believe it.
Speaker 2:Like you said a few minutes ago, like things don't matter in the grand scheme of thing, what matters is my relationship with God and what I'm doing. So, like are there things that you would say that in your faith journey and I know you only told us like a small portion of it, I know it's much longer that, like, as it relates to your time in music and your time in that, you really take with you daily now, like I think that, like, for me, like the act of practicing and the act of preparation is something that, like, I'm so much better at that as a musician than I am in any other avenue in my life, and I'm it's this thing that, like, I know God instilled this gift in me of music and I need to, I need to my diligence that I take with that, I need to show in the rest of my life. So are there things like that that you've learned in your faith and music journey, knowing that they're so intertwined, but, like, what are the things that you've learned about yourself or about you know.
Speaker 3:Whatever that shapes who you are today as the man of God that you are, yeah there's a lot in there, but, you know, it's always interesting when we get into talking about the act of worship and the preparation for that. And you know, what I will say is that one of the things that really profoundly hit me was, you know, my mom. My mom passed away 16 or 17 years ago from cancer. But before she did, she said to me no matter where you're playing, no matter who you're playing in front of, remember that you're always playing to a king. And you know, I know that that sounds like an audience of one, right, but it was before that which was really cool when she said that to me and that kind of always made sense to me.
Speaker 3:So, you know, preparation for everything in your life is important, right, you know, and we all do it a little bit better at times than others, and that's okay because we're humans. But you know, I think that having that kind of guidance in my life is what I try to achieve. So I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker 2:No, I think it's a great answer and yeah, I just think that playing we talk about this all the time that like our rehearsal, so we have a Thursday night rehearsal I'm sure most many people may not know that and so we rehearse Thursdays from like 7.15 to 9 o'clock and our best rehearsals are the least technical meaning. It's the we are worshiping through the figuring it out, and I always know, almost always know, that we're gonna have a good Sunday when those services, when those rehearsals, are very spirit-filled and we're not getting dogged up on. Well, you know, you said this was on four, not on, you know and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that can be challenging, yeah, and I think that that's just this.
Speaker 2:I think that speaks to something deeper is that, like, when your eyes are fixed on Jesus, your priorities are a little bit different. And I think sometimes and we all fall victim to it because, again, like you said, we're not perfect that we get caught up in our own stuff and thinking, you know, I need to have my ducks in a row, or if I don't have my, you know. But like, yeah, our best rehearsals are always the ones where there's just a little bit more worshipfulness than there's technical figuring things out. Like I feel like we get in the weeds sometimes and I think that's a great example in life, that when we do get in the weeds and stuff, then we lose who we are playing to an audience of or who we're living for. I think that's yeah, because I think that goes. You don't have to be an instrument, you don't have to be a musician to play for an audience of one or to play for the king, you know Well you know, I also think too.
Speaker 3:One of the great messages the Bible gives us is to not overcomplicate things.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:At least Jesus. I mean you look at the parables right, like it's just. Things don't have to be super complicated to have explanations. I feel like our worship Sundays can be like that too, like, okay, guys, when? When are we getting into technical things that are now taking away from the preparation? Or, and like you said, things have to be be good because we want to create a good experience for the congregation. But at the same time it's like all right, is this now starting to take away?
Speaker 2:whenever we get to the point where like was this in six, eight or 12, four, or you know like, and it's okay, but what do we feel in this moment? What's the best way to present this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I agree.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's a beautiful extension of our lives that sometimes we get caught up in the dumb details of things not dumb, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, that we're. We forget why we're doing what we're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I mean it's easy to do and it's easy to do with a worship team like we have, because we're, you know, thankfully, we're blessed and we're bigger. Yeah, we have more equipment, you know, so you can get bogged down into, into some of those things. But I also think that's the job of the worship leader or the music director on those rehearsals to kind of pull the group back.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:All right, Look, I understand what you're saying, but let's, let's refocus back now and and see if we can do this.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, just any final thoughts you have to for our friends that are listening, right?
Speaker 3:now. No, I mean, I, you know, I just I, I just would hope that people are getting an experience where they can really see the love that Christ has for them, and I hope that's what we do and that's, you know, what we pray about every week to try to do so yeah, thanks, brother.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for hopping on today. And thank you everybody for listening. Please invite friends share this podcast with people that might be interested. We just come out every week and if you want to know more information about the podcast or have questions, please reach out to a podcast at meethopeorg. And man. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being a part of the Hope community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meethopeorg or find us on socials at meethopechurch.