Worship The Lord Your God

TAKING PRAISE TO NEW HEIGHTS

Dave Eastman & J. Brian Craig

Table of Contents

THE ‘WHY’ OF WORSHIP…………………………………………………………………………………………… 3

CORPORATE WORSHIP……………………………………………………………………………………………… 4

ACCEPTABLE EXPRESSION……………………………………………………………………………………… 6

BUILDING GREAT FLOW………………………………………………………………………………………….… 9

KEYS TO GREAT WORSHIP ……………………………………………………………………………………….12

SIX ‘BEATITUDES’ FOR CONGREGATIONAL LEADERS ………………………………… 14

HELPFUL RESOURCES……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 20

Introduction - The ‘Why ‘ of Worship? (de)

In Psalm 33, David breaks down specific reasons that God is to be praised.

For the word of the LORD is right and true; He is faithful in all he does.

The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;

he puts the deep into storehouses. Psalm 33:4-7

Why should we praise God? David gives us six reasons: Because His word is right and true; because He is faithful in all he does; because He loves righteousness and justice: because He is

unfailing in His love; because He created the heavens with a word; and because He has power over all his creation. We give God glory because He is glorious. We sing His praise because He

is praiseworthy. We magnify Him to transform our shallow and finite thinking into awe at the

depth of His infinite greatness. We worship Him because it is fitting to do so. In light of God’s Holy Omnipotence, His Holy Omnipresence, His Holy Omniscience, His Holy Faithfulness, His

Holy Justice, His Holy Kindness, His Holy Grace, His Holy Love, His Holy Sovereignty and a hundred other things, worship is the only appropriate response for anyone with even a parochial

understanding of the stunning, transcendent perfections of the Almighty.

The Heavens Declare The Glory of God

Throughout scripture, we are encouraged to look to the heavens to inform our thinking about the magnitude of God’s greatness. Consider these two examples of His astonishing power.

The Sun •An immense ball of seething gases 864,000 miles in diameter. •Represents 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. The nine planets, asteroids, and debris represent .14%. To put this in perspective, if we assigned a value of $10,000 to everything in our solar system, then everything except the sun - the earth, the other planets, etc - would be worth 14 dollars. •Every second the sun burns off eight billion tons of solar material, converting it to energy, and every square yard of the sun is emitting an energy level of 130,000

horsepower. What this means is that every second, the sun produces more energy than mankind has produced since creation - including all engines, power plants and bombs ever constructed.

• One pinhead of “Sun stuff” (from the interior of the sun) would kill a person from 100 miles away. • Though the Sun is 1.2 million times bigger than the earth. it is a wimp as stars go!

• Beta Centauri is 12,000 times brighter than the sun! • Alpha Tauri - a middle-sized star, has a diameter 800 times larger than the sun. • Betelgeuse - dwarfs even Alpha Tauri: 160 million suns would fit inside of it. • Alpha Hercules - Go from the sun to the earth (93,000,000 miles), then multiply by 25, and

you get the diameter of this monster!

The Stars Genesis 1:16, is, in my view, the greatest understatement in the Bible: “He also made the stars.”

Through modern, powerful telescopes, billions of galaxies, containing millions of stars, have been discovered. The estimated number of stars is 300 Sextillion, which means that if the stars were

divided up among the world’s current population, each person would receive about

42,860,000,000,000 (42 Trillion, 860 billion) stars. God, through his limitless power, has created all of this, simply by speaking his creation into existence.

The Hunger

Beyond the simple truth of God’s worthiness, we must also consider that disciples are hungry for

authenticity in their worship. People want to touch the transcendent; they want a tangible experience; they want to know that they have

enjoyed an audience with the Almighty. We all know the theology— that God is omnipresent—but we often don’t live as if he is. Intimate,

vertical worship has the power to transport people into the

conscious presence of the Almighty.

Corporate Worship (BC) In the history of great worship advocates, there is certainly none greater than David - we clearly see his amazing personal worship through the testimony of the Psalms! Before he was a leader

he was a worshipper. His music calmed the troubled spirit of Saul. Once he had the chance, he installed corporate worship:

I Chronicles 16:4 David appointed the following Levites to lead the

people in worship before the Ark of the Lord—to invoke his blessings, to give thanks, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.

So many stories in scripture of the power of corporate worship. The psalms call repeatedly for praise, shouts of joy, and joyful singing by the whole assembly.

Hungry?

Psalm 68:24-26 (NCV) God, people have seen your victory march;      God my King marched into the holy place. The singers are in front and the instruments are behind.      In the middle are the girls with the tambourines. Praise God in the meeting place;      praise the Lord in the gathering of Israel.

This passage describes a victory march! A celebration. Everybody participating!

