[This post is part of a brand new blog series, “Your Guide to Practicing the Essential Skills of a Worship Leader“. Check out the other posts here.]
Prophetic worship. We’ve heard the phrase many times.
But what does it really mean?
- Is it lingering on the same song for 10 minutes?
- Is it making up your own spontaneous phrases?
- Is it groanings and utterings that no one can understand?
- Is it just being weird for weirdness’ sake?
Today we’re going to discuss the ins and outs of prophetic worship. What is it? How can you improve? Why is it important?
When I see young worship leaders today, they are almost entirely driven by talent and art.
Don’t get me wrong. I love art. I love incredible music.
But we need something more.
What Is Prophetic Worship?
Believe it or not, prophets prophesy. They look at a situation and they deliver God’s heart. They speak the mind of God.
We need more worship leaders like this – Worship leaders who are less in tune with their guitars and more in tune with what the Holy Spirit is saying.
Leaders who lead in the present reality and power of the Holy Spirit. It’s leadership from the inside out.
The people of God need more than incredible musicality.
Are you willing to go deeper?
Are you willing to listen to the Holy Spirit?
Are you completely freaked out at this point in the post?
Let me demystify a bit with some practice tips for improving your prophetic leadership. I guarantee that if you apply these tips, you’ll approach Sunday morning with fresh vision:
1. Ask the Right Questions
When you are preparing yourself for leading worship, don’t just ask questions related to the music. Ask like this:
- What theme is on God’s heart?
- What is God saying to His people?
- What do the people of God need to declare?
- Who is a part of my congregation?
Realize that you’re not just picking out songs. You are leading people to encounter God, hear his voice, and be transformed.
2. Practice the Spontaneous
While spontaneity doesn’t necessarily equal prophetic, it can play a huge role. A worship leader who is sensitive to the Holy Spirit can’t just perform a worship set because they are meeting with God in the moment.
They are helping people encounter the risen Christ. Whether or not they nail their guitar solo or strum with perfect precision isn’t what they’re thinking about.
Being spontaneous can be scary. It can also be done very poorly if you haven’t practiced it. I would recommend you practice every day, off the stage. While you’re in the shower, in your car, or in your quiet time, listen to the Holy Spirit. Make declarations. Sing your own phrases and melodies.
It may feel stupid at first but the more you do this off the stage, the more natural it will feel on stage. Don’t leave it to chance. Practice your spontaneous leadership.
3. Know Your Authority in Christ
Worship Leader, it’s important that you know the power of the Gospel. Inside and out. Backwards and forwards. If the Gospel is “old news” to you, you have no business leading worship. Because the authority we have in Christ is essential to worship.
That is what you are reminding your people of. That is what the Holy Spirit is awakening in God’s people. They don’t need to stay buried in depression, anxiety, and disappointment. They are children of King and need to declare that truth.
Knowing your authority as a believer will bring a fresh energy and intensity to how you lead worship.
4. Trust the Holy Spirit
Prepare like it all depends on you, but lead like it all depends on the Holy Spirit. Too often we leave out the Holy Spirit. We pay homage to him in our prayers but we trust more in our ability to lead than we do His ability to awaken the dead.
What if you implicitly trusted the Holy Spirit this weekend? What if you were relaxed, following His leadership? What if you knew beyond a shadow of doubt that He was moving? How would that influence your worship leading?
5. Engage Fully
Forget about how you look. Forget about how you sound. When it’s game time, pour your entire being into worship. The more vulnerable you can be the better worship leader you’ll become.
Don’t be afraid to cry when you’re overcome by the love of God. Don’t be afraid to kneel. Dance without shame. The best worship leaders put their private life of worship on display. They are authentic worshipers in front of people. No farce. No filter. Nothing is fake.
Don’t rely on your incredible vocals. Forget about your ability to arrange great songs. Forget about your songwriting skills. When it’s time to worship, forget everything but worship. Pour out your heart and engage yourself fully.
Question: What do you think it means to lead prophetic worship? How can we improve? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
This is another great post David! I lead, but don’t “front” our Celebrate Recovery worship team. The Lord has bless us with a great assemblage of talent and a common musical direction. I’m trying to grow us beyond banging out awesome songs with awesome arrangements…performed awesomely.
