Page 3021 – Christianity Today (2024)

1 Peter 2:9-10; Revelation 5:13-14

Here are five planning practices that can prevent worship from falling into dullness and routine:

1. Find the focal point. I prefer to center worship on a theme. Sometimes the theme is supplied by the season: Advent or Lent or Easter or Thanksgiving. Other times a special emphasis like Missions Month or Family Sunday suggests a worship theme. The sermon topic is a natural focal point. If the topic happens to be God’s faithfulness, or the love of God, or God’s sovereignty, it is not difficult to blend the hymns, anthem, and spoken word with the sermon.
2. List resources. After determining the focal point, I list resources for that theme. First, I turn to four or five hymnbooks by my desk and check the topical index and Scripture reference index. Then I list appropriate worship choruses. Next, I read the Scripture text in several translations. A topical Bible and concordance help me locate related passages that can be used in prayer or during transitions in worship. Finally, I review the means we have of presenting these items: the spoken word, people who can read interpretively, various musical expressions, and the congregation.
3. Explore the possibilities. One principle to remember: The higher the predictability, the lower the impact. So I look at each element of worship from different angles, to see how it might be approached freshly or arranged in creative combinations and yet with dignity.
4. Remember content and flow. As the service develops, I look for logical content and emotional flow. We want the content of the songs, readings, and prayers to contribute to the theme. There should be connections—at times overt, at other times subtle—between the different elements of the service. The service should not be an emotional monotone. I also want to avoid jarring emotional shifts. Worship should flow from one part to another.
5. Encourage authentic participation. We need to guard against mere performance. One way is to use our worship space better. Sometimes I lead worship from the floor of the sanctuary. Or we’ll have people come from the pews to lead a portion of the service. Or we’ll engage the congregation in some way. We counter “spectatorism” by giving people plenty of opportunities to participate—songs, readings, and prayers. If a person stands from the pews to read a proclamation, in a sense, everyone does it.

To Discuss

1. What aspects of our worship planning process are going well?
2. What can we learn about worship from Revelation 5:13-14?

From Building Church Leaders, published by Leadership Resources © 2000 Christianity Today.

For more information on similar handouts from the Worship Training Theme, click here.

With the amount of time you spend together as a touring band, how do you deal with tensions or arguments among yourselves? How do you work through the problems?

Tim: I think one of the great strengths about what we do is that we’re part of a team. We’ve met many people over the years that travel around as a team, and sometimes it can be a difficult and vulnerable position to be in. I think one of our strengths is that we have so many different personalities. We are rubbing against each other all the time and trying to sharpen each other. Also, we’re very different, so that means sometimes we don’t necessarily see eye to eye. It’s a bit like being married, isn’t it? Because you’re with each other so much, I guess communication and honesty is the key. We want our music to be prophetic and reflect God’s heart, but it doesn’t stack up unless the whole thing reflects God’s heart. That is so important in our relationships as a team. Because worship is not about music, it’s about a lifestyle and bringing glory to God in all that we do.

How do you, as a band, prepare spiritually before you take the stage, knowing that a lot of what you do is a vertical experience?

Martin: First, I want to make this clear—just doing a quick-fix prayer before we go on doesn’t really solve anything. The reason it works on stage is because we’re hopefully living it out twenty-four hours a day.

But we do pray and ask God to show up, because if He doesn’t, then it’s just music. So we do ask every time for that to happen. When we’re on the road and touring, we’ll often have times together at the end of the day when we’ll sit and one of us (including the crew) will do a little devotion time or something. It’s very simple, but we build it into what we do.

Since this is the “Deeper Tour,” what was the inspiration for the song “Deeper,” and do you approach all your songs as worship or are there different styles to your songs?

Martin: “Deeper” was written in about 1996-97. At the time, we just wanted to say to God, “We want this to be our lives, we want this to be forever.” So “Deeper” really summed it up for us at that time; we really wanted to go in deep. Also, during the meetings that we were leading, that was what we would talk about: “Come on, we’re going all the way, this is not just on Sundays, this is for life.” So that was the inspiration for the song.

Stewart: As far as all the other songs go, when we’re writing, it all comes from the same place. It comes from our gut feelings or whatever we’re experiencing inside. Not every song that we write is a combination of worship songs, as you’ve noticed from our records, but we feel that God has called us to be worshipers as individuals. We do write worship songs, but also a big part of what we think God’s called us to do is to take what we’ve got outside, to take our songs to the highways and byways, to get out there and do the gigs with Bon Jovi, et cetera. So there’s a different style of writing at times because you want to communicate with people that don’t know anything about the language that we use in church. If we talk about the “wondrous cross,” for instance, people might not know what it means unless we can explain it in a different way. So we’re trying to be creative and communicate things about our faith with people that haven’t stepped inside a church. That’s why we sing songs about relationships and about things we’ve observed. But it all comes from that same place: basically, life with God.

Martin: It’s been our observation (I honestly don’t mean this as a criticism), that Christian music has become sort of a machine. If you want to fit into that machine, you can only write a certain sort of song that fits a certain radio format, a certain song that fits a certain listener. Unfortunately, what it does is squeeze out stuff that may be really relevant. It does seem to be leaning now towards “We’re Christians but we can’t ever sing about the stuff that really troubles us.” It’s all about being happy, it’s all about being up, it’s all about being squeaky clean. But unfortunately, the older we get the more we realize that life’s not like that. We get dealt all sorts of blows from the left and the right. People around us, friends that have gone through marital and all sorts of difficulties—it all affects your writing. So as a writer, you want to write about those sorts of things; you want to observe those situations through the eyes of Jesus. We do get in trouble for it, but we want to fill our records with stuff that hopefully touches deeper than just “Isn’t Jesus great” all the time. Of course we know He is, but we still need to talk about the things that He’s going to help us through.

What was the band’s thinking when you went and played the arena dates with Bon Jovi throughout England?

Tim: From the very beginning with “Cutting Edge” (we started these youth events back in 1992), we were really just gathering together young people from our area for a time of worship and giving the Gospel. It was a period of time when the passion and energy in our meetings was so intense and so intimate at the same time … it was like, “What do you do with this amount of energy, excitement and passion?” Everyone was feeling they just wanted to burst out and take it outside the walls of the church. There are songs that Martin and Stu wrote at that time that reflect this, like “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?” That song talks about opening up the doors and letting the music play. “I Found Jesus” is another of those old songs. That’s where our hearts were. Our vision was to really see what we could do with the power of music … and healing, anointing, et cetera, outside the walls of the church.

So we have been singing about that from the very early days. But it’s not enough to just sing and talk about these things, we needed to get on and do it, put our money where our mouth was. So we really tried our hardest to do what we did outside of the church as well as inside.

The Bon Jovi thing is something we really pitched hard for. We felt this would be a great next step in getting in front of a lot of people who don’t know us. It’s an amazing thing, one night we got the call saying, “You’re opening up for Bon Jovi’s five stadium shows in the U.K.” Each gig was somewhere between fifty to seventy thousand people every night. We played songs like “History Maker” and “My Glorious” for thirty-five minutes; we did just what we normally do. At the end of the day, some people might just have enjoyed the music. Some might have felt the Holy Spirit, some might have not, but we really felt God had given us a great opportunity and we wanted to be faithful.

When you’re over here in the United States, it’s such a huge thing for Americans to see Delirious. When you’re at home, do you have a home church you go to, to be normal and not be so public all the time?

Stu G: Yeah, when we’re at home we’re very normal. We think we’re very normal now, actually (laughter). I think what has been really important, right from the beginning, is that we’ve had roots in a local church. We’re actually all from the same church, and we live about a mile away from each other, spread across this little town. It’s a very close-knit community, and our friends now are the friends we had ten-plus years ago. For them, it’s been a very gradual growth thing. Tim Jupp is not necessarily known as the keyboard player from Delirious, and I think for us that has been really important.