2 Chronicles 20 - Great story of an epic battle won by the singing!

In the New Testament, the Hebrew writer emphasizes the power of who we are as God’s collective people:

Hebrews 12:28-29 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

How does the Hebrew writer define acceptable worship in this passage? Reverence and awe!

Imagine the reverence and awe of the high priest entering the holy of holies, and yet in the new covenant WE ARE the temple (Ephesians 2:20-22). And each of us matters greatly to its

collective function and quality (Ephesians 4:16). When we come together to worship it should be whole-body participation!

1 Peter 2:5 (NLT) And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.

Certainly these passages apply to the complete organic function of the body of Christ, not just to

our Sunday worship services. But it is important to consider our “Lord’s day assemblies” in light of such passages. With today’s 3D movies, concerts, sporting events, music as entertainment rather

than participatory (unique to this generation), it’s no wonder that even disciples can tend toward

being spectators in the corporate worship setting! As church leaders we must continually strive towards engaging the whole congregation in powerful worship of God that is full of reverence

and awe.

Possible Hindrances to Engaged, Corporate Worship As church leaders, we need to be attentive to these things which are held in tension:

• too much complexity / too little creativity/innovation • bored of all old songs / too many new songs

Remove the “cringe factor!” Could be other common issues which have to do with training and mindset of your team - we will address these as we move along in this class:

• lack of flow

• lack of skill • band too loud • on screen lyric mistakes

You (church leaders) are experts at congregational dynamics. You have a great sense of the

“feel” of the room. As worship leaders we need your engagement, partnership, encouragement, and direction!

Acceptable Expression (de) “Speak to one another with Psalms,

hymns, and spiritual songs…”

One of the things I love about the church is our heritage of restoration. We like to restore things -

doctrines, patterns, lifestyles - that we find in the Bible. The same must be true of our focused worship. The Apostle Paul, on two different occasions, points us to the Psalms to encourage us

our participation in worship (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16). The Book of Psalms is the inspired

songbook of our Jewish and first century Christian forbears. Within this sacred collection, we get much more than words – we get emotion, from the ecstatic praises of a huge congregation to the

lonely lament of a solitary sufferer; we get direction, sometimes to shout, sometimes to cry out, and sometimes to silently ponder. We are encouraged to lift our hands in exaltation, to dance in

celebration, and to bow in adoration. We need to continue to grow and develop in our

knowledge and understanding of this marvelous collection if we are truly to explore everything God intends for His worshipping people.

Three Hebrew Words (excerpt from “Life-Changing Worship”)

As we dig into some of the Hebrew verbs of worship, our aim is not to come up with a set of laws to govern our approach in praise and prayer. Instead, we seek to uncover the vocabulary - and

the spirit - of Biblical Worship. What can we learn from ancient worshippers in regard to their

attitude, their posture, and their level of energy as they sought out the Almighty?

Exalt (rûm) I will exalt you, my God the King;

I will praise your name forever and ever. Ps 145:1-2

In Hebrew, rûm (room), exalt carries the meaning, “to be high; to rise or raise,” and is used over

100 times in this way in the Old Testament. This word teaches us to direct attention to the fact that God is God, and we are not. This is about intentionality—what we are aiming for in worship.

Our challenge is that we all come to God with a sadly inadequate view of who he is, a view that

for most has roots in how we felt about our father or another authority figure in our lives. The diligent worshipper seeks to elevate his view of God to a more biblically accurate and faithful

ideal. This requires deliberate attention and focused thinking. The Apostle Paul certainly sought

out a deeper vision of God, a vision he desired for the Ephesian Christians. He writes, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father My give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better…

Ephesians 1:17

We echo that thought when we sing Paul Baloche’s modern tune, “Open The Eyes Of My Heart.”

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord Open the eyes of my heart

I want to see you, I want to see you.

Given that we are seeking to fathom a fathomless God, we are wise to pray this prayer

passionately and frequently, as we will require supernatural aid to gain a greater, more intimate knowledge of God.

Extol (Hâlal) Every day I will praise you

and extol your name for ever and ever. Psalm 145:2

Hâlal carries the meaning “to make a show; to boast; and thus to be (clamorously) foolish; to rave;

to celebrate.” It is the root of our transliterated English word, “Hallelujah,” which simply means, “Praise the Lord.” Like many Hebrew words of worship, Hâlal is a call to expend energy, to pour

oneself out. We are encouraged by the psalmist’s example to be ‘clamorously foolish’ in worship. Next time your congregation gathers to worship, take some time to glance around the room.

Would ‘Hâlal’ describe your group? Are people actively engaged in boasting about God? Are

they raving? Are they celebrating? If not, why not?