I’d like us to move into Spirit-led spontaneity…to abandon ourselves to God in our presentation. It’s been difficult for me to champion this, though, because I’m not actually leading worship. Also complicating this initiative is the fact that we’re unable to hold practice sessions. We assemble our set, distribute it via email, learn our parts as individuals and then have about 30 minutes to run through it Friday evening before we begin worship.
Does anyone have any suggestions to offer? I do send out an encouragement email to the team…generally weekly…to explain my vision, point out scriptural support for my vision, offer heartfelt thanks for their efforts…but I don’t know how to present this concept in a way that they can embrace. The usual response is, understandably, fear over disturbing the tightness of the arrangement and stepping out into unknown territory.
Sandy, I would recommend practicing it before you do it in a service. Take some of the pressure off. And casting vision for spontaneous worship always helps.
Really good post! As a worship leader, i follow these concepts very closely. I think of prophetic worship as transformative worship. To lead this kind of worship, the leader must do the homework. We must be prepared at least as well as the speaker. We need to do more than practice the charts and the lyrics and the grooves – we also need to prepare our hearts and our minds to be ready to hear and follow the spirit.
It takes courage to lead like this. We have to face our fears of looking silly or unprepared in order to be relaxed and able to listen and recognize the spirit at work.
Thanks for your words.
Jim, beautiful description. I totally agree. We could probably learn a lot from the spiritual preparation of preachers.
you are right we have to worship God
Thank you for this! I shy away from using the term “prophetic worship” but interestingly the things you describe are pretty much my ideals for leading worship… and a great reminder to actually practice, work towards, and live out those ideals. And after reading this post, I can see how you could call it “prophetic”. 🙂 I’d much rather the church sing and hear what’s on God’s heart for them than what is on my heart each week.
Amen! You can tell with how certain songs are written if they’re just trying to be “cool” and when they’re from God’s heart.
Amen!! A prophet surely can tell the difference..truth vs. Error! God’s HEART pouring out upon His people. Excellent writing, teaching David..About TIME! Glory be to God! Great stuff!
Man, what a post! So relevant and important for our generation.
One thing I would add – It’s important to know God’s voice if he’s going to use you prophetically. It doesn’t do you any good to listen for a voice you won’t recognize.
Spend time with him Monday thru Saturday. Listen to his voice so you can hear and know his heart on Sunday.
Good stuff, David!
“It doesn’t do you any good to listen for a voice you won’t recognize” – that was like a gentle pile drive to the face 🙂 Well said, my friend.
Wow! I really loved this post. Thank you and may God continue blessing you and using you
Great stuff, as usual my friend.
I would add that prophets in the Bible not only spoke with words, but with actions. Our music can be one of those actions. Our daily lives, of course, speak as well. In fact, I think true prophets stir it up when they are least cognizant of that fact and simply focusing on the basics. Just a thought.
Thanks,
RK
Rich, this is causing me to think deep 🙂 I suppose the music itself could prophesy but I’ve never fully understood that. I guess music speaks in ways we’ll never understand.
Hey David,
I just wanted to say thanks for writing this! My experience with “prophetic worship” hasn’t always been a good one, because I grew up in a church that was a bit unbalanced in this area. But I feel like I’m re-learning the truth about prophetic worship, and I’m starting to fall in love with it again. All of your posts encourage and teach me, so Thanks!! I wrote a longer comment on my blog. You’re welcome to check it out.
Hi David, Great stuff! Can you recommend any good worship leaders that put thie spontaneous into practice? and any albums that might have caught this?
Noah, Kim Walker’s album Here is My Song is an amazing album that really captures the spontaneous well.
David, I agree with all you have said. Those 5 points are crucial to being being a prophetic worship leader. With that said, churches that do prophetic relatively well have a different needs when it comes to being a prophetic worhsip leader. We have no difficulty in being spontaneous, trusting the Holy Spirit and being fully engaged. We sometimes struggle with the “asking the right questions” piece.
I think we are lacking the most is in perparation (rehearsal both individual and corporate), being open to the Holy Spirit on Monday rather than Friday (developing the set list), and in my particular experience…leaving space for individuals to worship. We sing and sing moveing and rushing from song to song and never leave space…even silence…in order for the worshipper to engage in prayer, reflection or even phophetic words of their own.
just a view from the band in a Pentecostal church.
Ray, I feel your tension. Oftentimes our programming can be so tight that it’s hard to breathe. But “long” and “drawn out” doesn’t always mean being led by the spirit. Oftentimes what God wants from us is to move from song to song in a quick fashion. He also wants us to respect transitions between multiple services, the impact extended worship has on the children’s ministry, etc. God may be moving in ways that shatter our paradigms.
