Before I get into the ins and outs of planning the service, go here and choose “2012: 1.15 Worship Service” if you’d like to listen to it.
In Luke 19:46, Jesus says, ““It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” On January 15, 2012, Scott exposited this text to help our church focus on a 15-day season of prayer at Grace.
Planning a service that moves toward a sermon about prayer is an interesting practice. I was helped by thinking of the following things:
1. Many songs are prayers. This is a great service to choose some.
2. The only way we can pray to our holy God is by the access we’ve been given through Christ.
3. Before we pray, it would be good to be reminded about the character of the God to Whom we pray.
There Is Joy in the Lord – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace – I picked this as a way to call our people to worship and remind them that the knowledge of God for the believer leads to joy and hope, not fear or despair. Welcome & Ministry Opportunities Our Great God – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace – This is one of the best modern songs I’ve found to communicate both the weight and the glory of worshiping God. I placed it here to give us the sense that we do not worship God in song or in prayer flippantly. Praise Him – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace – This is a great new re-write of the old text “To God Be the Glory” with a new chorus and pre-chorus. Barbara Haynes had been wanting to re-write this one for years and released the new version (co-written with Ben Shive) on her new album, The Now and the Not Yet. I’ve been wanting to build this song into the repertoire at Grace, and coming out of “Our Great God” seemed like the right place to move us from worshiping the God of Creation to worshiping the God of Our Salvation. Mighty to Save – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace- This song continued the focus on Christ being our way to God, and on the power of the cross and resurrection (the Grace version includes a verse on these) to take us into the most holy place. Scripture Reading – Ephesians 2:11-22 – Drawing from the text in Luke 19, which is in the context of temple practices that were restricting access to the Gentiles, this paragraph strongly states, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Praise be to Him, who has brought us, the Gentiles, near! Sometimes forget about our Gentile roots in the USA. We Call You Father – Live Recording at Grace – Wendy Wills’ song became our response in prayer to the God who has drawn us near. “Freely we come!” Come Thou Fount – (the audio is at the end of the full service link at the top of this post) – This was one of my favorite moments while leading worship in a long time. I placed the song here in the service to give us the chance to pray to God as a congregation and ask Him to attune us to Himself and His grace. We usually sing it earlier in the service as a kind of invocation. Since I was placing it right before the sermon, I had planned for the first verse to be a capella and then to start instruments lightly on the second verse. When we came to this point in the service during rehearsal and we had finished the first verse, it just felt right to keep singing a capella. We sang through all three verses, just voices, and I turned and said, “Yep, that’s what we’ll do.” During the service, the congregation responded with loud, confident singing (though several admitted they were watching and waiting, expecting the instruments to come in). It was a powerful, joyful moment – just voices, praying the words of this great classic together. Sermon – Luke 19:45-46 (sermon audio) – “True Prayer” Congregational Reponse – I believe we sang the second verse of “Come Thou Fount” after a few moments of prayerful reflection. Benediction Praise Him (Reprise)
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Paul Clark and I are co-hosting a seminar at Grace Community Church on Saturday, February 11, 2012 entitled “Congregational Singing: Planning and Leading Congregational Worship from a Pastoral Heart.” We had breakfast with Keith Getty this morning, now a Nashville resident, to confirm his involvement with the seminar. Keith is the co-writer of the modern hymn “In Christ Alone” and has blessed the universal Church with many theologically-rich and melodically beautiful new hymns. I was very excited to meet him as I have been impacted by his music for many years. He was the same guy across the table as he is on stage. Both his passion for working hard to write great songs for the Church and his desire to lead God’s people to sing well were evident in our conversation. I am very pleased he will be joining us for a Q & A session to encourage worship leaders in what they do.
