The more you lead worship, the better you get at creating emotional experiences.
You become skilled at choosing songs that flow well together and evoke a certain response from people.
Raised hands, loud shouts, resounding claps, unison voices.
You become less concerned with pleasing the heart of God and more preoccupied with what will garner the greatest response.
But I’m wondering today:
- Is our corporate worship in danger?
- Have we become too dependent on songs, sounds, and stages?
- Is our worship simply psychological manipulation?
- How can we be sure our worship is pleasing to God?
- Is a fragrance is rising from the hearts of God’s surrendered, desperate people?
Because I know how to lead worship.
I know how to be a good worship leader with my heart somewhere else.
I know how to organize my songs to have a powerful impact on you. I know what kind of body language to use. I know what worship leader phrases to say that will draw out your shouts and amens.
Is God Pleased with Your Church’s Worship?
In the Bible, God says things like:
- “Away with the noise of your songs.”
- “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”
- “But let justice roll like a river and mercy like a never failing stream.”
This isn’t so much a teaching post as much as it is a post asking for your feedback.
What do you think?
How do we keep our worship from psychological manipulation and truly offer the real thing on Sunday morning?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
[ois skin=”Beyond Sunday 2″]
Great thoughts on ‘How do we keep our worship from psychological manipulation and truly offer the real thing on Sunday morning?.. the answer is in the scriptures you quoted… “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”
The answer is to constantly keep you heart close to God.
How do we do that?
Spend time with Him every day. Read the Word, pray and worship in your quiet place.
I’ve been leading people in worship for over 30 years.. if you don’t continually spend time with God: letting Him speak to you thru His word, pouring out your heart to Him in prayer and letting His Spirit refresh you in private worship… you’ll slowly become ineffective, possible burn out and/or lose out on God all together… it happens.
Don’t let it happen to you… decide that you won’t become a lukewarm Christian… Decide that you’ll passionately follow after God all the days of your life!
Great challenge, Mark. I heard someone teach this morning – “if you spend time with Jesus you’ll always have something to say.” So important to keep our time with Jesus as the “main thing”.
yeah, i reached this point 2 weeks ago, our elder, that oversees the worship drew me aside and we had a good chat and challenged me and encouraged me.
Ministering to His heart has been the focus pull for me.
I trying this approach now… to get on stage after a week of spending time with God, and stand in front of people on the sunday and just set myself alight and burn for Him, then, i hope, it should spread like a wild fire. [kind of the idea of leading by example, and finding the example by facing the wall, good book by Don Potter]
Be it for one person or 10000’s …the question i now ask myself and God, “was my expression of worship done with an attitude of Abel or Cain?”
Even though I’m not in the music department at church I do believe worship is an integral part in all ministries. Everything we do is worship in one form or another. I believe this as leaders – if we pursue God and His presence more than we pursue ministry itself then true ministry, leading others to worship will follow naturally and effortlessly.
Great post David.
Good point about spending time with the Lord. I think a big problem worship leaders and congregants have is we have idols/rival gods we worship all week along side the One True God. What would it look like if we all kept the first commandment. We wouldn’t need manipulation of any kind, people would be ready to worship Sundays because they’ve been putting Him first all week (worship would flow so naturally). When we don’t spend time with the Lord maybe our time or comfort is our Idol. When we can’t worship without manipulation or certain emotional songs we may have music as our idol. The problem is our congregants and worship teams often are worshiping entertainment, money, luxury, food, music, sex, video games or even themselves. I like to have weekly or bi weekly times of confession in worship sets, using the ten commandments and other scriptures. The Holy Spirit will convict people of sin and idolatry in these moments and our hearts begin to worship God out of gratefulness for His mercy and grace. We have to expose our idols and the idols that are in our churches, not tip toe around them or pretend they are not there. Revival starts with prayer, confession and repentance, not higher quality productions (although good quality, well prepared, prayed about music is important). One warning is if we are more impressed with the music than the Lord Himself we have an idol. Although we all struggle with idolatry I believe we constantly need to guard our hearts and draw strength from the Lord by spending time with Him and His word. We can’t do it on our own every hour we need Him. Make it your opening prayer of the day that you would keep the 1st commandment, that your idolatry and sin would be exposed and repented of, and you would truly put the Lord first and not forsake your first love (Rev 2:4).
P.S.
A pastor of ours once said these are his priorities which must be kept in this order
God
Wife
Kids
Ministry
Yourself
Because of our idolatry it’s often the Yourself part that makes the top of the list. God is the center of the universe not us. Thou shall not have any Gods before me
Convicting stuff, Brad. Where do you think we cross the line into idolatry? It can get kind of sticky when we have a hard time enjoying music (or any of God’s gifts) because we’re so concerned about idolatry. What do you think?
Brad, that idea of leading worship with confession really intrigues me at this point in my church’s life. Can you go into more detail about how you do that in your church?
IMHO, I think churches have become too reliant on music, and this is coming from a musician. If you unplugged the sound system and all the instruments and just resorted to congregational singing, would your particular congregation be pleased?
And that’s also my point. Many churches are way too concerned if the people are pleased instead of worrying if God is pleased.
Ephesians 5:19 ESV
Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
If we are to worship together, why are only a select few allow to present songs of praise? If we are to be in the world, but not of it, shouldn’t the church have a different dynamic than the performer-audience model?
Also, most modern worship teams are merely cover bands playing popular music of Christian artists. As good as many of these songs are, why aren’t local churches writing their own praise songs? It’s a cookie-cutter approach to worship.
Sure, it comes off as slick and professional, but I see that it masks the reality of what the church is, which is filled with broken people saved by grace.
