Most of us spend our time organizing weekend worship services.
Typically that involves a time frame of 15-20 minutes. This is great for a weekend, but I also believe it’s great in the life a church to schedule a night of worship every so often.
This is great on a number of levels:
- Refreshing – There’s nothing God’s people need more than His presence. And to spend uninterrupted time with Him can bring much needed refreshment.
- Challenging – Worship Nights can be a great way to challenge your volunteers on the technical side. Push your musicians to another level. Challenge your tech team to try new things with videos, lighting, and stage design.
But what I’m about to share with you transcends even just long worship nights. It’s more about how you view a worship service – it’s purpose and goal. In addition, I’ll give you some ideas and resources for planning your next worship service.
The Goal of a Service
The goal of a gathering isn’t simply to have church. It’s not simply to sing songs or have an emotional evening. The goal of any gathering is the glory of God. When you start with that premise, it informs all your decisions.
It’s not about singing new songs.
It’s not about singing old songs.
It’s whatever serves God’s people giving glory to God.
It’s whatever facilitates a steady gaze upon His greatness.
It’s my personal philosophy that not only should the worship team be exhausted at the end of a worship night, but everyone in the room. The unified act of everyone giving their all – physically and emotionally – to the praise of God should exhaust you in the best possible way.
Methods are simply vehicles to the main event. Songs are vehicles. They help lead us to the main focus, namely God’s glory.
Singing a certain song, hitting a certain key change, or rocking a certain arrangement is never the goal. We as leaders must relentlessly ask, “What will most help people focus on the glory of God right now?”
Worship Night Ideas
What I’m about to share with you are some ideas you can apply to your weekend worship services, as well as special worship nights. The goal in sharing these is to help you craft a powerful and engaging corporate worship experience for your church.
It’s not enough to just plan a bunch of songs. It’s time to get strategic on what you do. Here are 11 ideas (and then I’d love to hear yours in the comments.)
1. Silence – Oftentimes our worship services can be such a busy conglomeration of sound and our own “talking to” God that we don’t stop and actually listen to the voice of the Spirit. For an evening of worship, try planning a moment of silence where you simply rest in who God is.
2. Journaling – Plan a moment in your worship set where you place some cheap journals (25 cent notebooks are fine) up at the front. Have people leave their seats, grab a notebook (or a sheet of paper is fine), find a place of prayer, and write what God is speaking to them.
3. Responsive Reading – Plan a spot in your service where you as a church pray a corporate prayer together. Creatively place the prayer on the screen and have the leader pray a prayer and the congregation respond with their own.
4. Acoustic Music – High energy, emotional, sonically powerful music is great. But it can also be overwhelming to the ears. Make sure you plan moments of quiet, reflective music. Serve your congregation spiritually but also musically.
5. Faith Challenges – Rather than preaching a 5 minute sermon, pick a passage of Scripture and challenge people’s faith with it. Keep it brief, engaging, and give people an action step. Connect the scripture’s theme to a song you’re singing for greater impact.
6. Spontaneous Singing – The beauty of corporate worship is that God is present. Every gathering is unique in that God is doing unique things with unique people every time. Reflect this in your worship planning. Don’t just sing songs. Plan moments of spontaneity where you simply sing praise, declare truth, and shout unto God in the moment.
7. Medley Moments – I love to arrange music and play tight songs. But this can feel somewhat lifeless for corporate worship. Plan a moment or two where you flow between a few songs. Medley hymns with modern choruses. Flow into only bridge or chorus parts of certain songs. Build momentum through medleys.
8. Videos – Creative videos can add nice life to a worship set. If you have the team, attempt to create your own. If not, see what’s available on sermonspice.com, bluefish.tv, worshiphousemedia.com, or Life Church Open.
9. Spoken Word – An evening full of songs can become overwhelming. Why not try a spoken word, dramatic reading? It could be of a Scripture verse or something original. It’s also another great way to release other volunteers who have giftings outside of the musical realm.
10. Prayer Stations – Create stations throughout the sanctuary for people to go and pray. Set up a cross with post-it notes where people can write down what they’re leaving at the cross. Leave open canvases for people to paint. Have tables with a prayer focus on the nations. Get creative and unique to your particular congregation.
11. Communion – This can be done corporately or in stations throughout the room. Communion is always appropriate in every service as it’s the cross of Christ that unites us and enables us to draw near.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. I would love your input.