Thanks for the great post, David! I feel like you and Kate did a great job of introducing these concepts to me while I was at APC and I feel like I’ve taken them and run since I’ve moved to California. Keep up the great work!
Also, I’ve learned so much about prophetic worship simply by watching the worship at Bethel Church in Redding, CA. They practice this in almost every worship set. For anyone interested, you can watch some of their worship sets on ibethel.tv. (I recommend getting the subscription. It’s totally worth the 10 or 14 bucks a month).
Aaron, you should be a salesman for Bethel! 😉 Miss you bro!
wow man, loving your blog!
Hey Guy, thanks so much! Glad to have you as a reader!
Said beautifully. thanks.
I used to think i was weired and am glad am not the only one who thinks like this
Just to encourage pple a life of worship privatley can make a difference and continous worship of the Lord werever you are. Being intimate with the father can help you know the heart of God and therefore you can sing songs from the throne room. Ephesians 5:19
speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, practice singing in tongues,
You will find out as you leave it to God in worship and allow the Holy Spirit you will sing songs the Holy spirit gives you at that moment just like a prohet gets words just that your words come out in songs. As worship leaders God has written songs already on our hearts what we need is to be intimate with Him and listen to the Holy spirit in worship and we can allow Him to burst in song. I normally feel a bubblng in me and wen i open my mouth a song already in tune comes out and because it is coming from the Holy spirit it gives healing, dileverance, freedom, salvation, peace or love.
Awesome, Angeline. Keep up the good work!
I would like to suggest that worship leaders should start by reading their Bibles. How can you know what God is saying if you don’t care to take the time to read His divine revelation of Scripture? Prophets in the Bible spoke words directly from God and those words were recorded for us as well so that we can also get to know who God is. The canon of Scripture is closed now, which means no man today can say anything that has higher authority than God’s Word. Therefore any ‘prophecy’ today should be measured against Scripture because God will never contradict Himself. Prophecy simply means to speak God’s Word clearly and understandably. Stop trying to make everything so mystical. It just confuses people and God cannot be glorified by your spontaneity if you don’t speak and sing Scripture. ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.’ 2 Tim 3:16-17. Why do worship leaders want to go deeper than the complete and sufficient Word directly from God? If you don’t believe that God’s Word is inspired, true, relevant for today and in every situation in life, and that it has the power to convict people of their sins, change hearts and transform lives, you should not be a worship leader, or a Christian to begin with.
I’m all for prophetic worship if we can just get our definition of prophecy right. Lets try to stick to what is Biblical so that God can be glorified and people can be exhorted and lives transformed as the Holy Spirit works in their lives. And also, off course, so that we will not make ourselves guilty of speaking words that are not inspired. God takes it very seriously when we speak our own ideas in His name. ‘But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’(Deut 18:20)
After all, faith (in Jesus) comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:17). Isn’t that our goal?
Well said, Adele. Thanks for sharing!
I think it’s interesting that you said most of the worship leaders you’ve come across have been more concerned with art rather than the Spirit. I feel the opposite is true. Compared to the music that has been created in the church history, I would argue that the music being created in the church today has the least artistic creativity/integrity since the church began. Now, I understand the different between music as a means for corporate worship and music as a worshipful expression. But I think it’s dangerous to tell musicians to not worry about their craft. Yes, all people can worship, but think of Bezalel in Exodus. Bezalel was chosen of course because he was filled with the Spirit, but also because he was skilled. I find too many worship leaders and too much “christian music” is reliant on their ability as “prophets” and their ability to sense the Spirit rather than their craft. As for myself, I don’t want to bring anything to the Lord except my best. My best art is my best worship. In my mind, a great worship leader must flow in the Spirit, but never at the sacrifice of the gifts God has given him. To dismiss God-given talent/gifts for the sake of the corporate worship points to an improper understanding of why God gave you those talents. God has given what he has to us so that we can give it to others.
This is very well said, Derek. My point was that worship leaders are more music and song and “tightness” centered over Spirit-centered. I wasn’t necessarily referring to the creativity of their music, but more the execution of modern worship music, which I agree, isn’t always known for its creativity. How can we balance that – music as a means for corporate worship and music as a worshipful expression in itself? This is a major tension.