Here is the itinerary for the day:
8:15 – 9:00: Registration and Light Breakfast
9:00 – 9:30: Worship through Singing
9:30 – 10:30: “Leading Congregational Worship Pastorally” – Dr. Paul Clark, Director of Worship and Music Ministry at the Tennessee Baptist Convention
10:30 – 11:00: Break
11:00 – 12:00: Q & A with Keith Getty
12:00 – 1:00: Lunch
1:00 – 2:00: Breakouts – Choose Between the Following:
“Cultivating Passion in Worship” – David Ward, Director of Worship Ministries at Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, MN, Founder of Reformedpraise.org, Modern Hymn Writer “Leading Your Worship Team Pastorally” – Dave Hunt, Worship Leader at Trinity Church in Nashville, Worship Songwriter “Building Your Song Repertoire with Pastoral Intentionality” – Jeff Bourque, Director of Worship at Grace Community Church, Worship Songwriter
2:00 – 2:30: Break
2:30 – 3:00: Worship Through Singing
3:00 – 4:00: “Planning Your Worship Service with a Pastoral Heart” – Jeff Bourque
We would love for you to come! The cost is $35 and includes a (light) breakfast and lunch. To register, click here. If you have any questions, feel free to .
A fellow Middle Tennessee worship leader messaged me on Facebook (amazing how many ways we have to get in touch with folks these days) and wanted to know my thoughts on patriotic music in light of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. He was already leaning the same direction as me in this area, but was wanting some feedback to make sure he wasn’t missing something that maybe he should consider including. Here was my answer:
“We have pretty intentionally steered clear of any specific “American” or patriotic themes for the reasons you stated above (which were that God is not American or Republican, and that we need to invest our brief time together in worship and teaching). I’m certain Scott, our pastor, will pray for those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and for the souls of the attackers. It’s possible that I will look into scripture that coincides with the anniversary, but most likely, the pastoral prayer will be the most focused time of the service. We’re also pretty low tech, so our slideshow beforehand is only basic announcements (not a good place for anything of this seriousness).
I just think there is a danger (see Deitrich Bonhoeffer’s biography) in tying anything that we do on Sundays to pride of country. The pride is a good thing, and I’m as patriotic as they come, but I just believe it can hold potential for problems when tied to what we are called to do in scripture when we meet together as a church. So, as much as we can do to pray and help anyone who has been through something tied to 9/11 closely is obviously good, but we would be very careful when bringing something of this nature into the congregational setting.”
I actually haven’t read the newest Bonhoeffer biography (I’ve only seen a documentary of his life), but my pastor Scott has, and he says that if you read it, you will always think twice about tying anything of a political or patriotic nature to the church. Bonhoeffer’s experiences with the established church in Nazi Germany serve as a sober warning to us all.
This quote is from a yahoo group that I’m part of. Tim Sharpe, Director of Worship and Family Ministries at Christ Our Hope Church in Wake Forest, NC, was responding to a question posed by someone in the group about whether they should use a song in a congregational setting that had somewhat ambiguous lyrics. His response included this:
“I think I remember Kevin (Twit – of Indelible Grace) once saying that a great hymn text is both fresh enough to stir the imagination and clear enough to be understood the first time it is sung. I think that’s a great rule of thumb in evaluating congregational worship songs. Non-congregational songs can have more artistic license, as the hearer is not participating in the music and thus is more able to think about and process the lyrics. And, of course, all this should be evaluated according to the congregation that you serve (education level / artistic exposure / generation / etc.).”
On June 11 (in Nashville) and June 13 (in Newnan, GA), I had the extreme honor of leading a worship service for my friend Emmett’s memorial service. It was definitely the hardest worship leading experience of my life, (the second most difficult was the memorial service I led for his daughter Mallory Eden who died in 2006 – she only lived for about a day). It was also one of the most moving times of worship – for both services – I’ve ever led.
I knew coming in this was going to be difficult. Emmett had been on my worship team for about 6 years. We had shared our love for music and led many, many worship services together, including several for an overseas retreat for missionaries in Central & Eastern Europe. He was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer on February 17, 2010. It was stage IV. After a long, hard-fought battle, he died in the early hours of June 9, 2011. He leaves behind his wife Wendy and 4-year-old son Quinn. You can read their story here.
When I walked into the chapel that morning to rehearse, Barbara Haynes, another worship team member and one of my best sounding boards for all things worship, gave me a big hug and said, “Time to put on the steel.” Yep, it was time to lead worship with songs that were mostly chosen by my friend before he passed. It was time to let all the emotions come out during rehearsal and then press ahead – finding the impossible balance of not choking up so I can’t lead, and yet not disconnecting so that I’m present like I need to be to lead well for this very important occasion. We prayed that God would give us the grace to live in that balance for the next hour, and He gave it to us.