Hâlal is graphically used in Psalm 150, where it occurs thirteen times in six verses. 1Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. 2Praise him for his acts of power;

praise him for his surpassing greatness. 3Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,

praise him with the harp and lyre, 4praise him with tambourine and dancing,

praise him with the strings and flute, 5praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.

6Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.

Through the Psalmist’s words, all creation is enjoined to come before God with vocal,

instrumental, emotional, physical, vigorous and rambunctious praise!

Boasting about God trains and informs our thinking of Him. Psalms 19, 29, 57, 65, 103, 104, and

many others point us to His glorious creation as evidence of His power and creative genius. Psalm 23 reminds us of the unfailing love, personal shepherding, and generous provision of God

in the difficult circumstances of life. Psalm 139 instructs us about God’s omniscience and omnipresence. Psalm 145 focuses our thinking on the power of God’s awesome works, and

connects those works to his abundant goodness, his perfect righteousness, his amazing grace,

his deep compassion, his endless patience, and his generous love. Godly boasting is a way that we allow our minds to be trained and molded and fashioned, a way that our spirituality and

knowledge of God are advanced and enhanced. Through Hâlal, our comprehension of the incomprehensible is brought more in line with the immutable truths of God’s consummate

character.

Give Thanks (Tôdâh & Yâdâh)

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise…

Psalm 100:1-4

Tôdâh carries the thought of extending the hand, and is used of

adoration, praise, and thanksgiving. Another frequently used word, Yâdâh, means “to hold out the hand; physically, to throw at or away;

especially to revere or worship (with extended hands).” Between them,

these words are used in a descriptive way of praise and adoration well over one

hundred times in the Old Testament. The lifting of hands is not a Pentecostal invention, but rather a biblical practice. In both Old and

New Testament verses, we are encouraged to express our praises

to God through the lifting of our hands, and the one hundred plus uses of these two words encourage the same. Further, there is rather conclusive artistic evidence, from early church cave

paintings, that the lifting up of hands in praise was a typical ‘posture’ in the first century church. While I would not say that it

is in any way wrong to choose not to lift hands in worship, we

should never judge or look down upon those who either do it or not. It is simple a posture of praise, like kneeling or laying

prostrate.

I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

Ps 63:4

If someone were to shoot a video of your congregation during worship, what would they see?

Would they see footage of people checking their watches, yawning, chatting, or snoozing? Focus your imagination not on those visiting, but on your veteran members. What is their attitude? What

is their level of energy? What is their personal engagement in worship? Could it be described

with the passage above, and compete with trumpets, the blast of the ram’s horn, the tumult of a stormy sea, or the roar of a rushing river? Is the God of all the earth, who created this planet for

his beloved people, who loves us with a transcendent love, and who sent His one and only son to die for us, pleased with mediocrity, distraction, and sloth in our worship? When we stand and just

look around, when we are inattentive during times of singing or praying, when we have “feelings”

about the song selection or musical style, or when we give only a piece of our hearts, is God really pleased? Does our indolence in adoration really magnify His Glory?

There are over 100 ‘Words of Worship’ in the book of Psalms, words that give us direction in our

adoration and praise. As we consider them, here are some questions we ought to ask of our

worship team and of our congregation. 1. Are we focused on the greatness of the Almighty? Do we plan our times of music, prayer,

scripture and communion to bring honor and glory to God, and as a result, to help inform and remind our fellow worshippers of the privilege of drawing near?

2. Are we intentional? Do we set out to plan services that provide a “connecting point” for

each disciple? Do we intend to enter his gates with thanksgiving? 3. Are we energetic? Do we expend energy in worship? Are calories being burned in the

audience? 4. Do we promote freedom to worship? Are there “biblical postures” we discourage or look

down upon? 5. Are we appropriately emotional? Do we allow for and encourage enthusiasm, or do we in

any way discourage it? 6. Are we meditative? Do we ever enjoy periods of silent contemplation, or do we feel the

need to fill every second with sound?

Overall, as we consider the spirit of worship found in the Psalms, to what degree has our team

restored that spirit in our church? What are some specific areas our team and congregation should work on? And what specific steps can we take to continue in this journey of adoring

worship?

Building Great Flow

Intro: The Worship Box. I (Dave) have included a very thorough description of what we do in an

appendix later in this document, but want to highlight what I consider to be the most important concept. I have found that most people need 15-20 minutes of uninterrupted praise — a flow of

songs, prayers, scriptures, spoken word, or video — to really experience the perceptible presence

of the omnipresent God. So typically we begin by singing a song or two — hand-clapper type—

to break into the fellowship and get everyone seated. From the call to worship and opening prayer on, our aim is to give people a seamless flow up to and including communion. Some

examples: • Song – Song – Prayer – Song – Reading – Song - Communion • Song – Prayer – Song – Contribution- Prayer – Song - Communion • Song – Song – Spoken Word – Song – Prayer – Song - Communion

Additional Thoughts on Flow (Brian)

We take a very similar approach to building flow. Here is how I (Brian) describe our process.