We want to encourage kids to get out there and play music, but more than that we want to encourage them to stay in a local church. Trying to get the church to understand musicians and the whole creative temperament and spirit is another important thing for us. (Musicians often tend to get pushed to one side, and they get disillusioned and feel like they don’t fit in.) At our church it’s been a very gradual process; our church has really sort of grown with us and learned what works and how to look after us. We ask ourselves how we can best serve the church, because that’s why we’re there. We go to church to serve them, not to fall into a “feed me, feed me” sort of thing.

Also, we’re all married with kids, and we want to go to church. We want our kids to be there, so we have a ten-day touring rule. That is, we travel for ten days and we’re home on the eleventh day. We want to go to church with our kids and our family, we want them to grow up with dads and husbands and wives.

In what other ways do you keep a good balance between your touring, ministry and your relationships with your families?

Tim: We all married really good girls. Stu mentioned being away for ten days. On this trip we’re actually in the States for three and a half weeks, so we broke the rule big time. The way we got around that is we brought everybody with us. That’s why all the buses are here. There are twelve children among us, and we haven’t been here in the States very long so they’re a little bit tired tonight.

Sometimes when I’m leading worship I can get caught up with the bridge coming up or something like that. How do you focus on what it’s really about?

Martin: The funny thing about worship leading is there is a paradox between being extremely practical and extremely spiritual all at the same time. If you’re leading worship in a local church setting, you can be singing a children’s song one minute, with everyone jumping up and down (like frogs), and then in the next ten minutes you can be in the throne room of God, and some old lady is falling asleep in the back. I think the great thing is that God knows what we’re like, and we need to just relax and let God be God and let us do what we can do. It may be strumming a guitar or playing a keyboard; whatever it is, we need to do it to the best of our ability and not get too stressed out about it. When we’re ourselves, that’s when we’re the most anointed, and when we’re trying to be spiritual and come up with the next big thing, it always sounds terrible. I think you should feel free to laugh at yourself and be humorous about it if things go wrong, but when you’re in that moment, go for it. When you sense God’s there, run for it with all your heart and chase it down.

Can you talk a little about your early days in England and the revival among the youth? And what do you feel about a “presence evangelism,” in which you play music that’s relevant to people who don’t know the Lord and have the presence of God enter that secular environment?

Stu G: We started ten years ago, at the time Tim’s wife and myself were leading a youth group of about thirty kids. We’re from a small town and a small church; there were about three hundred people then. We talked to the kids and they said, “Hey, we just want to do worship.” We had no money, no practical bits apart from our instruments. We had an overhead projector and we rented out a small room. We turned all the lights off, apart from the overhead; it was totally low budget. We basically said that for two hours we wanted to be as creative as we could and try and find God. We didn’t care what it took, we didn’t care what we did, we wanted to find God for ourselves. We had people painting, we had dances, jazz, poetry, you name it, and we gave everything a go because we were just desperate. We thought, “Let’s throw it all up in the air and see what works and what doesn’t work.” The only parameter was that we’d have five minutes of the Gospel, because basically people wanted to bring their friends along that were not in church. It was a bit of a stepping stone. It was the most exciting time of our lives. We had seventy people turn up on the first night, and bear in mind we only had thirty kids. That was the result. Within a year we had over a thousand kids showing up, both from within the church and from outside the church. God was doing something in all of our lives. It wasn’t run by us; we were the band and we were putting a lot of it together, but everyone felt like they were running the whole thing. There were people beating down the doors to get there two hours early to set things up. And for us, it was just an incredible time. We’ll never forget that. Also it put a passion in our hearts to keep going, to ask “What’s next?” We’ve always come up with these different catch phrases, and one of them is “Taking it wherever it goes.” Even now we say we’re not going to stop where people’s perception is that we’ve made it. What is there around the corner? Where is the cloud? Where is the fire? That’s what has really kept us going.

In terms of getting the music out there, we totally believe that if you play music that God’s anointed, it doesn’t matter who you are playing to, it doesn’t matter what arena it’s in, whether it’s secular mainstream or a Christian thing. If God has anointed it, then He’ll speak to people. We’ve experienced that, and it’s probably the most evangelistic thing you can ever do. To play music that God’s breathed on and allow people to sense this. They might not get what it is, but they know there is something going on in the room. That’s why in the U.K. we do mainstream venues. We very rarely play churches. The other reason is there are never churches near as big as the ones you have here in the States. But we get out and we want to play rock-and-roll venues where people can bring their friends, where there is not an “I’ve got to step inside a church” syndrome. So many of the people that follow us have friends that they would like to bring. They want to invite their friends because they want to tear down the walls too. So when we get out there before forty thousand to seventy thousand people at a Bon Jovi concert, we’re expecting God to anoint something, and people start to raise their hands to “History Maker.” They don’t quite know what’s going on, but something in their hearts is changing.

Martin: Scripturally as well, it makes total sense. God uses music for everything. One minute you’ve got Miriam dancing with a tambourine as they come out of the Red Sea, and in another minute you’ve got the Israelites sending out the musicians first into the front lines of the battle. We totally believe that music is God’s secret weapon. It can cut to the heart of a man more than words can. I think God loves music and He’s created it for us to use in every situation.

Featured in Christian Musician, October 2002 www.ChristianMusician.com

I wrestled with whether to let Kevin sing during the morning worship service.I felt uncomfortable with one of his selections, a soft rock song done ina falsetto. But I overrode my reservations; the song was theologically correctand had a clear message.

Afterward, one church leader told Kevin his song was “an abomination thattotally ruined the worship service” and that “this sort of thing has no placein the church of Jesus Christ” and that a man singing in falsetto was“unnatural.”

It wasn’t long before Kevin left the congregation. “It’s obvious this groupwill never accept what I have to offer,” he told me. “I want to use the giftsthe Lord has given me for him.”

The music-style-in-worship debate is nothing if not divisive. Those who prefertraditional hymns clash with those bringing drums and guitars into the sanctuary.People on each side of the debate believe they are defenders of the way Godwants to be worshiped.

Can congregations make a lasting peace over this issue?

Those who prefer hymns and those who prefer choruses often feel theirdifferences. As pastor to both, I try to emphasize five points.

1. This issue is not new.

I remind those who prefer hymns that the songs they consider traditionalwere once new, radical, and controversial. Hymn writer Isaac Watts composedhis music as a reaction against the accepted church music of his day. Today,his works (including “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” “Joy to the World,”“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed”)are so much a part of the church’s repertoire, it’s hard to believe theywere once the new tunes on the block.

God has given new generations new songs in the past, and there’s no reasonto believe he’s not doing so now; the day Fanny Crosby died was not the dayGod’s music died.

Those who insist contemporary praise music is the way to worship Godmust not write off two thousand years of church history. Those who have gonebefore have much to teach us about who God is and how to approach him.

One reason this isn’t always appreciated is that often pastors delegate theselection of worship music to a praise-worship team of talented laypeople.But such teams often have a bias toward praise music; they may incorporatemore praise songs than the rest of the congregation can tolerate.

I seek the input of our praise team, but I have the final say about whichsongs are selected, how many are chosen, and even how many times each willbe sung. This helps to give balance to worship and prevent unnecessary criticism.In accepting that responsibility, I also try to shield the praise team fromcriticism. The buck stops with me.

2. Our identity in Christ, not our common tastes, unites us.

The New Testament churches were made up of people of different ages, genders,races, and socio-economic levels, who came together because of their commonbelief in Jesus. Christ gave them their identity and, consequently, theirunity.

In an era of marketing niches-of builders, boomers, and busters-we have grownaccustomed to having things our way. But do we really need single-tastecongregations?

What would happen if people with different musical tastes got along becauseof their common commitment to Christ? What a testimony to the outside world!

We regularly schedule “Hymn Sings” and also “Praise/Worship Nights,” on separateevenings. Doing so affirms that each musical style is a valid vehicle forpraise. People are allowed more time for the music they love.

3. Worship is corporate.

What would our worship look like if we asked “How can I join those aroundme?” instead of “What will I get out of this?” Corporate worshipis just that-corporate.

