I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time with fast songs.
I just don’t really care for them. I don’t really love to jump around and dance. My default life disposition isn’t celebration and exuberance. I’m what you would call steady – cool, calm, and collected. My emotions don’t drop too high or too low.
Some of you may be the opposite. You eat up the fast tunes. The more four-on-the-floor, synth driven happy grooves the better. Get rid of the minor chords, for God’s sake, You want to celebrate! You have no problem jumping or spinning or actually dancing. When things take a serious turn, you start to feel more uncomfortable.
Every worship leader wants to see people be more expressive. Nobody likes a bored room. We want to see people engage – sing, lift their hands, and move a bit.
But we all know the tension. In our gatherings, we have a wide variety of people:
- Those who are new to faith and don’t know what to do.
- Those who were dragged to church and don’t want to be there.
- Those who are suffering.
- Those who “worship inwardly” but reject outward expression.
- Crazies.
Unless you’re leading a high energy youth rally, it’s really hard to get everyone on the same page, doing the same thing. But worship leader, you don’t have to. Your job is to model, love, instruct, and shine a light upon the manifold glory of God.
And help people develop a healthy rhythms of worship.
Healthy Rhythms of Worship
That’s what I want to talk about a bit – a healthy rhythm of worship expression. There needs to be a value for celebration and seriousness in the life of every worshiper. All of us – with all of our quirks, temperaments, and personalities need to celebrate. We need to worship with exuberance and emotion.
There’s also seasons of suffering where a lament is needed. Different seasons call for different expressions, in one sense. In another, no matter the season we are always declaring the goodness and the greatness of Jesus.
Too many of us chill in the outer courts observing, criticizing, and comparing ourselves to others. But we’ve lost our desire to bare our souls and enter in to worship.
Here’s the catch: Yes, worship is a lifestyle. But worshipers actually worship. It’s not just about setting up accountability, systems, and habits in your life to make wise choices.
Yes, it is good to have an accountability partner so you stop looking at porn. It’s good to have a daily rhythm of Bible reading. It’s good to stay away from media that pulls your heart away from beholding the beauties of God.
But you can’t just automate your worship. It’s more than a life plan and a task list. You also must express it corporately with your church. There’s a special beauty in that expression.
You…with your personality and temperament need to celebrate. You need to shout for joy. You need to sing to the Lord a new song.
You…with your personality and temperament need contemplate the beauty and majesty of God. You need to think deeply about deep truths and press into the mystery.
Of course, we all don’t need to look the same. But we need to celebrate and we need to be serious in our pursuit of Jesus and our joy in Him.
I’d love to hear from you.
What do you gravitate towards? The celebration or the seriousness? What do you need to work on and develop in your life of worship? Let us know in the comments!
[ois skin=”Beyond Sunday 2″]
This was woven together so beautifully.
I know I personally lean towards the solemn, contemplative side of worship. Musically I enjoy the upbeat songs celebrating what God has done and will do, but something draws me into songs that give me time to contemplate the words we sing. I had a church member tell me after doing a faster-paced arrangement of “How Great Thou Art” that while they enjoyed singing the song, they felt they needed more time to digest and dwell on the descriptions of God and respond to Him through the words. I know that I would like to work on being more responsive to celebratory worship in my life and my worship leading.
Great observation, Nick! It’s so helpful to have these heart to heart conversations with the people we’re leading.
Exactly! I too gravitate more towards the “serious” side of sunday worship. I feel like most of the time it is more about dancing on the upbeats songs, even if the lyrics are good people tend to listen to the music first then to the words. The balance between the celebration and the seriousness is always a challenge.
Thanks for the article;-)
Be blessed!
Really like the blog/article. Yes, I agree with your premise. Personally for me I don’t need or like the totally upbeat songs but I’m learning to tolerate them. For me, it really needs to have a worship, slower, melodic type feel to it, kind of like Paul Weber-nobody like you or on the secular side, maybe a style like Adele. I guess I like a song where I can sing and express my inner most feelings, emotions, and declarations to my God, my King, my Majesty. The one who made me, this world, and all of creation. I can’t really do that while jumping up and down with a loud drum banging in my ear. Just sayin.
