This week, Scott preached from Luke 8:40-56 – two intertwined stories of Jesus healing Jairus’ daughter and the woman who had bled for twelve years. He pointed out the desperation of these two individuals and the call to faith that Jesus gave them while putting them in awkward situations (the woman could not remain anonymous and Jairus had to wait for Jesus to heal this other person before Jesus addressed his daughter’s sickness (and death). There are plenty of great songs about our desperate need for Jesus, so I could go right at this theme in planning.
Come, People of the Risen King – iTunes, Amazon – I really like this call to worship by Keith and Kristyn Getty. We only did a verse and two choruses to start the service.
Welcome & Ministry Opportunities
Arise, My Soul, Arise – iTunes, Amazon – A very gospel-centered song that assures the believer of his desperate soul’s salvation in Christ.
All Praise to God, Who Reigns Above – iTunes, Amazon – This hymn comes out of “Arise, My Soul, Arise” with much gratitude for the gospel. It declares God’s grace and matches it with the thankful response of the one to whom grace is given – “With healing balm, my soul he fills / The God who every sorrow stills / To God all praise and glory!” The links above are to “Sing Praise to God, Who Reigns Above” which is the same tune with slightly different words.
Scripture Reading – Psalm 111 – A psalm about God’s powerful works and redemptive acts.
Preparation for Communion – Each communion service, Scott takes a few minutes to prepare us for communion by explaining what Jesus has told us to do in remembrance of Him and by giving us spiritual direction about how to take the elements and who should participate. While the bread and cup were being passed out to the congregation, we sang the next two songs:
In You – iTunes (Dave Hunt’s version), Amazon (Michael Boggs’ version) – I had the entire service planned and the bulletin was ready to go to print on Thursday afternoon. Then, on the way to the office Friday morning, this song came on as I was listening to my “Worship Song Prospects” playlist. About halfway through, God made the connection for me from this song to the two people Jesus heals in Luke 8:40-56. I sat there at the red light and wept (hoping that the driver next to me wouldn’t notice). Then I called our office assistant and asked her to hold off printing so I could get this song in there. It’s a prayerful song about the hope that we each have in Christ for the healing of our hearts.
Jesus, I Come – the old hymn (sorry for the cheese-ball keyboard orchestration link). I was bordering on having too many songs with the theme of coming to Jesus here, but since we were celebrating communion, I thought it was appropriate to stay there for another song. I love the contrasts laid out in this text. And seriously, can you have too many songs about coming to Jesus?
The Bread and the Cup
The Doxology – it has been a long-standing tradition at Grace to sing the Doxology a capella after partaking of the Lord’s Supper as a hymn of gratitude to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Sermon – “Faith That Is Deeper Than Desperation” – Luke 8:40-56
Congregational Response – after a few minutes of allowing the congregation to respond through prayer and the offering, we stood and sang the bridge and chorus of “In You” once more to respond congregationally to the message.
Benediction
All Praise to God, Who Reigns Above – final verse
March 8, 2011
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?
February 28, 2011
I really enjoyed planning this service. Scott preached from Luke 8:22-25, which is the story about Jesus calming the storm. His themes were God’s authority and the need for us as disciples to experience life with Jesus in order to truly know and trust him.
“Holy, Holy, Holy” – first two verses
Welcome & Ministry Opportunities
“Indescribable” – iTunes, Amazon – I chose this because of the emphasis it has on God’s power shown through creation and his ability to create.
“You Are the Great I AM” – iTunes, Amazon, My post – This song takes the majesty we’ve just sung about in “Indescribable” and moves it into a comparison between God’s greatness and our mortality and dependency on him. This is the chorus I chose to sing in the response time.
Scripture Reading – Psalm 107:1-3, Psalm 107:23-32 – Scott suggested this reading as a great Old Testament parallel to Luke 8:22-25.
“The Fury of the Wind” – Reformed Praise – Eric Schumacher wrote this text after a trip he took to aid in the Hurricane Katrina recovery. Its imagery from Job is powerful. The lyrics reiterated the power of God through nature that we saw in the scripture reading and brought Christ into the picture as the one who can save us.
“Be Still My Soul” – iTunes, Amazon – Coming out of the weighty content of “The Fury of the Wind,” this beautiful hymn emphasizes that God is “on your side” and that we can be confident through life’s trials because “the waves and wind still know his voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.” It makes me giddy when a lyric matches this well with a sermon text.
Sermon – Luke 8:22-25
Congregational Response
Benediction
“Holy, Holy, Holy” – final verse
February 20, 2011
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?
February 20, 2011
I’ve decided to post occasional (maybe even weekly) orders of worship from our Sunday mornings at Grace Community Church. Hopefully, it will be helpful for you to hear the songs and see the orders (might help make a little more sense of the posts explaining how I go about planning).
Here’s the order from Sunday:
“O Word of God Incarnate” – Reformed Praise
Welcome/Ministry Opportunities
Parent/Child Dedication
“How Firm a Foundation”
“All to Us” – iTunes, Amazon
Scripture Reading: Proverbs 3:1-8
“In All Your Ways” – iTunes, Amazon
“Every Promise” – iTunes
Pastoral Prayer
Sermon: “Hear the Word of God” – Luke 8:1-21
Congregational Response
Benediction
“O Word of God Incarnate” – see link above
February 15, 2011
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.
Next post: Congregational Response to the Word.