Individual styles of worship, though valid for an occasional special evening,must sometimes be set aside so the entire congregation can be touched byGod. In the privacy of our homes, we may put on the music we love, crankit up, and repeat tracks over and over. But during corporate worship, everyone’sneeds are valued. This is what Paul teaches in First Corinthians 14:13-25:“For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body. . . .”

Our church board was puzzled when people began complaining, “The church haschanged so much since we started singing those new songs.” We had added tenminutes of choruses at the beginning of each service, but the rest of worshipfollowed the same liturgy it always had.

We finally realized that at almost every church function-potluck dinners,picnics, congregational meetings, missionary weekends-praise choruses werealso sung. The choruses were often preceded by, “Now let’s spend some timeworshiping the Lord,” implying the praise songs to follow were the only validform of worship.

We relieved some of the tension by saying during our regular liturgy: “Let’sworship the Lord by silently presenting ourselves before him,” or “Let’spraise God by reading together Psalm 100,” or “Let’s sing to the Lord a fewof our favorite hymns.”

4. Love means sacrifice.

Scripture calls Christians to love one another in the same way Jesus lovedthe church (John 13:34). That means sacrifice; we dedicate ourselves to thosearound us.

Do you not love me enough to sing my choruses? Do I not love you enough tosing your hymns? If the answer is no, then our problems are much bigger thanwhat type of music to use in the worship service (1 John 3:14-16).

Nowhere in the New Testament are believers commanded to spend their timeand energy trying to reach 100-percent agreement. Instead, the Scripturesmake clear that Christians will not always agree (Acts 15:36-40), but wemust, in Paul’s words, “[a]ccept one another, then, just as Christ acceptedyou, in order to bring praise to God” (Rom. 15:7).

5. Each church is fearfully and wonderfully made.

God creates each local church unique; no two will be exactly alike. The answerto the question, “Why can’t we be more like First Church down the road?”is, “We’re not First Church.”

The issue is not whether the church can change; change is part of life andpart of a vital congregation. But change is usually slow. Often people complain,“So what if the church has scheduled a hymn sing once a month? We still haveto sing those boring choruses on Sunday morning.” Or, “Sure we do praise/worshipsongs, but only for ten minutes before the service even begins. It’s as ifthe church is saying they’re not important.”

People can’t always see that the very thing they dislike on Sunday morningmay be a step toward including more of what they want. As the congregationwarms to new music, the leadership often becomes more open to making changes.

Steve Bierly is pastor of The CobblestoneChurch in Schenectady, New York.

Copyright © 1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

In this ChristianityToday.com exclusive, the acclaimed worship leader best known for the song “In the Secret (I Want to Know You)” explains what it is — and what it isn’t.

What is worship? It’s all about exalting Christ, and anything that leads towards a Christ-like life is on the right track of true worship.

When we use the word “worship” as applied to what we do in a church service, then most of what I do is musically oriented. Of course, preaching, prayer, the Lord’s Supper and even fellowship are all parts of worship. But there are several things that happen during the musical portion of worship. We express our love to God, and we sing and speak the Word to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. We let the Word of Christ dwell in us by meditating about who God is and our role as children and servants.

That’s the cognitive element. Then there’s the spiritual or revelatory element—worshipping God with all that’s within us. Part of that involves our emotions, engaging our whole being in this act.

Style and substance

There are many different legitimate musical styles you can use in worship music—everything from classical to rock, from black gospel traditions to liturgical traditions. I think there are strengths in each of those traditions.

Some of my favorite moments come when the instruments are playing gently and most of what you hear is the congregation singing. On the other hand, it’s fine to rock out; the Bible is full of exuberant joy in worship. Both extremes, the quiet and the loud, have their place. We’re emotional beings, and we need to worship with all of our emotions—from quiet meditation to raucous celebration.

I love to see youth jump around and go crazy. And I love seeing people be quiet as they listen to God. And I love everything in between. There’s good in all of it.

While the particular musical style isn’t a big deal, choosing the right songs is. The worship leader is responsible for presenting a broad, balanced picture of God through the songs he or she has chosen. We are singing theology—what we believe about God’s character, and how we should respond to him.

One of the dangers is that we get too narrow in the focus of the song lyrics, because we sometimes forget that teaching is one function of leading worship. People often remember songs more easily than sermons because adding melody to words helps with memory retention.

With that in mind, I’m always on the lookout for songs that are not only help people connect with God, but speak a message that we need to hear. Do they have significant theological content? That’s one of the things that shapes my writing.

There are plenty of good worship songs that are more than just simple love songs. But we need those simple love songs too, because they touch a part of our soul that might not be touched through hymns. It’s part of touching all that’s within us.

We in the West tend to dismiss the simple things because we’re cerebral, cognitive people who tend to see the world “informationally.” We’re not as tuned in to the sensory or experiential—such as experiencing God’s love and power. In Western evangelical churches, including my own Vineyard tradition, we’re not as good at the mystical as we are at the cognitive. So, those “simpler” songs leave room for a person to interact with God on a personal basis.

To rock, or not to rock?

I come from the Vineyard background where, in the early days, we used the style of music to which most Boomers could relate—rock. That’s what they wanted, and it worked; we had some very powerful times of worship.

Rock music as a means of worship offers a very important element of relevance to a generation that grew up on that style. They’re hearing the sounds they’ve grown to love, an art form they appreciate. And when you appreciate an art form, it’s natural to sing a love song to God in that art form.

If you grew up in a traditional hymn-singing church, you might disagree. If you’ve learned to meet and experience God through the piano and the organ, you’ll be attached to that style. And that’s completely valid.

But how do you make one co-exist with the other? How do you introduce rock to an organ-loving church? You have to respect the tradition of the church you’re a part of. You have to realize people don’t change very quickly. They don’t want a wholesale change of their worship style, because there’s a sacred connection to the style of music they’ve always known.

One of the easiest ways to bridge the two worlds of contemporary and traditional music is to introduce new arrangements of traditional hymns. It makes the hurdle a lot lower for people to get over. They’re singing a song they’ve always sung, but in a new way.

There are so many rich gems in the hymns. Last weekend, we sang, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” two different ways in two different settings this past weekend. It works just as well both ways. Hymns like that are timeless.

But ultimately, worship music is about more than just style or the right song choices. It’s about what it does to the worshiper. You can’t divorce music from the fruit manifested in those singing the songs. You can’t evaluate the effectiveness of worship unless you look at a cross-section of what’s happening in a local church. Are people being discipled? Are they reaching out to people in need or to those who don’t know God?

That’s how to know if your worship is real and effective.

Andy Park is a veteran worship leader and songwriter currently serving at the North Langley Vineyard in British Columbia. Park has more than 90 works to his credit, including “The River Is Here,” “Only You” and “In the Secret.” He has led worship on numerous Vineyard recordings, including Blessed Be the Name and All I Need.Learn more about him at his website, www.andypark.ca. His new book, To Know You More: Cultivating the Heart of a Worship Leader, can be found at Musicforce.com

I recently heard someone talking about the current “worship trend.” To be honest, I found that quite funny. If it’s a trend, then it’s the only eternal trend there is! Worship is here to stay—throughout all time and eternity.

Of course, what they were trying to say is that there’s been a wonderful new song and sound rising up in much of the church in recent years—a fresh wave of vertical, biblical, and relevant worship. And that’s absolutely wonderful. But the key to remember is that we’re caught up in the middle of an eternal river of praise. With every new song that comes along, with every album that’s released, with every worship meeting we attend, we’re truly joining in with an age-old flow of devotion that will never run dry. This is the reality of what we do when we “worship” in song.

Hymn-writer and poet Christina Rosetti once said that in Revelation 4 and 5, “heaven is revealed to earth as the homeland of music.” Indeed, in these chapters we also see what music was created for—first and foremost for the praise of God. There’s an incredible orchestration of praise described here. First, we see the four living creatures speaking out their endless praise. Day and night they never stop saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

Next come the twenty-four elders, who lay their crowns before the throne, saying, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and praise . …” Then this choir of praise grows a little stronger as the elders and living creatures join their twenty-eight voices together in praise that the blood of Jesus has purchased souls for God.