Here is the service order with an explanation of why the songs were where they were:
Prelude – played by Ben Shive in Nashville and Barbara Haynes in Newnan.
Video – Someone put together a video slide show (if anyone has a link and/or his name, please leave it in the comments) of pictures of Emmett and his family to begin the service. The images faded in and out to “Heaven Song” by Phil Whickham, which has not stopped playing in my head since.
The next two songs are prayers that I believe Emmett would have prayed. They are a tribute to his life of joy before the Lord.
Be Thou My Vision – I chose this to open the service because it was the same song that opened Mallory Eden’s service and because as far as I could tell, it would be something Emmett’s heart would have cried out to God during his life.
Fill Thou My Life – Emmett chose this one. It definitely resonates with my memories of him. He was a passionate and joy-filled person, which is what this song communicates.
In the next section of the service, we moved from celebrating Emmett’s life before God to celebrating Emmett’s salvation because of Christ.
Scripture Reading – 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 – Scott preached on this passage later in the service.
Behold – Emmett LOVED this song. I know it was because of it’s message, but I think he also really dug its vibe. On the recording I linked to above, Emmett played a really cool percussive thing along with Steve Adams or Scott Moore (can’t remember which of you guys it was!) on the first chorus. We made sure to play the same arrangement for this service.
Before the Throne of God – He also chose this one. I was overcome with emotion when we reached the final verse that says, “One with Himself, I cannot die.” The beautiful irony of death being the continuation and perfection of life with Christ in heaven and imagining Emmett standing before his Creator still brings the tears as I write this. I LOVE our Savior!
Then Scott gave an incredibly beautiful eulogy remembering our dear brother. It was exactly what needed to be said. In it, he preached the gospel clearly, which is all that Emmett and Wendy wanted.
Though this service was definitely a celebration, everyone needed a couple of songs to help them grieve with hope. The next two songs and the reading were planned for this purpose.
The Valley Song – This is the only song that Emmett said HAD to be in the service. We sang it for Mallory’s service as well. It’s a beautiful song that lets someone going through something like this feel the pain but keep the hope of God’s love in view. We sang it as a worship team.
Reading – “If Death My Friend and Me Divide” – I had planned to read from the Valley of Vision earlier in the service, but when Scott forwarded me this text that was sent to him by Katie Thompson in our church, I knew it was the right thing to put in this spot.
It Is Well – I had a really hard time deciding whether to put this hymn in the service. They didn’t specifically request it. I originally had “The Glorious Impossible” here, but it felt like the time of sorrow would be cut too short if we went too quickly into something that upbeat. So, after trying to decide which song we would do, I just decided to do both. I don’t think Emmett would be disappointed that we sang so much. And we grieved the most as a community during this hymn.
Doxology – This is the only song Wendy specifically requested. It was the appropriate verse to close the time of the service particularly set aside to grieve.
Prayer – Scott closed with some directions for a time of visiting after the service and then prayed for the family.
The Glorious Impossible – Emmett had this one on his list too. Though it felt a little “up” for a memorial service, I know Emmett would have said something like, “And the issue is….?” Truth is, this service was a mix of tears, sorrow, joy, hope, brokenness and community. This song took us to the joy and hope to send us out. Thanks for encouraging me to keep it in there, Barbara.
And thank you, Wendy, for giving me the chance to put my passion to work to honor my friend and my God.
There are thousands and thousands of worship songs and hymns out there. You can find them in hundreds of hymnbooks, on hundreds of websites, and on hundreds of worship albums. Out of all the songs that you come across, how do you choose which ones to introduce to your congregation?
I’ve read some good guidelines over the years that have helped me to compile what I look for when I’m listening to a new album or come across a new writer on iTunes. Here they are:
1. Look at the lyrics apart from the music. I think it was an article by Bob Kauflin that pointed this important practice out to me. Make sure you don’t just get mesmerized by a beautiful melody! Though musical content is important, theologically sound and well-written lyrical content is more important.
2. Listen to the “heart” of a song. Does the song make you want to worship God? Does it have a reverent, God-glorifying quality to it? It’s been just recently that I’ve picked up on this. You can tell when a song is written from a humble, gospel-honoring place. Those are the songs I want my congregation singing.
