3 Important Practices That Will Transform the Way You Lead Worship

It’s easy to lead worship these days, right?

Learn a few songs, gather a few musicians (if you can play acoustic guitar, it’s even easier!), read a book and you are ready. To top it all, there’s also a world of learning material and resources available online, which we can leverage to train ourselves.

But I am betting you already know that.

In fact, I’m betting you also know that functional excellence is just one side of the story and you’re looking for more.

As for me, just like you, I’ve also met many worship leaders who are all about the ‘song’ but very little of anything else. Whenever this is the case, there are two definite outcomes: The shallowness and lack of substance will start showing through Worship will become predictable and lifeless leaving everyone—especially the congregation—frustrated and bitter

In this post, I want to share some suggestions on solidifying our worship sessions so that they consistently turn out to be times of refreshing; times of encountering our awesome God to offer Him the glory, honor and adoration due to His Name. 3 Crucial Tips to Add Depth to Our Worship 1. Study

Worship leaders must continually strive for a deeper understanding of God, worship and the Church. The prophet Hosea wasn’t kidding when he prophesied that we can perish due to lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6)!

In our various endeavors to stay relevant with the latest tools, techniques, methods and songs, we can easily lose sight of Christ, His saving work and His Church and adversely affect our worship.

To craft worship that becomes a living expression, we need knowledge—especially of the revealed Word of God, the history of our faith, what we believe, why we believe what we believe and the role of the Church in the journey to eternity.

Let’s start putting in the hours of study that we are seriously in need of. 2. Reprioritize

I wrote about life priorities in this post, but we need a similar outlook in ministry also. The next cool new song or presentation software or musical techniques should actually be secondary priorities in worship.

But, given the nature of music ministry, they tend to take too much prominence at times. For e.g. what is treated as most important in the worship of your Church? The worship band or the mystery at the Table? Songs or scriptures?

We need to check ourselves regularly and reprioritize whenever necessary to ensure our highest pursuit in life and worship is always Christ and not some temporarily cool novelty. 3. Balance

Our ministry also needs sensible balance in almost every aspect—fast vs. slow songs, new vs. old songs, performance vs. participation, hymns vs. contemporary songs, music vs. silence, planning vs. spontaneity and so on…

Functional aspects aside, we also need to balance far deeper realities:

· Human worshippers gathering as a divine church

· Human worshippers worshipping a divine God

· Visible worship towards an invisible God

· Missional action backed by silent contemplation

Without balance, our worship will get skewed towards the ordinary. In our worship practices, balance is best achieved when our goal is genuine, inspired revival of our Church and not just keeping up with what someone else is doing.

My friend, the worship leader’s role is far beyond planning song transitions for the next week. The responsibilities of fostering a living worship culture, safeguarding the most important elements of worship, teaching the congregation to worship, raising up other ministers and more should also concern us greatly—for the wellness of our church and the glory of our God! But then, these are only my thoughts, why not share yours in the comments? How do you think we can build more substance into our worship sessions?

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