But then the choir really gets going—thousand upon thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand (in other words, millions) of angels join their voices together and loudly sing, “Worthy is the lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength, and honour and glory and praise!” What an amazing orchestration of praise—first we had just four voices of praise, then twenty-four, then twenty-eight—and now millions! But it doesn’t end there. In chapter 5:13 we read, “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all that is in them SINGING.”

What an incredible song and sound that must be! Yet here is the mystery—every time we gather together and voice our devotion to God in worship, we join in with this song. We haven’t come to just a church building, or a home group front room. In reality, we’ve joined with “thousands of angels in joyful assembly”—we’ve come before the very throne of our God in heaven. When we begin to see worship from this perspective, there’s never a danger that it will become merely the singing of songs.

As a worship leader, I find this so inspiring. Whether I lead before four people in a home group, or four thousand at a conference, I’m always first and foremost standing before the audience of One—my Father in heaven.

With the eyes of faith, we need to realize that worship is a “spiritual” event long before it’s ever a “musical” event. We’re caught up in the everlasting spiritual song that goes on day and night in the throne room of God. This is the reality of worship.

Click here to learn more about Matt Redman. Also be sure to read our music review of his latest album, Where Angels Fear to Tread. If you’d like to hear the songs for yourself, check out this media player of the album. Visit Musicforce.com to purchase your own copy of Where Angels Fear to Tread today!

Though he’s been leading worship for nearly twenty years now, Michael W. Smith wrestles with the concept of worship like any other Christian. Over the years, Smitty’s personal growth in the area of worship has extended far beyond the boundaries of his church. Can you imagine how a pear orchard, ketchup, or simply being silent can have a part in pleasing God with our worship to Him? Michael talked with us about personal worship in all areas of his life. Put yourself in a chair across the table from him and enjoy his words and experiences in the interview below.

You’ve been leading worship for about twenty years now. Do you think there’s a new hunger for God today? What have you seen?

M: I think there’s a passion for God like never before. The bad is getting worse and the good is getting better. In terms of worship, there’s just a real passion. I think that’s why musical worship is popular. It’s not just the songs. It’s expressing what people want to say. Ultimately, I think there’s a movement of God, and it’s like a wave sweeping across the country.

For the last two-and-a-half years while doing summer festivals, I’ve seen young kids, 8-, 9-, 10-years-old, raising their hands, weeping and crying and praising God. I didn’t see that ten years ago. So I believe there’s something happening. I believe we’re just scratching the surface, too. It’s an exciting time.

What is the church’s part in continuing the movement of the Holy Spirit in worship?

M: I think worship is a lifestyle, first of all. I think music is just a small part of it. Although, it’s something we can do corporately, which I think is powerful. Just look at the Old Testament. They didn’t go out with the army first. They sent the musicians out. And many, many wars were won because the music confused the enemy, although we were outnumbered. So I think that’s critical. We’ve got to remember music is a big part of it.

But I think as churches — and I’ll go off the deep end here — and say we’ve got to reach out to our communities. We’ve got to get involved in taking care of the poor. I think if the church did what they were supposed to do we wouldn’t have anyone sleeping on the streets. It’s hard work. It’s hard to figure all that out. But I think that’s an act of worship. We’ve got to get involved and reach out to the communities, be more evangelical, and bring people into the kingdom. That’s what it’s all about.

What have you seen as far as the leading of corporate worship in the church?

M: In terms of worship, I think we ought to have the right people leading. Not everyone can lead worship. You don’t learn how to lead worship, in my opinion. I think you’re gifted. You’re anointed to lead and then you learn.

I think one of my greatest gifts is leading worship. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I’m better at it today because I’m more sensitive to the Spirit of God than I was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago I’d go, “Hey, let’s sing ‘How Majestic Is Your Name.'” I’d do all these songs, never realizing I need to settle down and hear God.

If you were to give a worship leader one recommendation, what would it be?

M: Don’t be afraid to be quiet. Some of the most powerful times are when we’re quiet. While playing a song the other day in a worship service, something happened. I played for a little bit and then I just laid my hands on the piano. I didn’t move because I felt like we were supposed to be still. I’ll tell you what, God ministered during that quiet time.

I believe people are afraid to be still because we’re used to being stimulated. So people feel uncomfortable in the quiet times. They think, Oh my goodness, it’s quiet. What do we do? Instead we should be going to God asking “What do you want to do? Bring it on.” That ability to be quiet could be a bridge.

I’m still not there yet myself. I’m learning, but I’m getting better at it because I’m learning how to hear God in worship.

How important is the selection of songs for worship time in a service?

M: You need to have good songs.

There are a lot of worship albums out there now. There are a lot of bad worship songs, in my opinion, but there are a lot of good ones, too. But with many of these worship albums, two songs are good and the rest are throwaways. We’ve got to raise the level. We’ve got to have excellence. God deserves the best from us.

Not that I do it right every time either. Take the song “Open the Eyes”. Although we sang it a ton of times, you know what? It still has punch. There’s something about it that’s anointed. “Agnus Dei” is one of the only songs I wrote on the Worship album, but I knew it when I wrote it ten years ago it was important. That song is just anointed. It just is.

Speaking of choosing songs, was it a difficult task to choose a dozen songs out of your favorites to end up on the Worship album?

M: It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I definitely had twenty on the list and had to narrow it down. I just went with my gut and thought if I had twelve songs to do, what would they be? I wrote them out in two minutes because I knew what they were.

“Breathe,” “Open the Eyes,” “The Heart of Worship,” and “Let It Rain” are on the album. The little trilogy at the end of “Let It Rain” is a really powerful moment on the record. We weren’t going to put “Awesome God” on the album because I’ve been singing it at concerts for years. Everybody’s done it. But when we got to the end of the concert, nobody wanted to go anywhere, and all of a sudden we just ended up doing it. “More Love, More Power,” too, was not supposed to be on the record, but it is.

What’s different when you sit down and write one of those great songs?

M: It’s one of those things that you say, “I can’t put my finger on it.” What is it about a simple little song like “Agnus Dei” that just really works? I can’t try to write one of those songs. Every time I try I fail miserably. Sometimes they come to you in fifteen minutes. Those are the best.

How does the preparation for a project like Worship compare to previous albums you’ve recorded?

M: This was such a different project. Since it was recorded at a concert, we had one shot. You want to prepare, and at the same time you want to stay out of the way. So we had to find that happy balance of not manipulating and not getting too far over to the other extreme of no preparation at all. So I told those involved, “Here’s what I think the flow is, but I might take a left turn.”

Tell us about the time before and after the concert.

M: Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family. I think there was a great sense of needing each other. How often does that happen — that everybody would lay down their egos, come with humility, and be part of a support team? It spoke volumes to me. It was really good.

The day was good. Our prayer time before the event was great. But as soon as it was over we were just worn out. We experienced God in a new way. We all just sat and looked at each other. Nobody knew what to say. Then somebody said, “Oh my gosh, I needed this.” And everybody started sharing how much we needed each other — “Why don’t we do this more often?”

So, it’s my goal at some point to get together again. I don’t know how I’ll do it. But I’m a mentor. I’m a father figure. So it’s a goal of mine to try to pull all these artists together again.

What’s something related to worship leading that you’d like to see change?

M: I’ve always wanted to go to church and sing one song, then for the rest of our worship time, just go and love on each other. I’d like to literally play a tape and have each person find someone they don’t know and just converse for twenty minutes to get to know each other. That’s worship. Who says it’s not worship? I’m ready to shake it up.

I’ve found out now, after being part of starting the church I attend and being a regular worship leader at least a couple times a month, that I’m going to search. I’m searching to find the answer to the question of “What do we do next?” So it’s a challenge.

Who are worship leaders you listen to?

M: I pay more attention to specific songs. I probably learned most about worship in my days when I went to Belmont Church on Music Row. I led worship there for years. I learned a lot from Don Finto, my pastor back then. He still mentors me.