1. You’ve got to warm people up emotionally.

I have seen young worship leaders often try to start out with a deep vertical song, and it ends up seeming like a dirge. Start with upbeat, sing-to-one-another type songs, and then move towards

emotional connection later in the line up.

2. We aim for a real point of connection in every service. This might be before Communion. It might be after. Each service order is different for our group. But we want people to get to a place

of intimacy with Christ.

3. Transitions are key. Nothing can spoil the flow of a worship order like an awkward transition

between songs or elements of the service. Our worship team always practices getting out of one song and into the next. We might not even practice the whole song but we always practice

beginnings and endings and getting from one thing to the next.

4. Experiment with flow orders. We like variety, so we have tried different things. I don’t like people knowing when they come in that there are three songs, welcome, two songs,

communion, etc. But generally we always have upbeat songs, a moment to meet the people around you, moving to more deep / meditative / vertical songs, often with a testimony /

communion mixed in there. Here is an example from last Sunday. The theme was “Victorious

Living.”

What a Fellowship (Leaning on Jesus) - old style gospel, upbeat version of this By Faith - this has more of a hiphop beat, lots of verses from scripture (Heb 11) Meet those around you (2 min) - we do this every Sunday, really warms people up Scripture: Psalm 57 (NLT) Shadow of Your Wings - this is a newer song, very vertical but still upbeat, based on Ps 57 Blessed Be Your Name - very moving, popular CCM song our group really digs, very vertical Oceans - our group is really moved by this song but it has taken a while, really emotionally connects now Testimony/Communion

There’s Not a Friend - after 3 min of instrumental - we do a moving modern version of this song, same melody but very soulful and emotional chord changes, another emotional connection Offering / Announcements Lesson Victory in Jesus - fun country shuffle version of this. We always send people out with something fun, happy, that get’s people moving

Other flow options - often we’ll put the Offering after the lesson. Sometimes Communion will be

combined with the lesson if the lesson content really ties in to the cross. Sometimes the sermon is early in the service with more worship later (example Special missions, we have a time of

worship as people come forward with their gifts). We like to keep people guessing and engaged.

Some Notes on Song Choices (from Brian’s group)

1. We try to keep the list of songs we are singing fairly restricted. I’ve seen situations where the introduction of too many varied songs hinders the church from really connecting. As I

mention many times to worship leaders, we tire of songs long before the congregation does. For every one time they hear/ sing the song we have probably heard or sung it a half a dozen times,

with all the prep and rehearsal that we do. Plus musicians tend to have shorter attention spans

musically. So while I enjoy lots of other songs, we keep a pretty tight repertoire of songs that we keep recycling.

2. We sometimes retire songs we love for a while. So even given what I said above, there

comes a time when you just a sense a song is done for a while. So there are many songs that I

have even written personally (like “Be with Me Lord” or “I Need Your Love”, even “Praises Heard Around the World” or lately, “Anchor for the Soul”) that right now we aren’t singing. Doesn’t mean

we won’t bring them back. I don’t mind “Sanctuary” any more, after we took about a decade off of singing it.)

3. We like a mix of types of songs. Every group is different, and different groups work for every group. My local congregation, the South Bay Church (part of the greater LA Church of Christ) has

a little under 300 in attendance on Sundays. We are pretty diverse group in age, ethnicity, economic class, and spiritual age. We try to have a little gospel, a little contemporary Christian,

some of our own songs, some hymns, and even some country once in a while. Other

congregations may like one genre and stick to it. There is no right way to do it! I would imagine if we were to hear a worship service from the time of David circa 1000 BC, even though the

messages of the psalms are amazing – the music might sound awful to our western-music-ears. I used to get a bit tripped up by trying to do it just right. But it’s like parenting: just when you

think you have it figured out, everything changes and you have to try to figure it out again.

Anyway, we like a mix. And we still try to make it flow.

4. When we intro a new song, we keep singing it. If it’s brand new, we might sing it a couple

weeks in a row. Later, maybe once a month. There’s no rule to it, you just feel it out with your team. I make decisions but get lots of feedback. We talk in rehearsals about what is working and

what is not. While I’d like to be democratic with the song choices, I think one person has to be

making the final decisions as far as the service flow and overall objectives, and it’s just too hard if it becomes “committee based.” What I do is have people send me suggestions, I put them in my

planning document, and sometimes we end up doing them at some point and sometimes we don’t. So you might see some suggestions or notes scattered through there. Finally, we almost

never use new songs to open or close a worship time. We usually sandwich those in between

familiar songs. Even catchy ones.

