Worship Service Considerations pt. 1

There is an intended flow to Journey worship services (and most Christian services for that matter) that we need to adopt in our song selection structure.

Briefly, that flow is:

• Focus on God by acknowledging his goodness and his presence with us (1 Tim. 6:12)

which moves us to…

• Introduce his truth in the teaching/preaching of his word (Colossians 4:15-16; 1 Timothy 4:13; 2 Timothy 3:15-16)

which moves us to…

• Respond to who he is and what he’s doing in us (1 Corinthians 14:16)

which moves us to…

• Encourage/Challenge one another in the mission (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:15)

By the way, this is a biblical model for how worship looked in the NT. Though we don’t have a prescribed template for exactly how to do a worship service (God is much more creative and complex than a formula allows for), we do have a thematic idea of what a service should include based on the early church as presented in Acts and the epistles. There are specific elements (like giving of offerings, prayers, preaching, communion, proclaiming the Gospel, etc) that are always present in the corporate worship gathering, and of course, they fit into one of the four basic categories above. (For more on this, see D. A. Carson's intro to Worship by the Book ).

Our role, then, is to really lead people to participate in all these things, mostly, though not always, in the order above. This is why we start with a meaningful Call to Worship[1] (whether spoken or musical), incorporate Scripture readings, sing songs that acknowledge him and his sacrifice for us, songs that lead us to respond to him in our hearts, and songs that encourage us to respond to him and others with our actions. That brings us to song selection.

Setlist Creation

Most of us have our songs that we like doing with our particular musicians, so I don’t want to talk so much about the strengths and weaknesses of this particular song versus that particular song. My purpose here is to talk about the types of songs we do at the beginning of the service and the types of songs we do on the “back half,” and how this helps us achieve the atmosphere and flow objectives mentioned above.

In the next post, I will walk through a typical Journey service. With the new staggered worship format made necessary by the multi-site approach, the descriptions below won’t fit exactly for every service, but the heart behind the song selection will stay the same.

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[1] A good Call to Worship or opening prayer should acknowledge the presence of God among us by his own choosing. In other words, avoid the common, and theologically inaccurate, mistake of suggesting that we have the power to invoke or conjure up God’s presence by our words. This means, we have to avoid phrases like: “Lord we ask you to come and meet with us…” or “God we invite your presence among us…”. I’ve made this mistake before and it was pointed out to me that this is just bad theology. Instead, let’s acknowledge that God is with us, and urge the Holy Spirit to help us see him more clearly.

Worship Service Considerations

I am a pastor. Specifically, I am a pastor at The Journey, a Gospel-centered missional church in St. Louis. We are what many call an "emerging" church. More specifically, I am the pastor charged with upholding the worship value of our church. So this means that I guard and guide the look, sound, feel, taste and smell of our worship services.

God has blessed me ridiculously with this job. It is a dream job, with an unbelievable group of hard-working, God-fearing, family-loving guys. I also get to use a lot of my best gifts in this capacity, meaning I get to teach and shepherd and play music with some very gifted musicians.

I also get to think and write about a lot of things that both interest me and impact my ministry work. So I'm starting a series of posts that share some of my basic thoughts on how to think through the song selection process. More of this kind of stuff to come. Look forward to hearing from some of you.

Why Subvergent?

I guess this is my official entry into the blogosphere. I don't tend to be the most disciplined guy in the world, so we'll see how long this lasts. I feel compelled to jump in, write a little more about the God, people and things that I love, and probably wind up reading a lot more about some of them too. I'll start by explaining the name "Subvergent."

I admit it's kind of a goofy name, and in part, that's the point. If you're reading this blog you're probably interested in words like: emerging, emergent, postmodern, Gospel-centered, culture, plant, mega-, multi-, and missional. I'm interested in most of those words too. Somehow, all these words, and a lot of other catchy ones, are now part of the modern church vernacular, and the spin-off phrases (some more creative than others) abound. I'm not casting stones here (i.e., my blog title), just being a little tongue-in-cheek, I suppose.

But with every joke there is at least a kernel of truth, and the truth I'm alluding to in my title involves the re-thinking of evangelicalism in America and elsewhere. Thinking, it's been said, can be dangerous, and re-thinking can be too. What's being re-thought amongst evangelicals these days is definitely not safe, but mostly good. Many smart and creative people are looking again at what it means to live like Jesus after you've been changed by him. A lot of this spills over into how church services look and feel and sound, a subject very near and dear to my heart. This is the kind of stuff I'll write about here.

There are some re-thinkers out there that are churning out some unhealthy takes on the Gospel...like I said, re-thinking can be dangerous. I think the word subvergent kind of captures this tension.The Kingdom Jesus ushered in has a subversive element to it: the last shall be first, power structures topple, the suffering servant is the king, and so on. In an ironic twist, this holy subversion, which is personally inspiring and challenging, is being subverted by some with less than biblical motives. Go figure.

There is a lot of subverting and emerging going on. Read about it here.