I don’t know of anyone I can just sit here and pick out. There are very few albums I sit and listen to and worship. Sometimes it’s a little too much hype for me, kind of a cheerleading thing. And that’s not really what I do. I try to find songs that speak volumes, like when I found “Above All,” an unbelievable song. That will work every time.

Have you talked with people over the years that have never experienced worship before?

M: I think once they come and something really special happens, kind of like what happened on this record, they’re in. They want to come back. “I experienced God this morning.” You never know whom you have in your congregation. We have a lot of visitors almost every Sunday coming and checking it out. They’ve heard about it. So you just never know what kind of climate people lived in. You don’t know what kind of church life people have been in for years, so I try to be sensitive to that.

What’s something you’d like improve?

M: I probably need to talk a little more while leading corporate worship. I don’t talk much because of the nature of it. I think one of my biggest weaknesses in leading worship is that I don’t share. Every once in a while it’s good to share together, to instruct people. Sometimes you’ve got to instruct people on how to let go. But because of the nature of what I do for a living, I’m trying to be invisible the whole time.

I have this false sense that every time I talk I’m drawing attention to myself. The fact is I need to talk, and I need to instruct more. I’m trying to get better at that.

Can you tell me about the time in your life when you first began to grasp the importance of worship?

M: I think I experienced it to a certain extent as a kid. I really experienced it at Belmont twenty-one years ago. I’ll never forget the first time I attended that church. It was unbelievable. It was more than just singing songs. It was the first time that I kind of jumped in and I found myself washed. I really felt like I was worshiping in spirit and truth. I’ll never forget it. I felt like I can do this every day for the rest of my life. It was a pretty big experience.

That’s when I knew that worship was part of my destiny. Don Finto told me, “You’re a worship leader.” And I told him, “I know.” It’s the weirdest thing. So he truly mentored me.

Can you give me a few words that describe worship to you? How would you define it?

M: Being thankful. Being in awe. Dying to self. Worship, to me, is forgetting about who you are, forgetting about your agenda, and being prostrate before God and saying “I’m in awe of you, and thank you for what you’ve done in my life.” That “thank you” sums it up. That’s worship. Also worship is reaching out to your fellow man. Worship is loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s why churches have to reach out to our communities. We’ve got to reach out beyond the walls.

“Purified” is a song you co-wrote with your wife. How has worship become part of your marriage?

M: I just think it’s from what we do every day. We live and breathe. We experience life. We get our kids ready for school. We go on dates. We never fail to communicate. I never let the sun go down on my anger.

If we get in an argument, I can’t go to bed. Even if it’s not my fault I say, “I confess. It’s my fault.” Just keep it clean. Keep the communication lines open. If there’s one thing that I’ve done right with my marriage and my kids, I’ve communicated. I believe that lifestyle is worship to God.

How do you see worship in other areas of your life?

M: Do it unto the Lord in everything you do — your job, your friends, the guy at the Quick Stop, the guy at the little market you go to, whatever and wherever. It’s the way you treat people. All of that is worship to me. Experiencing God’s creation.

This is really strange, and you’re going to think I’m really crazy. But this happened two years ago in the spring. We have these trees in Tennessee called Bradford Pears. They grow a big, beautiful, white blossom. I was just cruising down the road and wasn’t really paying attention. But when I stopped, right beside my car there was this huge orchard. I sat there and cried for five minutes. I had a “God” experience. I sat there and thought, “that’s unbelievable.” I sat there and cried. It was a holy moment for me.

Can you give an example to help us better understand what a lifestyle of worship is like?

M: I feel like my worship is very often invested in my kids. The other day we went to Disney World with my kids. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant. We all sat at the table and started eating.

I looked over at my daughter and she didn’t have any food. I remembered then that she didn’t like Mexican food too much. I said, “I bet you wanted a hamburger.” She just said, “Whatever. I’ll get it later.”

Well, I just got up and ran. It took about three minutes to run over to this place I saw earlier. I got a cheeseburger and fries, and I came back and handed it to her. She smiled and said, “Dad, you didn’t have to do that.” I told her, “I wanted to.”

Then she got up and started walking. I forgot to get her ketchup! She loves ketchup. I caught up with her and then ran back across the park. I filled all these little ketchup containers and I went back to her. She was so surprised and thankful.

Hey, I don’t score every time like that. But you know what? I had forgotten who I was because I wanted to serve my daughter. It was a joy. It was a complete joy to go get her that hamburger and run back and get ketchup.

That was an act of worship to me because God has given me these incredible kids to serve. Believe me, actions speak louder than words. I didn’t do it to get attention. I tried to do it incognito and not for a show. I just didn’t want her to go by herself. I wanted to do it for her. That’s just one example of what I feel worship is.

Dan Wakefield, a writer who moved to New York in the 1950s, was originally from Indiana. When he arrived in New York, he completely overturned his Baptist roots and became a bohemian. In one of his books, he describes how he wanted nothing to do with the values of middle America. He completely rid himself of religion.

Now, however, he’s near 60 years old, ostensibly needing spiritual meaning, and attends a liturgical church. Why? Probably because to him, the church feels safe, it’s connected with history, it doesn’t feel like a fly-by-night operation, and it is more satisfying aesthetically.

Historic liturgy often appeals to a certain kind of person. It opens doors to the heart that the art of pop culture—drums and guitars—can’t.

Personally, I like both. Each form of art opens different doors into my soul. But each form must have at its core true worship. It all begins with this question: What is true worship?

Instinct Run Amok

At our deepest level, we were created for worship. But this instinct has gone awry.

Jonathan Edwards spoke of religious affections—that core of our being that orients our mind, will, and emotions toward an object. Sin has caused our affections to stray, propelling us to worship relationships, achievement, work—everything but God. Alfred Adler would say we gravitate toward control or power or comfort or approval.

We obsess about those things, comfort ourselves with them, fantasize about them. Biblically speaking, those things are idols. Worship is pulling our affections off our idols and putting them on God.

The word worship comes from an Old English word meaning “worth-ship.” I define worship as a private act that has two parts: seeing what God is worth and giving him what he’s worth.

Job says, “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.” When I treasure something, I longingly look at it, for example, in the store window and think about how great it would be to own it. I ponder its virtues, talk to my friends about how great it is. Then I go out and buy it.

Worship is treasuring God: I ponder his worth and then do something about it—I give him what he’s worth. Every approach to worship must have those two elements.

Harnessed Worship

The only difference between private and public worship is that in public worship, individuals are doing it in concert with others. In a team of six horses, each horse is affected by the speed and direction of the other five. The same is true of corporate worship—it’s individuals worshiping God in harness.

If the minister is talking about the holiness of God, for example, I’m seeing God’s holiness in concert with the congregation. Together, God’s people are in harness, letting the worship leader guide them so they can respond to God individually by giving him what he is worth.

Scripture readings, exhortations, and sermons show people what God is worth. The offering, prayers of repentance and thanksgiving, and times of confession allow people to respond to God.

In order for us to worship, our mind, will, and emotions have to be moved. They’re all organically connected.

Merely learning a truth about God is intellectual education, not worship. For example, I can know intellectually that God is good but still be worried silly about something that’s coming up this week. If the morning’s sermon is on the sovereignty and goodness of God, I haven’t worshiped unless that truth descends from my mind and touches my emotions and my will.

I worship, then, when I realize I’ve been trusting in my own abilities, not the sovereignty and goodness of God. When I pull my affections off the other things I’ve been trusting in—which is why I’m anxious—and put them on God, I will be touched emotionally. I may cry; I may not. It depends on what kind of personality I have. But the truth will affect my emotions.

My will is also affected when I decide to change the way I handle that threat next week.

Worship is grasping a truth about God and then letting that truth strike you in the center of your being. It thrills you, comforts you. That’s when the truth has moved from left to right brain—from mind to heart. On the spot, it will change the way you feel. The whole brain, the whole person, is affected.

Mistaken Emotions

Not everything we feel Sunday morning can be labeled true worship. Several emotions can be mistakenly associated with true worship.