I appreciate this information so much. It is a refresher of sorts. As a former Praise & Worship Leader some time back, I was taught to practice the Presence of God in my private time. Always allowing the Holy Ghost to lead. It has been a long time since I have operated in that capacity and I miss it. I want to get back to Prophetic Worship & Praise!
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Thanks for sharing, I’ve learnt a lot. I believe that the Spirit of the Lord has been calling me to this place of worship so I’m on a quest to learn more about it.
Sometimes I find the call of a worshipper to be an awesome task. Im trying to tap into God’s presence some more because I want to please him in private as well as when I stand to lead his people into his presence. I crave prayers.
Wow prophet david im so blessed to hear and read about your insight thank u for the awesome words of encouragements
I’m just stepping into being a worship leader at my church for our spanish service and one of the things I’m studying is how to lead people. I was going over my set list today before rehearsal practicing transitions and before I started “worthy is the lamb who was slain” I was thinking about how jesus not only took nails in his hands and feet, but he accepted a crown of thorns on his head and vinegar instead of wine. asking the right questions is something I’m working on and I am planning on asking the congregation to consider this idea. what do you think?
Please explain the term “profhetic worshipper” to me.
Prophetic worship as a term is an oxymoron.
Worship is giving to God. However, a prophecy is received from God. So it’s like to say “we’ve come to give to God but we’re not gonna, we want to receive from Him.”
I encourage calling it “musical prayer.” Furthermore, it is not something that the whole congregation is able to enjoy, especially first timers. I encourage this practice in prayer meetings. But keeping worship on Sunday much like it was for people walking up to the Temple singing psalms. Only that way can be of the same mind and heart.
Also, prophecy is a spiritual gift. It is not for everybody, much like teaching is not for everybody and preaching is not for everybody (look at Romans 12).
God speaks to us.. SOMETIMES, and sometimes He is silent much like he was with many prophets in the old testament.
Practice it by all means. Just don’t make it a measure of spiritual maturity.
I lead worship…..but of recent I feel gripped and bound by fear……
I used to pray at a church where tongues and manifestation of the holy spirit is not so much…..
I guess I need help…….
I agree with most of what was said here in the posts and on the site. However, I believe there has to be balance and order in all aspects of worship. Our God is a God of order (I’m not talking anything about legalism here). I believe the worship team has to be committed to God first and understand to some degree who they are in the Lord and where they are on their own journey. I also believe all teammates have to know the material. You can’t begin to flow prophetically in music with the Spirit if you barely know the songs unless you are a soloist. If you are blessed enough to have a team that is committed and sacrifices time to practice beyond 30 minutes before each service kind of thing, over time you will get to know each other’s nuances and the Holy Spirit will move through you as a team letting each individual prophetically know where the other is going in the music. This allows the whole team to move together as unified in the Spirit! This should be the goal. God has always been looking for committed people, He never changes. “No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back” – Luke 9:62
Thank you for this david…God bless your soul….
Hello,
I just finished again reading every post here. They are for the most part all good and I get very encouraged by reading them. A couple of things I would like to comment on or add is to also consider the congregation. Give your set some space and allow no, expect the Lord to do something new. It may be through a member of the worship team, it may also be through someone in the congreagation. Trust the Spirit of God and look for his moving. He moves through the audience as well and it’s been my experience that when things are right, the experience as a whole – congregation/audience included is in unity. Do not fear, the Spirit will never lead you over a cliff and He will hold everything together. After all, He controls the universe, He can control 4, 5, 6, or whatever the number of individuals are on a stage if you let Him. Consider this, have you ever played the same song or the exact same set and felt the Spirit move in a completely different way? One time it might seem an intense experience, another like a slow moving wind. All the same Spirit but moving in a completely new way. This is the God we serve. A true adventure to say the least, and worth every moment. Take it in, breathe it in and do not be discouraged. Get to know Jesus, study and read His word and spend as much time as possible in your secret place with Him!
A couple last thoughts about the prophetic. Someone mentioned knowing if it’s coming from God or self. It’s easy to tell. The Holy Spirit will always point to, and glorify Jesus. All the glory will be directed to Him and for Him. If it’s pointing anywhere else, it is not the Spirit it is the flesh. Lastly, while it’s true there will not be any new books added to the Bible. God the Father, Jesus His son, and the Holy Spirit is not done talking to His people. He is ever eager to speak to His children and followers if we have ears to here, and an open teachable heart.
God bless you all –
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