I like this. What would you recommend to worship teams? Maybe occasional Sundays where there is no music or a more stripped back approach?
Hi David,
Glad you like it. I look at the church as the ‘worship team’. Obviously, a drastic change would not work. I’m working on some ideas that hopefully would encourage others to look at things a bit differently. God Bless and thanks for your blog!
I agree with JC.
We have turned music/lyrics/singing into worship when it isn’t really worship at all. I like what Krish Kandiah writes in his book “Home for Good” about the scripture in Isaiah 1: 11-17 : he writes:
“This is the kind of worship that God wants from his people. All the singing, hand-raising, festival-going in the world won’t replace it. God would rather we shut down our services than carry on with them while neglecting these six headlines. Most churches are pretty good at teaching headline number one: ‘Stop doing wrong.’ Some churches aren’t bad at teaching headline number two either: ‘Learn to do right.’ But then it quickly fizzles out. Numbers three to six don’t get much of a look-in. These six headline commands don’t sound like worship to us anymore. They sound like hard work. They sound time-consuming. They sound energy-draining. I usually hear worship described as just the opposite. Worship nowadays is often synonymous with relaxing in the presence of God. It is taking time out to ‘just be’. It is ‘me time with God’. It is being recharged by God’s Spirit. It is emptying my mind of fears and concerns. It is ‘waiting’ on God.
Not according to Isaiah. Isaiah says if we care about worship, we should worship by caring. It is not one or the other. Some of us buy into the passive reflective worship described above, and get so busy focusing on the one we serve and love that we forget to get round to actually serving him. Some of us buy into activism that means we are so busy doing stuff and serving God’s agenda that we don’t stop to reflect on who we are doing it for. Isaiah calls us to an intimate activism and an active intimacy. Our reflective worship services need to go hand in hand with active worship service. If one is missing, the other may as well close up shop and go home. Active and intimate – together. Just like God himself……….A true relationship with God requires us to enjoy his presence and enjoy his purposes, committing ourselves to his plans, sharing both his passion and compassion with others”.
Kandiah, Krish (2013-03-14). Home for Good: Making a Difference for Vulnerable Children
Awesome words, and I had the privilege of preaching them when I taught on the subject of “Adoption being the heart of God”. It really did make people think about what we have turned worship into and how far we have gone from God’s heart.
Tino
Nice post! Sometimes we’re getting so familiar, so comfortable of it, and forgetting the true essence why we’re doing it. Not all ‘worship’ is pleasing to God, He accepted Abel’s worship and not Cain’s, because it’s a matter of the heart. Everyday we need to commune with God, soak in His presence, rend our hearts to Him and make worship our lifestyle.
Im far from an experienced worship leader and as a pretty laid back unemotional guy. I approach every week focused on the content of our songs and the destination. I try to pick songs that paint a picture of God and give us a glimpse of who he is. I think its natural to get emotional when we encounter God and initially felt each of us would find our own unique way to worship. Im learning that there are some in my congregation who need a little nudge and I find joy in encouragement. Some will raise hands high and sing at the top of their lungs. Some just close eyes and other I know by their whispers of the words are engaging with God. We all do worship in different ways and its not about creating the moment with guitar swells and great stage productions. To me the key is getting to know who I am leading, building relationships and encouraging the church as we pursue and praise God together. If we lost the stage and lights, expensice gear even our building would our worship be the same ……could we still find it meaningfull?emotional?
This is a great one Dave! I have come to understand that music in its self has its own annointing..manytimes we get carried away with the melody of the music and people tend to think we are in the spirit.This i think is very manupulative.i have been leading worship for a while now but not until lately i realized i have been making a whole lot of noise mostly.i am very charismatic, i know just what to do to get the people going. for me, thats just the art. Worship should be centered on just one,an audience of one and thats the the most high.if we miss this, we miss it all. i have been a host of an anuall worship night in my church for 4years and always have a whole lot people gathering to worhsip but a couple of month ago God led me to put together a worhsip night somewhere else and told me clearly this one is about me.the phrase “this one is about me” broke me. it felt like i have been doing my thing the previous years. i had to take instructions completely from Him on this one. He gave me a set list i naturally won’t take.in all my years of worship leading, i have never made Jesus the focus of my worhip like it happened few months back.i went into the worship night expecting for my self too.not feeling like i don’t need something from Him.i never felt more important than anyone in the building.i needed Him desperately like every other worshiper in the building.so there was no need to be manipulative.I just wanted to experience Him like never before, so i had to be real to myself first.i can tell you, it has been my best experience in worship so far. just about 30 people in the building, but it felt like the whole city gathered to worship and they were amazing testimonies. i share this testimony to say that, when we forget why and who we worship…we loose it all.thats why we resort to other options.when we aim to minister we can perform well, but when we want to perform we loose everything.shalom.
I had a similar conversation with another Pastor on staff at our church this morning. I’ve copied the comment from someone else, and have shared it with our teams more than once…. (can’t remember where I heard it): “we should be able to lead worship just as passionately and fervently if the power goes out.”
I believe it becomes “psychological manipulation” – when it’s our own effort and we lead when we are under connected to what God, and his word, what he is doing in the room and in the hearts of people. I haven’t read all the comments – so not sure if that has been said in different ways… but for me. That is where I am at, and I agree. Very convicting. But very encouraging at the same time!
Great words, Jason. Staying focused on what God is doing in the room is so important.
Hello I seen something written on a white board in the office of a House of Prayer in traverse City’s it went like this
Clinical
25min worship
5min sing in the spirit
I orical per circle
No double chorus
2 cycles
This greatly greaved me it seems a out line for emotional worship writer. Out for others to fallow any. Comments? How do it combat this in love?