Nostalgia. Some people are moved to tears by listening to “The Old Rugged Cross” and others by “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” But those feelings are not necessarily worship. They could also be merely a sentimental connection; the song reminds people of a warm memory. This is one reason why people will say, “I can’t worship if I don’t sit in my pew,” or “I can’t worship because you rearranged the furniture,” or “I can’t worship if I don’t know the hymns.”

That’s nostalgia, a fond sentiment that people often need because everything else in life is changing. But that feeling isn’t worship, and there is no resulting impact on their whole lives.

Conscience clearing. Some people feel guilty because they haven’t gone to church for a while, or they haven’t been praying, or whatever. So because they’re in church, singing a hymn and putting something in the offering plate, they feel better. Their consciences are clear. Perhaps that feeling is better than the sentimental feeling, but it’s still not worship.

Aesthetic experiences. Other people may have only an aesthetic experience, which is still not worship. Even people hostile to the gospel can weep while listening to Handel’s Messiah. C. S. Lewis said that his imagination was baptized when he was still an atheist because of excellent Christian art.

Our emotions become a legitimate part of worship when, in response to a truth about God, we give something back to God: our money, our sin, our praise. Again, the three elements must be there: mind, will, emotion.

As it relates to worship, I’d rather use the word moved than the word emotion. If we don’t find that our affections have been moved from earthly idols toward God, we haven’t worshiped. Our affections are more than just our emotions.

Some of us, myself included, are not emotionally expressive. That’s just who I am. However, if I leave Sunday morning having had no emotional connection whatsoever, I haven’t worshiped. I must allow my heart to be touched to worship.

Baptized Art

In recent years, churches have emphasized excellence in worship, especially in seeking to reach non-Christians. In general, churches that focus on excellence tend to attract more non-Christians.

Non-Christians are attracted to the art of a tight-sounding worship band or string quartet. They are not, in general, attracted to the special music of Brother Joe’s seventh-grade nephew, who gets up and plays “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on his clarinet. That music is meaningful for the members of Brother Joe’s church, who know and love the nephew, and who know and love the truth. But those who don’t have the relationship already are only made uncomfortable by the lack of excellence.

Aesthetics is a movement from the right brain to the left. Consequently, art is often a back door to truth. Clearly, people are brought to faith through great aesthetics. The power of the art draws people to behold it. After a while they begin to wonder if the ideas that inspired it are true.

As a general rule, the larger the church, the more important worship aesthetics become. It can be compared to the difference between two restaurants, both of which have great food. One restaurant is a dive, tucked away in a hard-to-find basem*nt; its patrons are proud of the fact that not many people eat there. It attracts few new customers because nobody knows where it is unless you’re told by an insider.

The other restaurant, however, places a premium on good advertising and a pleasant ambiance. It’s easy to find, warm and friendly. Everything about the restaurant communicates, “Why don’t you try our food?” I would go so far as to say that when planting a church, you determine its future size in part by the importance you place on aesthetics in worship.

But it’s important to keep worship aesthetics in perspective. Frankly, I doubt that to God there’s much difference between the classically trained soloist and Brother Joe’s nephew. God is the one we want to please, and I doubt he judges on the basis of aesthetics.

Easy Access

Contemporary pop music is not the only art that attracts non-Christians, however. I’m always puzzled when I hear pastors suggest this.

Our largest service at Redeemer is not the one we started with the contemporary band (though that could change). It’s the one with traditional hymns and string quartets playing classical music. Perhaps that’s because New York faces Europe more than the rest of the country. I’ve found the people of Manhattan like formality. They’re used to cathedrals, art museums, symphonies. Many non-Christians feel safe in a liturgical service because they know what’s happening next. There are no surprises.

I’ve also found that many who come back to the faith often choose a liturgical church. These people tend to be intellectuals: professors, writers, musicians.

Nonnegotiables

The pressure on a pastor to create a good worship service each week can cause me to react wrongly when a service doesn’t come off the way I think it should. I’m a detail person, and occasionally, I cringe when a vocalist blows it or the microphone system goes haywire. That’s not good. It indicates an overemphasis on aesthetics.

Yet, just as people can have an aesthetic experience and not worship, they can also worship without good aesthetics. I need to remember that. I’m committed to excellence but don’t want to make it a nonnegotiable. Aesthetics are negotiable; truth is not.

Neither is the authenticity of the worship leader. Before Sunday, I must be worshiping God throughout the week. I use daily Martin Luther’s scheme of “garland” meditation, which he describes in a letter. I meditate until some thought of Scripture catches fire in my heart. I collect those thoughts, which stay radioactive all week, and use them in my worship leading the next Sunday.

This prepares me to worship in concert with the congregation. My people can sense whether I am worshiping or not. I believe the church needs to see me worship, to see my affections being moved by the truth of God.

From the book Changing Lives Through Preaching and Worship. Copyright © 1995 by Leadership/Christianity Today International.

Featured in Christian Musician, January 2002www.ChristianMusician.com

Formula for a good discussion? Take 120 church worship leaders and put them in a tent with three nationally known worship leader/recording artists and let the audience ask anything they want to know. We start off with each panelist introducing themselves to the crowd.

Jami: I’m from Oklahoma and I’ve been leading worship for eight years at camps, conferences, women’s retreats, kids, college and singles stuff too. I love it. It’s an honor and privilege every time. I’ve been learning a lot about worship and still have tons more to learn.

Lamont: I’m originally from British Columbia, Canada. I now live in New Haven, CT. I’m a missionary and worship leader. This combination breathes into the kind of songs I end up writing. I like to think these songs are worship songs that the un-churched can also sing along with. I’m part of a ministry community up in New Haven where we minister to the Yale University students. We (as the band Ten Shekel Shirt) do a lot of traveling and that sort of thing as well.

Lincoln: I live in northern California, in the Sacramento area. I’m a worship leader. I work part time, like hardly-ever-there part time for my church. I help them oversee the worship ministry and do technical direction (just kind of all-around friend to everybody). I started a youth group in Modesto, CA about six years ago. I started leading worship and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. It was horrible, not that it’s great now, but it’s gotten better. I just knew that was what God was calling me to do. Every fiber of my being said, “do this” … so I did it.

Q: How can I help the youth ministry, teaching them to become youth leaders and youth worship leaders for a youth service?

Lincoln: For me, it was the worship leader at our church who took the time and cared enough to encourage me. In fact, he led the services with me for the first couple of months, because I was too afraid even to talk to the kids. So I would sing the fast songs and he would talk, then he would sing the slow songs. I got to where I could sing the slow songs too, which was a big deal. I remember one week I came in and said, “I think I’m ready to say something this week,” because I felt like God had shown me something. He said, “all right.”

So if you are a worship leader, take the time to take younger worship leaders along side of you. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a sacrifice in quality but you know if somebody had shut me down when the quality wasn’t that good, I wouldn’t be doing this. You really have to follow God’s leading in trying to help somebody identify their calling and all those things. It can be kind of a complex issue. But on a case-by-case basis, just try to encourage the younger people by spending time with them. Really look at their heart and intentions, and also watch to see if the kids are being blessed in the youth group.

Jami: I think too, you help educate them and yourselves on “what is worship?” Is it necessarily a style? Because I’ll run across students who will say “Jami, why can’t our church worship be like it is at camp?” I’ll answer that with something like, “I think worship starts here in our hearts. If you have trouble in your church worshipping with the hymns, there is a heart problem, not so much a style problem”.

There are all these different kinds of styles, but if you’re in love with Jesus, then you’re going to worship in the silence. You don’t need your favorite band and your favorite style. It’s good for those students to be able to stand in a traditional worship service and show that they can worship with hymns. Just like we want the older generation to learn how to worship this certain way, it’s also important that we’re able to worship that way.

Worship is not about style. I hope we’re not teaching our younger generation that it’s style, because we’re missing the whole point if we are. So we can help educate them to be respectful of all styles, because it’s not about “style.”