3. Calculate the range. Most average singers have about an octave plus two-or three-notes range. If a song spans more than that, they’re going to have a hard time with it. I don’t worry about how high or low a song was recorded as long as I can transpose it and it doesn’t go below a low A (for the guys) or a high D or the occasional E (for the ladies). Side note: Because of the influence of pop music, some worship songs written today depend on the force of a high male vocal for the energy of the song. You can detect whether this is the case when you lower the song to make it singable by the whole congregation. If you lower it and it no longer feels like it has that “power,” it means that the melody wasn’t that well-written in the first place and was only appealing because it was recorded in a higher key where the singer could belt it out. If this is the case with a song, it’s another good reason to pass.
One more side note here: if you are a male worship leader and you keep songs in the higher keys so that you can belt it out, check your heart. I know the temptation! It feels so good to soar up there. Even spiritual. But if your people, especially the women, are not able to sing unless they can harmonize with you, that’s not very inclusive of your average singer who’s trying to participate. I can’t tell you how many times a woman in our congregation has thanked me for putting songs in keys that they can handle.
4. Imagine an older congregant singing the song. Barbara Haynes, the worship leader at Grace before me, taught me this valuable litmus test: can an older man or woman who is not a trained singer pickup the melody of this song and be able to sing it? If not, it’s probably not the best song to introduce. We want to make sure no one gets left behind just because a song we choose to sing is too jumpy or complicated melodically.
5. Consider the theme. What themes is your church repertoire lacking? Do you need more declarative songs about God’s character? Do you need more congregational response songs? Or do you need to find some songs that address hardship or maybe some that emphasize unity? Look at your current set of songs and see where you need to shore up the subject matter to make what your church sings more fully representational of the whole Christian life.
If you put a song through all the considerations above and it’s still standing, it’s probably a great song! But before you write it into the annals of your church’s history, there’s one more thing to consider:
6. Conduct a congregational test. Last year, I listened over and over to a song that I concluded would be a great one for our church to learn. I charted it out, taught it to the worship team and was excited about introducing it to the congregation. But when we finally sang it, it fell totally flat. I waited a few weeks and tried again. Still flat. Not every song you think will work works. And that’s okay. There’s an intangible “connection” factor where you can tell if a particular song is helping your people worship God or not. It’s an important factor, because your goal is for your church to glorify God with their praises. If they aren’t able to sing a song from their heart (and they’re able to sing others – meaning it’s not a heart issue, it’s a song issue), it’s not very glorifying to God. I think in my case, the production of the song on the recording I was listening to was so compelling that when we did it in the context of a Sunday morning, the energy of the production didn’t translate.
These are the things I consider when sifting through the myriad of worship songs and hymns out there. Are there some other things that you consider when you are looking for new songs to introduce?
After the preaching of the Word at Grace each week, we spend a few minutes allowing the congregation to respond in various ways to what they’ve just heard and in ways that we are always called to respond to God’s gracious lordship over our lives. We have tried many different things over the years to lead people in responding – spanning from singing a responsive song congregationally to spending a few moments in silent reflection.
There are many good ways for those planning a worship service to call people to respond to God. At Grace, we’ve landed on spending a few minutes after the sermon doing the following:
1. Calling people to prayerful response: whether they stay in their seat or come to kneel at the altar, we encourage everyone to spend a few minutes prayerfully responding to the Word while I play a soft guitar in the background (nothing too melodic – it distracts the musical folks!).
2. Giving everyone a chance to pray with someone: we have several people stand at the front during this time each week to receive and pray with anyone who would like to about anything that is going on in their lives. Scott, our pastor, always says, “I never want someone to come to church and not get the opportunity to pray with someone.”
3. Giving everyone a chance to give their tithes and offerings: it makes sense to us to include this in the congregational response time. Giving our money to God’s work through the church is a response to His lordship over our finances.
4. Singing briefly after everyone has had a chance to respond in ways 1-3: after a few minutes (most weeks), I ask everyone to stand and sing one of the choruses of a song we sang previously in the service. I usually base my choice on what our pastor actually preaches in his sermon. I pick the one that fits the best as a musical response to the Word.
Then Scott gives a benediction – a final word sending us all out into the world for the week – and we sing a final song.
Next week: out of the vast array of songs out there, how do I go about choosing the ones that our church should sing?