February 14, 2011
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?
February 9, 2011
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?
January 25, 2011
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.
Next post: What about tempo?
January 19, 2011
I will have been a worship leader on the local church level for nine years this Thursday. In all of those years, I’ve never had to experience letting go of the reins like I had to on December 11th, 2010.
My wife began labor the day before (on Friday evening). We stayed up all night timing contractions and wondering if we needed to head to the hospital or not. 24 hours later, I was slated to lead the first of our annual Christmas Worship services at Grace, which is the biggest, most complex single worship service of the year. I had been arranging for at least a month, rehearsed with the band and choir on Tuesday and Thursday of that week, and had one of my worship leaders practice with the band on all the songs “just in case” I couldn’t make it to the service.
Well, I didn’t make it to the service. At drop-the-beat time on Saturday night, we were still counting contractions and wondering if we needed to go to the hospital. I made all kinds of calls to make sure everything was covered, and I kept racking my brain to make sure I hadn’t missed any vital piece of communication. At one point during the day, I had to say to myself, “Jeff, it’s going to be okay. Everyone is ready, and you need to be with your wife now 100%. Stop worrying your sleep-deprived mind. If you miss anything, someone will pick up the slack.” I prayed for God to take care of everything and to do His work that night, and then I let it go.
My daughter Ella was born the following morning 15 minutes before the morning worship service started (thankfully, I had the foresight to have someone else lead that service regardless of whether my daughter decided to come that day). I didn’t get to listen to the Christmas Worship service until a week and a half later. I was blown away.
More than once, I wept as the beauty of the songs and the message of Christ’s incarnation at Grace Community Church blessed my ears. And all of it happened without me. By the end of the service, I gratefully praised the Lord for his provision of help, and repented of all the worrying I had done about whether things would be okay without my direct leadership. I am so thankful for the servants in our church that stepped up to be His vessels of Grace to those who attended. And I hope I’ll be a little more willing to let go of the reins should such circumstances present themselves again in the future.
January 9, 2011
Ella Marie Bourque was born on December 12, 2010. She is beautiful and we’re having a blast in the Bourque house getting acclimated to two little ones. I’ve obviously been occupied with weightier matters than blogging, but in my final week at work before she was born, I wrote a new tune with David Ward to an Eric Schumacher Christmas text.
You can find it here.
December 18, 2010
Mike Harland at Lifeway Worship sits down with Stuart Townend in this video to ask him about everything from pastoral worship leadership to pitfalls in writing a congregational song. For those of you who are not familiar with Stuart Townend by name, he is the writer or co-writer of such songs as “In Christ Alone” and “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.” He is without a doubt my favorite modern hymn-writer, and someone whose work I always peruse in looking for new songs to introduce at Grace. I was inspired by his passion in this interview and convicted as a writer. Eric Campbell, Worship pastor at First Baptist Church in Durham, NC shared this with me. Thank you, Eric! Side note: Starting in 2011, click here for a link to a Nashville-produced album Eric just recorded.
The Choir Room EXTRA: A Conversation with Stuart Townend from LifeWay Worship on Vimeo.
November 23, 2010
At Grace Community Church, as I’m sure it is in churches across the world, we have songs that have become part of the DNA of our corporate life. Here are three of our favorites that you may not be familiar with:
Wonderful, Merciful Savior
This song by Eric Wyse and Dawn Rodgers practically sings itself. It’s one of those melodies that rises and falls in all the right places, and the Trinitarian verse structure makes it a very versatile song in a worship leader’s repertoire. This is a recording of our church singing it during our first Sunday worship at our new property back in 2005.
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Give Me Jesus
When I was re-introduced to this old spiritual about 8 years ago by Dave Hunt, I thought, “Man, we need to be singing this at Grace.” We’ve been singing it ever since. This recording is from our 2008 Good Friday Service.
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Do Not Fear
I learned this song way back in my college days, and I am always surprised that it’s not more well-known. A beautiful song by Billy Sprague based on God’s promises to His people in Isaiah 43, it has probably the best men’s/women’s parts sung back and forth of any that I’ve heard. This recording is from “Lavished Grace,” our church’s first album celebrating 10 years of ministry (1993-2003).
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November 18, 2010
I’ve posted this week’s new music at Reformed Praise again since it’s an old text set to new music. Head here to hear this Horatius Bonar hymn with a new melody and to download a free rough recording and lead sheet.
November 9, 2010
During a break in our writing session yesterday, James Tealy went to his email and read the following quote to me. I had to share it.
“Earthly prosperity is no sign of the special love of Heaven: nor are
sorrow and care any mark of God’s disfavor… God’s love is robust,
and true, and eager—not for our comfort, but for our lasting
blessedness; it is bent on achieving this, and it is strong enough to
bear misrepresentation and rebuke in its attempts to attune our
spirits to higher music. It therefore comes instructing us. Let us
enter ourselves as pupils in the school of God’s love. Let us lay
aside our own notions of the course of study; let us submit ourselves
to be led and taught; let us be prepared for any lessons that may be
given from the blackboard of sorrow; let us be so assured of the
inexhaustible tenacity of His love as to dare to trust Him, though He
slay us. And let us look forward to that august moment when He will
give us a reason for all life’s discipline, with a smile—that shall
thrill our souls with ecstasy, and constrain sorrow and sighing to
flee away forever.”
- F. B. Meyer
November 4, 2010
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