Lamont: Sometimes it’s good to bring in an outside speaker, to educate some of the adults as well as the youth in that kind of thinking. Sometimes it’s hard for them to understand that there can be more than one form or style of worship. The leaders also just need to be examples of respect for different kinds of music, and ultimately, for honoring God in different ways. I’m in a worship band and we make a lot of noise (laughs).

One of my favorite kinds of worship these days is liturgy. I like to have an Episcopalian type communion once in a while and just sit in silence. For me, it’s almost been too noisy at times, so it’s like, “Lets mellow out a little bit and take some meditation and reflection time.” There is no right form or style, it’s not about that, it’s about a heart thing.

Q: In our church we have worship “teams.” I’d like to know more about how you practice and how you get your team ready for worship?

Lincoln: I’m a real detail oriented person. One thing I hate to do on Sunday morning before service is to practice. If we’re going to sound check, then let’s sound check, but not practice. When we come to rehearsal I like to rehearse and not learn songs.

My theory is, the way you learn a song is the way you revert back to playing the song. So if I learn a song off a chart, I tend to need a chart to play the song. If I learn a song in my heart, then that’s all I need to play the song. I get the music in my spirit over the course of the week. You have to have a balance of not giving people too much new material to learn. You need to be looking at your set list and rotating you music to where people don’t get confused. What I’ve seen work really effectively is getting a good working group of songs and then working in a new song. I try not to do more than one a week, because people can get sensory overload.

It’s really easy to get into rehearsal and waste tons of time. It can be frustrating when you get in on Sunday morning (I don’t know how many of you feel this way) and you rehearse up until you’re supposed to start leading worship. I believe it’s wrong when people from your congregation are walking in and your still fiddling through stuff rather than knowing the songs on Sunday. The best use of a Sunday morning is to take the time to work out the sound stuff and make sure everybody is happy. Then have thirty minutes to relax, have a drink of water and pray with each other. Have time to hang out and then go out clear minded and lead worship.

The other thing I’m a big advocate of is doing sectional type band practice. If you have a choir, have somebody take and lead the choir for the first part of the rehearsal. If you have a praise team that’s separate from them, have somebody take that section and rehearse the songs themselves. The rhythm section rehearses on their own etc. Before this plan of action we would end up spending over an hour and a half on one choir song each week for a five- minute offering. Then all we had left was thirty minutes to spend on the forty minutes of worship we had planned.

Once we realized that this was imbalanced in our priorities, we took the time to separate the choir and the band the first hour. Then when we come together in the second hour, it was beautiful. So organization (just really thinking through the process), and not just having it be crisis management week-in and week-out is really helpful.

Q: How do you handle the situation where you have to choose between a talented musician with a not-so-into-it heart and a not-so talented one with a great heart?

Jami: From my personal experience of being with the guys on the road with me regarding talent-verses-heart, I would always choose heart over talent. Always!

As band mates we live together, eat together. We breathe the same air together. We spend twenty-three hours a day trying to get to the place where we lead worship for thirty-five to forty minutes. I want to be around somebody who is going to challenge me spiritually, edify me, encourage me and also hold me accountable. Because living for God is supposed to be our first priority, not music. That’s supposed to be an overflow of our love for God. What we’re experiencing with God day-in and day-out is more important than music. I want to be around that guy who’s going to help me grow up and not be a baby. That’s what I choose, and consequently, I feel like God has really blessed that.

Q: What do you do to prepare yourself week-in and week-out for worship? What do you encourage the band members to do to be prepared for worship?

Lamont: Getting together, eating together and praying together, just those kinds of things, doing what I call “naturally supernatural things.” Sometimes supernatural doesn’t have to be big, weird and spooky. Sometimes supernatural can be very natural and real. Just doing things like that together is actually great for building a good vibe, so to speak, in a band. People ask me, “How much do you prepare to do your worship?” I answer that question with, “I never stop preparing, This is my life, My life revolves around God; it’s about worship.” It’s an endless preparing, so-to-speak.

One thing that’s under-rated is the ability to be discerning. There are a lot of musicians that can play great chops or sing these cool scales and that kind of thing, but a Hebrew scholar told me that the word “skill” basically could be interpreted as the ability to play discerningly. Sometimes being able to capture the moment in a room is a great gift, talent, whatever you want to call it. I think that comes with being prepared in your heart and your spirit throughout the week. Be sensitive to what the Spirit of God wants to say.

I was just thinking about this festival a couple of days ago, My friend so and so has an opinion about this festival and so and so and I have an opinion about this Festival. I bet you God has an opinion about this festival. Do you think the Creator, Maker of all things actually cares about this festival? Do you think He cares about you guys and all the people here? I think He does. And a good musician will be able to, in a sense, capture the heart and the moment of what God wants to do in a place and with the people.

Jami: I had a guy tell me one time (I never forgot it because it was so humbling), as far as preparing for worship, he asked me, “Hey Jami, how is your private worship?” I remember going, ” uh-oh, I haven’t done that in a while. He just looked at me, deep into my eyes and said, “Look, your never going to take a group of people publicly where you haven’t been privately.” That statement rocked me!

I used to sit in this one little room in my house all the time and play love songs just for God’s ears. I’d write in my journal just to Him. Well, I got just so busy, and I stopped doing that. It’s just a good reminder to all of us that we can’t forsake that private worship that we’re suppose to be doing all the time. It’s a cool thought to think that if all week long we would be private worshipers, whether in our car or whatever, for if we’re constantly being private worshipers and we come together corporately on Sunday morning. How amazing that would be?

I have just had another one of those strange feelings. Another telephone interview has just occurred with an excitable American lady calling from Virginia Beach in Virginia.

She asks me where I’m from and with just a little too much mischief for my spiritual reputation I reply “Littlehampton Beach, Littlehampton”. She exclaims “is that in England?” and I reply with even more mischief, “that it is the capital of England and the center for world revival”. As is usual she hasn’t heard the new record (bless her), but thinks it’s “awesome anyhow” and believes with a passion that Delirious? hold the keys to the future of modern worship.

When I secretly contemplate to myself, there are two things I am sure of. Firstly, that God is worthy to be praised and has always been from the dawn of time to eternity. And secondly, Delirious? is doing nothing new but just hanging on the coat tails of the Kendrick’s, Wesley’s and further back, Handel himself. Whenever I hear that phrase spoken over us, however kind it is meant, it literally puts the fear of God in me, and remember, we’re not talking about any “old god” here, like the god of rock ‘n roll-we’re talking about God with a capital G “GOD”. Not even the G in Stu G’s name comes close-believe it or not!

I must digress at this point. When people thought that Eric Clapton was God, probably what they really mean was that they felt the presence of the big “G” when he played. This I have come to understand as the greatest mystery and paradox: that God uses people like us, full of contradiction, private sins, little self-belief, and a bit scraggy around the edges (Darlene Zschech exempt of course!) and yet gives us the keys to the “Glory box”. The grace for playing music that pleases God, grace that makes God our biggest fan (you know the sweaty one who is always squashed against the crash barrier) cheering us on shouting “come on, come on, I’m worthy to be praised and desperate to change lives! Sing with all you have and walk reverently before your God”. This is not a job for the elite; this really is “power to the people”. It’s the people, you and me, who must humble ourselves and let God play on our heartstrings, and allow us to build small windows so that from time to time we can all peer through and glimpse the beauty of our Creator.

So, to the future of modern worship, I immediately digress again. People for centuries have worn clothes but the style and cut has changed and always will change. You get my point, don’t you, that we will and always have worshipped God-but the way in which we do so has and always will change because God loves creativity. Of course the challenge in writing a piece like this is that you are forced into talking about the wrapping around the sweet knowing how important it is, but never, never, ever being more important than the Sweet itself. So with that in mind, I will for a moment indulge on some thoughts for the future and how important packaging is in this consumerist society (and yes, that includes every one of us). All of us care about packaging whether we admit to it or not and must understand that God cares about how we present ourselves and our art too. We know that when Solomon built the temple, how eloquently he listed details of decoration ranging from golden emblems to pomegranate carvings. Of course God’s priority was the temple, but we see Him taking great delight in decorating it! Yes, God plays on our heartstrings, but let’s be diligent and tune our guitars up properly. Yes, God delights in the song of the Lord, but it’s not going to bless the people as much if you’ve got a case of the “wobblies”. Let’s have common sense too-none of us would call a plumber out to fix our cars, so encourage people to do what they’re good at.