Question: What other creative ideas would you add to this list? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
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Once again, Thanks David! We had a great night of AWEsome worship in a service just like this not too long ago and we are planning to do it again. We integrated several of the suggestions you made above and they really did make for a special night that many in our congregation often ask when we are doing the next one. Based on our experience, I would add a couple of other elements people may want to include. One thing we wanted to do was include the arts in our service. So we had someone set up with just a light on their Easel as they painted during the worship service whatever the Lord put on their heart. It was beautiful and moving to look over at that while we were worshiping. We also have an exceptional drama team and plan on using “silent drama” during one of the songs that has more of a story to it (think Lead Me Sanctus Real; Hands and Feet, etc.) Lastly, we are hoping to plan an Evangelistic Worship Night next time. We want to find away to invite those in our community to come out and “experience” God in this setting. It is great when the saints come together and worship God but one of my burdens is to reach beyond the four walls of our local church and bring in those people that are lost in our communities and don’t even know it. As always, thanks for sharing!! – John
Hey John, those are some great ideas. I’m curious – what will you do differently for an “evangelistic” worship night?
Thanks for the post, David!
We just had our first every worship night last May for Pentecost and we are planning our next one for the beginning of December.
Our initial one was basically 10-12 songs and a time of corporate prayer in the middle. So your list is very helpful as we seek to take things higher and help the congregation connect with and glorify God.
That’s great, Cyrus. All the best as you plan for December!
Thanks for posting! We have small group worship times, but I’ve wanted to plan an all-church worship night. These are great ideas!
Hi David,
Thanks for posting this! These suggestions are great. It’s so important that we view worship as more than just singing a string of 10 songs in a row in extended worship times like this and to create space for ways of connecting with God that we might not always have time for on a regular Sunday morning (silence, journaling).
I’m curious about your philosophy of worship that says everyone in the room must be exhausted after an evening of worship. My struggle with the word exhaust comes from a pattern that I see where we think we have to try to impress God with our worship to the point where we are ‘exhausted’ by the end of a worship time. I wonder if this almost suggests that God needs our worship to feel good about himself, or worse that he is somehow more impressed with us after we’ve worshiped ‘real hard’ for an hour.
Biblically, I suppose we see verses that talk about David dancing with all his might. This might have been an exhausting act. But then we also read verses that say “come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest.”
Just wondering what your thoughts are on how we balance the intensity of one’s engagement in worship with finding rest when we worship. Could it be true that worship is an act of receiving as much as, if not more than it is an act of giving?
Thanks for everything you do David! I appreciate how you are blessing the church! Keep it up!!
Thanks for bringing this up, Kevin. I’m simply referring to the fact of being fully engaged in the worship of God. It’s not a time to watch or be disengaged. When we’re fully present – mentally and physically – engaged in worship, we’ll feel exhausted afterwards in the best possible way. I’m not just referring to jumping around. We need to be fully engaged even in the quiet moments. Does that make sense?
We do a night of worship once a month. We often incorporate a testimony from someone in the congregation, telling what God has been doing in their life. We always include small group prayer, where we encourage the congregation to gather with 2-3 other people and pray together and for each other. That has really made a difference in our church!
Debbie, love the testimony idea! Would be cool to also feature this on a video.
Neat ideas bro… though I think these are super useful tips for ‘day’ worship also 😉
Thank you David! This is such an appropriate message for me as my team and I plan for an annual worship night in December!
One of the things we do is invite a guest minister to lead worship to break the monotony of the team leading alone and to give them time to be ministered to..God bless you
Guests can be a great idea, Gloria. Thanks!
Thanks so much man
I am a young worship leader looking for ideas on how to grow and to thing like God wants it to be. And this has helped a lot.
Be blessed
Jp
GOD BLESS YOU WE ARE TRYING THIS ON 15TH JUNE 2016
Great Ideas David, will incorporate some into our monthly worship nights starting August 2016.I like the painting and the prayer ideas.
nice idea , am james from grace mountain ministry, we are planing 2 days worship night at our church in November 30-31….its will be fire
Great!
Thanls a lot. l think have gotten some ideas.
My question is that what are those strategy to bring people to a platform of worship.
From Nigeria
These guidelines are awesome David. I feel you have stated everything that i need in planning a worship night. Am actually planning a worship night come December 2016. This absolute perfect for me. Thanks a bunch.
We are planning to have a night of worship this side around early february 2017.This is the second of such an event.Desiring to improve from the previous worship night we are desiring to use the advice given.anyway thank you so much and may God bless you.
Thanks David..
it’s so awsome.. i am so excited to read this.. tommorrow night, we will worship with some young people in our church..
God bless you
Wow! I love this.
It’s too powerful. I’m planning to hold a worship night in my campus.
Thank you for you ideas.
Awesome ideas David, I’ve been helped a lot.
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