I really appreciate your blog, especially because of your natural bent and yet you bring legitimacy to celebration as well. Me, I gravitate toward celebration. Of course I appreciate both elements of worship but my natural bent is to jump, shout, sing loudly, and dance. I spent a lot of years traveling and ministering to thousands of churches before becoming a worship pastor. In one culture of churches I would hear yelling, shouting, and singing loudly but it seemed to come from a place of anger and fear. In another culture of churches I would see standing, gazing, numb facial expressions which seemed to come from a place of sadness, reluctancy, and fear. It made me sad to see no “joy” in churches which is why I believe I tend to lean toward celebration.
David, I like your balance in this article. As an older (63) music director of a small (under 100 people) church, I like to start Sunday morning services off with faster and louder celebratory songs (contemporary-style). But we also always include solemn and reverent worship songs, and then usually build to “‘Shout To the Lord’ moments,” using songs with strong expressions of adoration and gratitude, focusing on God’s greatness.
As a former Vinyard Music addict 😉 , it took a while to warm up to boisterous songs, but I love it now. I still appreciate Vinyard, but one of the great things about belonging to a multi-cultural church is that you get to fall in love with musical styles (and people!) you might not have been exposed to, otherwise.
Some day I’ll lead worship in another church. This is the exact road map I hope to follow, with our Father’s guidance of course
Jim, whichever way the Spirit leads you, great. In my own case, it took a number of years after I was appointed music director to realize that the Lord didn’t bring to that position because I was the greatest thing to hit the P&W biz. I pray that if and when the Lord elevates you to the position you’re hoping for, you have an easier time learning to follow His lead than I did. 🙂
Its kind of funny, but as a musician /Pastor and worship leader, i love the deep slow heartfelt worship tunes. But I love to play the faster more celebrative songs. So i have this inner struggle ( i say struggle but not really) every week! Lol
We sometimes get caught up in the whole emotional side of ourselves, and we tend to project that onto our congregations. Whether the jubilant, jump for joy songs, or the quiet, contemplative songs, they are often designed to evoke emotions. But the real “meat” of worship is the words. As a famous artist told us recently, there is no such thing as Christian music. Only Christian lyrics.
What we deal with a lot is that the fans of more recent worship songs and contemporary Christian music tend to feed off the emotion of the music more, and sometimes feel that if it isn’t “jump and shout” or “quiet and evocative”, then, as one parishioner told me when we did a hymn recently, “You cannot worship to that!”.
With our fans of more traditional worship music like hymns and standards, it seems they tend to be more attuned to the message in the lyrics, although they also like a snappy or heartfelt melody and arrangement.
I’m sure many reading this are from the mega-church movement, and a lot of those churches teach that the heavy beat, modern screaming guitars, lights and smoke are all required to “set the mood” for worship. But just like everyone on earth doesn’t listen to top-40 pop, r&b, or country (what about classic rock? classical music? jazz? blues? bluegrass?) in secular music, every church music encounter doesn’t have to be contemporary and emotion drenched.
I’m afraid we tend to manipulate the emotions of our congregation with our music. I think we must be very careful of that. As always, worship is not about US. It’s about Him. Worship is, and always will be, where God and His people meet for His glory and praise.
I definitely lean towards the serious end of the spectrum. As a worship leader, I’d be just fine scheduling a full set list of deep, intimate worship songs and forget about the “fast” songs. But, you are right. We all need to celebrate. And as a worship leader, it is our duty to lead the charge.
Your article came at a very appropriate time. At our last worship design team meeting, two people said that we need a shorter worship time – three fast songs and then a short, repetitive slow song. Our current opening set is 2 fast then 2 slow songs. I am also usually impacted more by the slow songs because they give me time to reflect on the words and focus on my God. May I present your article to my worship design team, please?
It is so important for worship leaders to have a close communication with the lead pastor in order to have a full understanding of the vision and direction for each service. We set the tone for where the message is leading. Our choices for style & content should flow from that starting point. Also, the larger the church, the more “helpful opinions” you will hear. Certainly keep your ears open but stay close to God and remain accountable to the pastor’s vision.