As far as I can tell by reading about the early church and heeding the letters of Paul and the other writers in the New Testament, there are five essential elements that we either see the early church doing or hear commanded for the church to do when we gather.
1. Sing! Colossians 3:16 makes it obvious that we should be singing songs to one another. Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn after the “Last Supper.”
2. Read scripture publicly. I Timothy 4:13 states this clearly, and also states that we should…
3. Preach the Word. Another verse that gives an example of this is Acts 2:42. It also says that we should devote ourselves to…
4. The breaking of bread together (Communion). Though we have chosen as a congregation at Grace to do this monthly, there are many who do it every week. I don’t think there is a prescription for how often we do it, but it is important that we do it often (I Corinthians 11:25-26).
5. Pray. Acts 2:42 also speaks of devoting ourselves to praying together.
These are the things that I see God calling his church to do when they gather together. I have nothing against other elements that you may find in worship services all over the world, unless, of course, they are against biblical teaching. But I say this often when I explain why we do what we do at Grace: If we only have 1 hour and 15 minutes together each week in a worship service, let’s spend it doing the things that we know we are commanded to do.
Each time I write one of these posts, three more ideas for posts come to mind that I want to tackle! I’ve been thinking about writing on a specific topic for the past week, and then I reread the last post where I said what I would write about next – I have been formulating the wrong post in my head.
So, let me do what I said I would and write very briefly (maybe) on how to choose songs that make sense content-wise from one song to the next. This is something that’s very practical. There are many times when I pick two declarative songs to sing at the beginning of a service, and I ask myself, “Which one should we sing first?” I believe the specific content of the song is the best way to make this choice. Unless the music makes much more sense flowing from one song to the next, take a look at the lyrics to see which you would more naturally say before the other.
For instance, this past week, we were focusing on God’s great love and forgiveness shown through Christ to the woman who washed his feet with her hair at Simon’s house (Luke 7:36-50). I chose the hymn “The Love of God” and Matt Redman’s tune “You Alone Can Rescue” as the two songs we could sing before we moved into communion. “The Love of God” is one big pontification about the height, width and depth of God’s love that includes this beautifully-written final verse:
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill
And ev’ry man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Though the hymn does have a line that speaks of God’s love being manifested through sending his Son, it does so in a more broad way – “redeeming grace to Adam’s race.” So then I look at “You Alone Can Rescue,” and I find a much more personal testimony of God’s love through Christ who “came down to find us.” Though it is still a corporate song using “we” and “us” pronouns (I need to do a post on pronouns in worship sometime!), it speaks of God’s love in a more intimate way.
So, I decided to start with “The Love of God” straight into “You Alone Can Rescue.” Then the lines started jumping out at me.
From “The Love of God”: “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.”
From “You Alone Can Rescue”: “Our shame was deeper than the sea, Your grace is deeper still.”
What a beautiful progression! God’s love goes beyond the lowest hell (more general), and his grace goes deeper than our sin (personal). I didn’t set out for that to happen, but as soon as I saw the parallel, it made me happy.
So my point is this: pay attention to how one song’s lyrics transition into the next. They’re not always going to be as obviously paired as this, but if no care is taken to have some sort of coinciding message or progressing message, the worshipper might get a little contextual whiplash (as my friend Wayne Causey said to me last week).
Next post: What elements are essential in a corporate worship service?
In the last post, I focused on what kinds of songs make sense to choose for a worship service and a general guideline for song placement within a service. If you read it, you might be asking, “The theme and the natural flow of divine revelation and our response makes sense for choosing songs and placing them in a service, but doesn’t tempo matter just as much?”
Yes, it does. We worship leaders have a weighty tool in our hands: music. Most everyone would agree that music has the ability to strongly influence the emotions. Martin Luther says it well: “Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.” This is why tying musical beauty to theological truth is so powerful for the church. So, it’s very important to choose songs as a whole that lead the worshipper to an appropriate place emotionally as well as theologically.
The first consideration to be made is about the lyrical and emotional quality of a song. A good songwriter will match the content of their lyrics with its melodic mood and tempo. You never want your congregation to be singing about the victory God has given us over sin with a song that matches that kind of content with a minor, slow, funeral-dirge kind of musical bed. It messes with the mind! So make sure, when choosing which songs to sing in your congregation, to begin by double-checking that the message matches the mood.
