Careful Planning

We all have our own preferences. For instance, I prefer BBQ sauce over Ranch on my chicken. I prefer the mountains to the beach. I prefer Pepsi Zero to Coke Zero, and that’s a hill I will die on.

I also have my own personal preferences in worship. I prefer a good blend of the old classics and new hits. I prefer low lighting as it helps me to focus. I prefer live instruments over canned tracks. And, I have plenty more.

However, seldom do my preferences matters when it comes to planning worship. When planning a service, I often have to fight the urge to impose my preferences on to the worship service.

Robbie Castleman writes, “Now, worship planners and church leaders might verbalize a dependence on God’s Spirit to lead, guide, move and bless the congregation in a service of worship. But if a believer’s experience or congregational need shapes the service, the actual walk doesn’t give evidence for such talk.”[1]

I meet with a group of area Worship Leaders every Thursday morning at 8:00 AM. It really is a special time for me, personally. We all do life together, and share with each other our joys and our burdens of worship ministry. I recall one of the discussions we had discussing the flow of the worship service, particularly the planning of worship. It goes without saying that each of our desires is for the Lord to have His way in the worship service. Although we are responsible for the our congregations each and every Sunday, it is God who is the Lead Worshipper. We ultimately want to be discerning in listening to Him as we carefully plan each worship service. This is not easy. Sometimes that voice we long for and crave goes silent. What do we do then? What do we do when the direction and calling grows stale?

Oftentimes, when I feel stuck or stale, I tend to fall back in to the same patterns of behavior. I often find myself looking back over previous worship services, hoping for a spark of inspiration. I also spend time looking through the Scripture that’s being spoken on that particular Sunday…if I am fortunate enough to receive it before Saturday evening. But, for some of us, we rely often on our own agenda or our personal preferences to mold and shape the worship service. It’s easy to fall back onto our old standards or favorites. Worship Leader… THIS IS DANGEROUS!

Francis Chan famously shared an interaction he had with a church goer after a service one day where the church goer criticized the worship saying, “I didn’t really enjoy worship today.” To which Chan responded, “That’s OK. We weren’t worshipping you.”

Our preferences do not hold any weight on the worship service: It’s God’s service, therefore it’s God’s plan. And sometimes our careful planning can be interrupted by the Holy Spirit. I grown to appreciate and love those interruptions. It makes for a much better worship service.

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[1] Robbie Castleman, Story-Shaped Worship: Following Patterns from the Bible and History (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 194.