SINGING SIMPLY

I enjoy big production church. You may have seen me leading singing with full band, worship

choir, high-end lighting and sound. That stuff is fun. But an equally dear to my heart is singing with a small group. Simple, unplugged, either a capella or with very simple instrumentation.

There are lots of churches out there that put on amazing, concert-level stage presentations. But that’s not why we gather. We come together to sing “to one another with psalms, hymns, and

spiritual songs” and to “sing and make music from (our hearts) to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19). Even

with big church production, I am wanting to make sure I can always hear the voices of the brothers and sisters.

With many of our churches adding new contemporary Christian songs, worship bands, bright

lights and high amperage, I feel the need to never lose the simple, house-church-level singing.

We have a tradition in our group of doing house church services on Super Bowl Sunday that people invite their friends to. I was putting together a song sheet for all our house church leaders

to use, and it made me think we need more simple songs that are easy for “unskilled and ordinary” godly people to sing together.

You know what I mean. At a baptism, at a staff meeting, at a family group leaders’ get-together, small group prayer time—what songs do you sing? What if the super-talented song leader is not

there? What if there is no worship band? Is there a new song you’ve introduced lately that works on that level, or are they all old ones? I’ve made it my personal mission to write, find and collect

new songs that are simple and easy-to-sing and I hope to share them with our fellowship.

Keys To Great Worship (Some Practicals)

Focus on Spirituality & Unity of the Worship Team & Tech Ministry (BC) • Every rehearsal we spend time with good news, or looking at a passage, we begin with

prayer, we talk about the importance of our spiritual approach.

• I recommend pulling the whole team together (including tech people!) for prayer, scripture, good news on Sunday morning.  It is important to continually emphasize the tech being part of the worship team.  Otherwise I have seen divides form between tech and musicians/singers.

• Teach, remind, emphasize humility and spirituality with the team. It is a ministry. Book’s like Dave’s “Life Changing Worship” are a great resource for teaching. Worship ministry workshops on a weekend can be very valuable.

Discover and Play to Your Strengths (DE) • Uncover and utilize the gifts of your team - spoken word, rap, do whatever you can do with

the skills of your current members. Find out what works for your team and your church. • Don’t get discouraged if you can’t pull everything off. You may not be ready to have a great

gospel choir or a solid church band. • As an example, a guitar player playing cajon is better than a bad drummer playing badly.

Teach the Congregation (BC)

• Figure out times you can work on your singing as a congregation — worship midweeks, worship renewal weekends, Sunday series, etc.  Breaking in to parts and learning harmonies is still a fun family exercise the disciples love!  Even with the newer contemporary songs, it is valuable to learn how to sing in harmony. 

• The congregation needs regular reminders about everybody singing, everyone participating, and the heart of worship.  Quick Sunday lessons (much like an “offering” or “communion” lesson) can help with this, as well as worship intro videos available from sources like sermonspice.com

Always Listen for the Voice of the Church (BC) • Teach the team to always listen for the voice of the congregation.  This means having

sections of songs that are just the voices, guarding against instruments getting too loud.  The job of the song leaders and part singers are to lead the congregation in worship, not perform for them.

Rehearse Regularly  (DE) Music is an art form - it cannot be done on the spot or on the fly. • Instrumentalists and singers have to prepare individually • Groups need to rehearse regularly - weekly or every other week (my recommendation). It

doesn’t matter how good the individual musicians are; it is about the team gelling together, developing a chemistry, and crafting their art.

• The Minister needs to be involved directing the team - not every week, but from time to time, you ought to step in, offer encouragement, teach a devotional, etc. Whether or not you are musical, or moved by music, is irrelevant. You need to be involved because it is a vital part of congregational life.

Peaceful / Joyful Sunday morning set-up (BC) • For some reason, the “default” for Sunday morning is often panic and stress, especially for

groups that have to set up an entire A/V system every week.  It it crucial that there is someone guiding the set up/rehearsal process who is steady, spiritual, joyful, at peace—that will help minimize freak out.

• It helps to not try to do too much - not too many complicated or new songs. We usually have about one thing per week that we know will need some work but most everything else is already part of our repertoire and not too hard to pull off.

• Regular rehearsals outside of Sunday help a lot with reducing stressful Sunday morning set up.

Six Beatitudes for Congregational Leaders (DE) (Excerpt from “Life-Changing Worship”)

As we mentioned earlier, people are starving for authenticity and connection; they want a

tangible experience of the presence of God on a regular basis. For many people, corporate worship – especially prayerful, intimate, scripture-filled, musical worship – can provide them that

connection point.