So, more about freedom. Oh no, I am about to completely contradict myself. I’m always doing this-but let’s be honest-rock ‘n roll is about being yourself, giving red and yellow expression to a black and white world. Whether we play the violin at Prestonwood Baptist, the organ at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, the acoustic at Anaheim Vineyard, or drum pads triggering huge sampled sounds, we are all in God’s great rock ‘n roll band. And why, you ask, because rock ‘n roll is about breaking the rules, and with God’s help we can, and must continue to believe that God can do anything with music. Believe that God can sing when we play, know that music has the secret keys to someone’s soul, and that one note can bring tears, joy, excitement, rekindling of dreams, the need to forgive, plus the realization that we are nothing without God. And how do we know these things are true? Because God loves music, and music ushers in the presence of Jesus, and yes Jesus is freedom personified.

So, back to the world called future. We are not going to believe the packaging that God is going to put around music because it is and has always been His secret weapon in softening the hardest of hearts as droves of our population run to a life of salvation. I see churches in nightclubs (happening already), worshiping God to a huge garage mix. I see scruffy kids playing thrash metal in their garage, worshipping their King, I see the OAP (Old Age Pensioner) whistling to the latest hymns tape whilst doing up his old Bentley in his garage.

Freedom, freedom, freedom. It has no colour and yet all the colours. You can write two sorts of song as a Christian. Songs about the light and songs written about what you see ‘by the light’. If you’re good at writing songs for the congregation, then keep doing it. And if you prefer to comment on life and society, then do that. What we all need is a redemption of frameworks. In Ezekiel 44 v.19 it says that the priests who ministered in the temple put on every day clothes when they left to go into the outer courts (i.e. the market place), meaning that they changed their appearance to fit in with the people. We must realize that there are two worlds, and we have to learn to communicate appropriately to the two worlds. This is why music is so powerful-because it doesn’t need words that so often confuse the brain. God raises up people to write about what they see, whether it’s “great is the Lord” or “it’s okay, you know you’ll live to fight another day”.

The future is doing both. Let’s stop being confused by the two worlds but delight in the different packaging that unlocks the message inside. This is the future where “two hearts beat as one”-where worship isn’t just a jolly sing-along, but church becomes an expression of all that God colours, and a creative hotbed for all the painters, sculptors, photographers, ballet dancers, opera singers, stand-up comics, film directors, clothing stylists, sound engineers, actors, novelists and loads more-children discovering techno instead of television, and pop stars discovering purity instead of pain. Let the future be full of people “going into the ministry”-the thing that they are created to do-and in doing so, fulfilling God’s purposes for our lives.

Please God, fill the air with Your music. MTV, K-ROCK, the Proms, the Opera house, the Country Music Fairs and clubs-all filled with God’s sound. The secret sound whose roots is in the Holy Place, and yet is meant to be the trumpet call to the lost soul. I despise the notion that worship has become a style of music that can be harnessed in “Nash-Vegas” and packaged for all the world.

I despise the pursuit of monetary gain and decisions to just “do” worship because that’s what’s selling.

We as a band, will continue to work through issues like this, such as always wanting to “let out what is within” and make the records we want to (but having the worry that if we don’t sell any records then our staff won’t get paid). I’m sure that we don’t always hold the balance perfectly and there is grace when the balance shifts one way or the other. The main thing to reinforce is that there is one qualification to being in God’s great rock ‘n roll band-that we are God pleasers before we are man pleasers.

Because music is so subjective to many different sorts of people, we have had to treat everything lightly, some thought that “Mezzamorphis” was the leaving of Delirious? into a world full of co*ke and women, and some think “Glo” is the softening of our mainstream vision returning to kids drinking co*ke and flattery from middle aged women!

For we want and feel compelled to do both. On the one hand because we want, and have to influence culture, but on the other hand Jesus is coming back for His bride and not VH1-believe it or not.

So, if you keep it simple or keep it loud, be free in the glorious love of God and let’s run into the future like wide-eyed children.

Whether standing tall, bowing low or falling on your face before the Lord, God deserves our honor and respect; and when we say “amen” to his will, amazing things happen.

This month, as we continue our study of how we worship, we’re going to look at Nehemiah 8:6 and see what we can learn from the revival that took place there among the people of Israel as they began to worship.

In chapter 8, Nehemiah has just finished restoring the wall in the city of Jerusalem. To coincide with that, there is a dedication process going on and the people have discovered the book of the law amidst great joy. Then in verse 6 it happens. Ezra has opened the book in sight of all the people and he blesses the Lord, the great God of Israel. In response, the crowd stands to its feet and all the people answer “Amen, Amen!” while lifting their hands.

There it is again. Lifting holy hands without wrath and doubting. We talked about those words of the Apostle Paul in an earlier study. David also talked about the raising of hands. And now, as this dedication is taking place, we see it happening again. We have a revival going on among the people of Israel. Those that were in Jerusalem while the word of God was being proclaimed were so moved they stood up out of respect for the Word and began saying, “Amen, Amen!” with their hands raised.

Now let me be clear on one point: This is not Mike’s idea. It comes directly from Nehemiah 8:6. “Then Ezra blessed the Lord the great God. And all the people answered, “Amen, Amen!” while lifting up their hands; then they bowed low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground” (NASV). That’s yet another picture of how to worship, to bow before the Lord. To worship is to give deference, to give respect to the Lord, whether you’re alone, at a dedication ceremony or in a meeting with 5,000 other people.

I remember vividly such a meeting. It was 1975 and I had gathered with 5,000 men as the speaker preached on the Kingdom of God. Suddenly, the presence of God swept into that building in a way that I have experienced very few times in my life. When it happened, all 5,000 men took off their shoes and fell on their faces. The preaching was about the resurrection and how Jesus conquered the devil and Hell and sin and death, and how he took captivity captive and took the keys out of the hands of Hades and ascended. I was afraid to look up. The power and presence of God was so real, it was His glory in the building.

Two decades later I felt God’s power in a similar way. In 1995, we were in Jerusalem recording Shalom, Jerusalem with Paul Wilbur. It was one of the most powerful recordings I’ve ever been a part of in my life.

Don’t look for me on the Shalom, Jerusalem video, though. Instead, I am off to the side. There were bushes on the side of the stage to make it look nice for television and I spent part of the time literally in the bushes, just praying in God’s presence and glory to come. We needed God’s help because there were so many different elements that all had to come together. We had the lights coming from Switzerland. The recording truck came from England and was put on a barge in Greece before being shipped to Haifa. We had a large choir and many musicians. We had banners. We had Israeli dancers. It was a huge thing and it was a powerful time, and a breakthrough for Paul Wilbur’s calling and ministry.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. There were about 3,000 people in the audience and I had people come up to me later saying it was a powerful and historic time of worship. One man came to me and said, “I’ve been a missionary here in Israel for 22 years and I have never seen this many local believers gathered together.” He had seen bigger Christian meetings, but they were mainly Christians from different parts of the world. He had never seen so many local believers from all over Israel gathered together to worship.

And just as in that meeting in 1975, the presence of God came into that place and it was awesome. We had Israeli soldiers with Uzis on their backs dancing in the aisles. And the Rabbi in charge of that facility came up to one of our employees during rehearsals and asked, “What is this I’m feeling? I don’t understand it. I’ve been here all these years and I have never felt this in this building.” He was told it was the presence of God. It was amazing.

Not that we should have been surprised. When you get into a place of worship and you bow before the Lord and say “amen” to the will of God, amazing things happen. It was a huge step for us to do what we did. A big step of faith. But it’s when you take those leaps that God steps in. He will do incredible things out of what happens with you in the secret place, out of that place of worship, communion and adoration before the Lord.