Secondly, we need to make sure as worship leaders that we remember the meta-narrative of scripture when we pick a set of songs for a whole worship service. The story of the Bible is about God’s holiness, man’s sinfulness, and God’s gracious redemption of man through the death and resurrection of Christ. It is “good news.” That means the predominant emotional quality of the normal Christian worship service should be that of celebration and joy. I believe that if a church emphasizes a different emotional tone through their music, the joyful, light-bearing quality of the gospel could be lost over time. I don’t mean that the church would no longer be evangelical, but that the overall mood of the church gathering begins to stray from the awe-inspiring, love-provoking mood of the gospel.
What I’m emphasizing here and what I emphasized in my previous post go hand in hand: If you are choosing songs that magnify the character of God and our response to him, and if the mood of the songs match their lyrics, your service will probably have an appropriate progression through tempos and moods. For example, a service could progress from exaltation (majestic songs) into confessional response (reverent contemplative songs) into thankfulness (lighter, mid-tempo). Or it could be praise (joyful, faster songs) into a response of desiring sanctification (prayerful, mid to slow tempo songs). Whatever the theme is for the day will probably drive whether it would be one or the other, but in both cases, the songs flow naturally in tempo and feel from more “up” or celebrative to more “down” or contemplative. This may not be the norm in all cultures, but because of the way our culture understands the meaning of musical tempos and major vs. minor, it overwhelmingly is for ours.
There certainly are exceptions to this flow in tempo and feel – there may be a service where you pick songs that are deliberately emphasizing the wrath of God for a good portion of the service. These songs might be minor and slower right from the get-go. There may be other times when it’s appropriate to keep the tempo up for most of the service – Easter is a good example. It’s hard for me to pick songs that are slower-paced when we’re focusing on the resurrection of Christ! But in general, the tempo should go from faster or broader to slower or lighter as the service progresses, because it matches the progression of singing declaratively about God’s character and then singing responsively to his revelation.
Next post: fitting songs together – does the content of one song transition logically to the next?
I sat down recently with Jamie Mosley, pastor of Redeemer Church, a 4-month old church plant in Hendersonville, TN. Jamie was part of our staff here at Grace before he was called to become the pastor of Redeemer, one of two churches that Grace planted in 2010.
He asked me to chat with him about how I would go about planning a worship service. As pastor, he desires to cast vision for his worship leaders that will help them lead his congregation in both God-centered, theologically rich songs and a flow of worship that leads the worshipers somewhere that makes sense. As usual, I can’t come up with this stuff until someone asks me the question. Then I can’t seem to shut up. Through our conversation, I was taken back to the nuts and bolts of how I have learned to plan a worship service over the years.
I’ll spread this over several posts so that I can keep each piece somewhat succinct. The first thing I remember is this: there is a vertical and a horizontal grid, or an “x” and a “y” axis that I have in my mind as I’m choosing songs to sing. The “x” or horizontal axis is the theme – what passage of scripture is my pastor preaching on this week? What will he be emphasizing from the text? The “y” or vertical axis is the natural flow of a worshiper in the presence of God. This can be several things based on different passages in Scripture, but the most common I’ve found is exemplified in Isaiah 6:1-5 when Isaiah has a vision of the Lord. In this passage, he sees the Lord and spends four verses describing the scene. This is the first vertical column: declaration of the majesty, character and deeds of the Lord.
Then, in verse five, Isaiah responds, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips…” This is the second vertical column: response to the majesty, character, and deeds of the Lord. This includes gratitude, wonder and confession interchangeably.
I believe the order of these vertical axes to be very important. Here’s why: if we begin with our response, what are we responding to? Our worship can become very “us” centered if we are singing about what we will do or are doing without first reminding ourselves of Who God is. Once we have sung a song or two about His greatness (with declarative song choices that are based on what the theme is for that particular service), then it is much more natural and, prayerfully, powerful to respond!
So, to put it together – in choosing which songs to sing and where to place them within a service, I first consider the theme and choose songs that lead toward it. Then I place the songs in the service in the order that makes sense for the worshiper – declarations of God’s character and deeds, then our response. Now of course, some songs will have a mixture of both, but most will lean more heavily in one way or the other, giving me a handle with which to place them.