As powerful as music is, however, it is vital for both the worship leader and the church leader to

remember that not everyone connects in corporate worship, and not everyone is moved in particular by musical worship (musical people find this hard to understand). Some find their

spiritual connections in digging deeply into the treasures of God’s word. Others get out in nature

and connect with God through involvement in His creation. Still others receive their greatest joy and connection in serving the poor, sharing their faith, or giving generously of their resources. For

those of us in the full-time ministry, we are given the task to help all connect.

Some Thoughts For Ministers

After thirty-five years in the full-time ministry, I find this calling to be an incredibly fulfilling, constantly stretching lifestyle. The traditional paradigm of the full-time ministry leads many to

feel pressure to be really good at everything. What makes this even more challenging is that we are often not specifically and thoroughly trained to do many of the things we feel obligated to do.

Such is the case with worship. My training as a worship leader consisted of a few classes learning the basics of reading music and leading songs, along with sitting at the feet of some very

exceptional song leaders. Those who are not musically gifted often do not even have that training, and yet are expected to put together great, emotionally moving, deeply intimate worship

services. For this reason, the wise church leader will gather around him a team of specifically

gifted and focused singers, technicians and planners to work together in crafting effective times of corporate praise. This will require a great deal of humility and an openness to working as a

team, trying new and sometimes unfamiliar ideas, and accepting that perhaps there are others who are better than the leadership team or person at this kind of planning.

Here is an example of something I have often seen in the planning of worship services. A minister rises early on Sunday morning to pray over his lesson, tweaking the points, adding illustrations,

then says to himself, “you know, this other song would work really great with this last point I’m making.” He comes to church, and in the pre-service huddle 30 minutes prior to worship,

decides to change the worship order to make room for his last minute idea. If you are working

with a competent worship team, that order has been generated perhaps 5-7 days or even weeks in advance, edited through the week, further refined through rehearsal times, and carefully laid

out. Musicians have learned their parts and rehearsed thoroughly. The Media Team has carefully

edited the lyrics and song order for projection. Vocalists have worked through the songs so as not to be overly dependent on lead sheets. Spoken Word Teams and people leading prayers

have been given specific direction. The minister’s ‘great idea’ is about to derail a carefully crafted and thoroughly prepared plan. If I can wear my worship leader hat for a moment, may I say,

respectfully, cut it out! This is inconsiderate and disrespectful to hard-working worship leaders,

most of whom serve as volunteers, and communicates a sloppy and overly casual approach to a vital aspect of congregational life. This is not to say that the minister should not have authority to

look over, advise, redirect and change an order of worship, just that he should get to it by no later than midweek instead of waiting until Sunday morning! Work out a plan with your worship team

to meet with them regularly, work through your ideas, set the order, and work your plan.

Consider these ‘beatitudes’ for Congregational Leaders working with a worship team.

Be Supportive. Every minister should ask himself if his team feels the support and

encouragement of the church leadership. Even better, he should ask the team if they feel

supported, and if not, what he might change to support them more overtly. Like all artists, musicians have artistic sensibilities, and most need specific encouragement and direction. There

are many ways to show support to your team. • Offer them specific encouragement when they get it right, not just correction when they

get it wrong.

• Spend a little money. Buy your guitarists new strings, replace your drummer’s drumheads, and purchase your keyboard player a nice foot pedal. Give them a small budget to

download new worship songs and buy sheet music; in short, provide them the tools they need to do their work well.

• Visit their rehearsals from time to time, and offer to lead a devotional on some topic

pertinent to their work.

• Show specific appreciation to the ‘unknown soldiers’, those who run the sound, set the

stage, prep the screens, program the lyrics, and the numerous other jobs that must be done to prepare an outstanding service. Often the only time these folks are noticed is

when something goes wrong.

Be Humble. Many ministers are woefully under-educated regarding worship. Given its

importance in our heart-mind-soul-strength response to the love of the Almighty, we need to change that, starting immediately. Hopefully, some of the thoughts included here, along with

other resources at the end of this document, will serve to aid in that. Ministers, elders, and others

in leadership need to invest the time and wrestle with understanding exactly what it is that people are hungering after. It is also important to accept that as ministers, we don’t have to be

experts at everything. Once we have spent time training our worship leaders and helping them

to know where we want to go, we can let go of some of the planning and get other gifted minds involved.

Be Organized. Ministers who make last minute changes drive their worship teams nuts. If you think and plan ahead, and give your teams adequate time to respond to your suggestions and

direction, you will be much happier with the final product, granting a greater blessing to your entire congregation. Some ministers have a monthly meeting with their worship teams to plot the

direction, share where the sermons will be going, and brainstorm creative ideas. If you prefer to

do this on a weekly basis, make certain that you take care of it early in the week – don’t throw last minute ideas into the mix and expect them to be done effortlessly or expertly.

Be Approachable. Make it clear to your team that you are open to new ideas and that you

appreciate their thoughtfulness and creativity. This does not mean that leaders have to follow

every suggestion — some might be downright bad — but we should also be respectful and receptive to new approaches.

Be Sensitive. Every person, whether he is a minister, worship leader, or any other member of the

congregation, needs to remember that worshipping God is a very individual thing; that is, what

works for me does not necessarily work for you. Ministers cannot take the approach, “Well I know what is best for this group in terms of worship. We’ll do it my way. So get happy about it,

and then we’ll all be unified.” That is a damaging and arrogant approach (I know; I’ve used it).. Many people connect through a cappella music, but many others do not. Some do not connect

through music at all, as we have discussed earlier. Our services should be designed to help

every worshiper enjoy the privilege of tangible connection with the Almighty.

Be Worshipful. Evangelists, elders, and deacons need to be examples of energetic worship. Leaders often challenge the church to participate, but the church may be following the example

of those same leaders, who are too often distracted, disengaged, and at times even disrespectful

toward God.  Often leaders are too busy critiquing the worship to actually worship.  They wander around, fellowship, taking notes to 'train' their worship leaders, instead of just worshipping.  When

it's time to praise God, evangelists need to stop discipling, women’s leaders need to stop counseling, elders need to stop shepherding, and deacons need to stop serving.  Every disciple

ought to lift their eyes, hearts and minds upward to the God of Gods and get lost in wondrous

adoration. Leaders leading by example will serve as a powerful call for each member to fully engage.

Building A Great Worship Order Some Thoughts on Flow, by Dave Eastman

Praise the lord, all you servants of the Lord Who minister by night in the house of the Lord

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary And praise the Lord.

Psalm 134:1-2

In our local ministry in Chicago, we have worked hard to develop a more inclusive, diverse and

connective approach to our times of collective worship. Over the past few years, our team has experimented with many ideas, styles of music, and other ‘techniques’ for sharing the Word of

God (i.e., Spoken Word Teams); we have rejected some, tweaked others, and standardized a

number of practices that have helped our people to a deeper, more conscious experience of God. We continue to experiment and are always hunting for new ideas.

Observation: When people come together on a Sunday morning, they have been beaten up by the world. As much as we might encourage them to come spiritually prepared, they are not

necessarily in a spiritual state when they arrive. It is primarily the job of the worship team to take

these people by the hand and walk them into the presence of God.

Observation: Our people love to fellowship. This is a good thing.

With these two observations in mind, we offer these practical thoughts for our times of worship.

These ideas are not set in stone; there are a lot of creative approaches that a team might use. However, for our services these have provided a typical template that we tweak from week to

week.

1. The Initial Song. We prefer to use an upbeat, energetic song to begin on Sunday

morning. Our people view Sunday as a kind of family reunion. They are greeting one another, catching up, giving some hugs, etc. Therefore, the function of the opening song

is to ‘break in’ to fellowship and begin the transition from a horizontal (person to person) focus to a vertical (person to God) focus. So in practice, the praise team and a few very

disciplined members end up singing verse one. Verse two is heartily joined by maybe half

the congregation as others close out their fellowship, and by verse three, most have joined in and are somewhat focused. Sometimes, leaders allow themselves to become

irritated by this, as if their congregants are somehow disobedient or disrespectful toward God; in our view, this should not bother us, as it comes from one of our greatest strengths,

the love that people have for one another.

On another note, the song leader here must be vigorous, with energetic conducting

techniques, and all of the parts singers should engage with energy and appropriate expressiveness.

2. The Second Song. We often follow this with a great, classic hymn of praise, usually directed at helping people focus on the greatness of God. By this time, most people are

at their seats and actively participating. The transition from one song to the next is very important. Our practice is to alternate the main song leader here, so that there is no break

while the song leader finds the key to the next song.

3. The Welcome – For our group, the welcome is the opening kickoff. It should be personal,

energetic, welcoming and warm, with a strong spiritual component and a call for people to put away the cares that they’ve brought into the room. From the prayer that concludes

this time, we are heading in a beeline toward the throne.

4. The Flow – From the prayer that closes the welcome, we are building a solid flow that

normally comes to an emotional crescendo at communion. So for that reason, we want an uninterrupted series of worship events tied together in a unified whole. Some

examples: • Song – Song – Prayer – Song – Reading – Song - Communion • Song – Prayer – Song – Contribution- Prayer – Song - Communion • Song – Song – Spoken Word – Song – Prayer – Song - Communion

We’ve found that the key to all of this is in the “uninterrupted” nature of the flow. There

should be no breaks in the flow, no waiting while the ‘pray-er’, reader, speaker or spoken word team slowly reaches the stage. If you have a gifted keyboard player, it is great to

have an instrumental bridge leading from one element to the next, or even playing softly behind those spoken elements.

This requires that every participating in the service has a copy of the worship order, and that in the pre-service huddle, every transition is discussed and every potential ‘pause’ is

addressed.

5. During this part of the flow, we normally begin with higher energy, God-directed tunes,

moving to slower, vertical ‘prayer’ tunes just before communion.

6. For Communion, we use varied approaches • Lead in with a song, then a testimonial or short talk • Lead in with songs and prayers • Lead in with songs & scripture readings (or a spoken word team) • Lead in with song, scriptures and video

7. For Contribution, we also use varying approaches, but we try to emphasize that giving is

an act of worship and adoration. It is not separate from the worship, but an integral part of it. At times, we take it up during the main flow, and at times after communion or after the

sermon.

8. The Fellowship Break. After all of these elements, during which we may spend from

35-50 minutes, we take a short fellowship break (our people refer to this as “halftime”), where the younger kids are dismissed to class, then we come back together with a brief

song, and the sermon.

We try to make all of this happen within about a 90-minute period.

An Effective Tool – to simplify preparation and facilitate effective communication, we use an

online service, “Planning Center Online” to prepare our worship times. For a modest monthly fee,

Planning Center is a one-stop shop that allows for interactive, group-based preparation and streamlines communication with musicians, singers, and media people.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize – Worship leaders have an awesome responsibility: to walk the

church into the Holy of Holies. Our goal is to give our people ‘moments of connection,’ where

they keenly feel that they have had an audience, an emotional connection, with the King of Kings. Everything our team does has this as our primary goal.

Helpful Resources - For additional information, song resources, video lessons, and more,

please visit one of the websites listed on the next few pages.

www.jbriancraig.com - Brian’s site is loaded—LOADED—with resources, chord charts, song

sheets, worship flow ideas. You’ll find many of his original recordings, with simple tutorial videos, guest articles, personal conviction, and much more—a great resource for your team!

In addition to his web page, Brian puts CDs together for the purpose of sharing congregational songs. The form and instrumentation found on the recordings is definitely not the “right way” to

do the songs but can be helpful for teams coming up with ideas for their Sunday worship times.

 His latest CD, “The Other Side," has just been released, and the rest of his albums can be found at cdbaby.com/artist/jbriancraig.

Blog & ResourcesContact

Store

www.lifechangingworship.com

Originally initiated as a resource for training worship leaders, LCW has evolved into a church-

wide resource page with articles from worship leaders all over the world, hymn stories, helpful

links, worship quotes, and much more. A number of churches have utilized the ‘video lessons’ portion to help train their congregations on ‘acceptable expression’. Our ‘staff’ includes disciples

from four countries and 15 congregations in the U.S., Nigeria (recently moved to Canada), El Salvador, and Great Britain.

In addition, all of the Songs of the Kingdom files (from River City Music), song sheets, and samples have been added to the LCW page to give easy access to any of your worship leaders

needing lyrics, chord charts, fresh ideas and more.

Intro Page Video Lessons Songs of the Kingdom

Articles

Helpful Stuff

Spoken Word

Song Tutorials

What’s New

Resources

Lessons & Quotes

Hymn Stories

Many of the principles discussed in this class are expanded in the book “Life-Changing Worship”, which is available at www.ipibooks.com as a soft cover, audio and e-book..

Worship Renewal Weekends

Through ongoing conversations with ministers and worship leaders around the country, it is clear

that there is a growing passion for God-directed, vertical worship in our churches. People want to know that each week, as a part of the corporate worship experience, they have had an audience

with the Almighty.

At the same time, there is a desire to hold on to what we are ‘great’ at – harmonious, beautiful, 4-

part a cappella singing. To further complicate things, there is a need for us to grow in our sensitivity to multi-cultural and inter-generational concerns. With all of these things in mind, a

number of us have developed our own individual approaches to worship renewal weekends,

training times to help the leadership, worship team, and entire membership of your congregation continue to grow in this vital area of congregational health.

If you are interested in hosting a weekend of worship renewal, you can contact one of us for

additional information:

Brian Craig: jbriancraig@gmail.com

Dave Eastman: deastman@chicagochurch.org

Kevin Darby: johnkellymusicllc@gmail.com