What is Worship, Part III
In the last two posts on this topic, I have tried to express that true worship is when a person’s heart is focused on the beauty, majesty, faithfulness, and glory of God alone, and that all of our external acts, including the act of musical worship, should be expressions of what is already in our hearts. I also talked about how leading worship should be an expression of our life’s worship and an act of service and love to those we are leading, and I talked about specific ways we can serve them as they worship God.
In this post I want to talk about something I learned recently about worshipping in a different setting. Often we get used to worshipping in one setting - with a certain leader and certain songs sung in a certain way, etc. We become comfortable with whatever form of musical worship we have been involved in.
So when something changes - when a new leader comes in or we visit another church, for example - there is a strong temptation to criticize the worship. “This isn’t the way the song goes.” “She’s playing it too fast.” “Look at him showing off - he’s not worshipping.” “Those aren’t the right words.” Feel free to interject your own critical thoughts here. We’ve all had them.
The last time this happened to me was when we were visiting my friend Craig’s church to tell them about our trip to Thailand and ask for their support. Craig is the worship leader at his church, and he does a really good job, but I confess that during a couple of songs I was distracted because he played them differently than the way I played them. He was playing what I considered to be a fast song much more slowly, and he sang it with a slightly different rhythm so that when I sang it my way I sounded off.
If Craig weren’t my friend, and if I hadn’t already felt the Spirit move during his worship leading that morning, I don’t know if anything would have changed in my heart. A long time ago, in situations like this, I would simply stop singing and mentally criticize the worship leaders. Later on, I became “tolerant”. I would sing, but I would sing it my way - a sort of silent protest as if to say, “This is how you sing it.”
But God convicted me that morning as I was singing it my way. He said, “This is not worship.” And I knew He was right - I had no worship in my heart as I silently judged my friend’s playing. I realized that what I should be doing, instead of singing discordant notes, was to sing along - to join my voice with the voices of those around me to create a more beautiful sound. As soon as I did this, my heart also joined with their hearts and I became one with that community of believers that I had mostly never met before, and my heart was turned towards God again because I had gotten myself out of the way.
Now not everyone necessarily knows how to sing so as to make the group sound better, but the important thing is not the notes. The important thing is what’s going on in our hearts. I have heard absolutely terrible singers belting it out, and they are in the right because their hearts are pure. Even if I am singing all the right notes, or even harmonizing, I could still be in the wrong if my heart is cynical towards the worship.
But as a singer, this is how God spoke to me personally. He said, “You know how to harmonize and match your rhythm to the music, so do it. Add your voice, and your heart, to make this worship more pleasing to me.” The specifics might be different for you, but the idea of joining your heart with the worshippers around you is universal.
In the last post I talked about how part of the worship leader’s job is to remove as much distraction as possible to make it easier for people to worship. As worshippers, it is our job to worship despite all distractions - because there will always be distractions, and we cannot control the environment, but we can change our hearts.
Ok Adam, another lesson from your Opa. In the 70’s our singing groups, like Sunday Night Singers, introduced songs that for that time were pretty “rowdy” but nowadays would sound ho hum. Obviously Opa liked the traditional hymns because a lot were based on the staunch German style and he knew them all in German. Singing in German gave a solid robusdness to them that Opa loved. You would have to hear them in German to understand. For example, “Ein fester Burg ist unsere Gott” - very marchy. However, rather than criticizing that new style of song Opa simply did this. As he entered a worship service, and this would be any worship service, he bowed his head in prayer saying, “where two or three are gathered in Your Name, there you are also - I pray that this service would be a blessing to me”. Opa’s comment was that he was never disappointed because God always found something that touched his heart and he was able to worship and be blessed by the sevice. Opa knew what worship was and he always allowed the Holy Spirit to prepare his heart. I don’t know if you have heard these words before but Opa was “God-centric” not “self-centric” - a true worshippers heart.
Adam, this has been so helpful for me as I have started to lead worship for my Bible Study. You have really helped me to turn my heart towards God, and though I am nervous, I am still able to worship Him.
In addition, I have a fairly practical question for you (and for anyone else who wants to interject):
What do you do when there is a line in a song that no matter how much you try, you just cannot sing the right notes? I can sing it without the guitar… I can sing it acapella… I can sing it with the CD, but when I play, I just could not get the right progression of notes.
(1) Practice. If you practice enough, you’ll get it. I would suggest practice not only for the musical aspect, but also to practice worshipping. By which I mean, worship on your own with just you and the guitar. It’s a lot easier to worship with the distraction of people following you if you’re used to doing it on your own.
(2) If you feel like you just can’t get it no matter what you do, change it. Leading worship is more effective if the leader is confident in what they are singing, even if it’s slightly different than the way people know it. However, because changes can sometimes be distracting, I would suggest caution with any changes. It depends on the song and the change (how well others know it and how drastic the change is), and it depends on the group. It’s much easier to change things in a small group setting though.
(3) If you don’t like either of these options, then you can do what I sometimes did: don’t sing the song. I don’t recommend this because it’s effectively quitting, but on the other hand I did it all the time ;-).
(1) Yep. I’m attempting to do this as much as possible. I am trying to memorize the songs and then worship with them on my own. The chord changes need to be second nature to me.
(2) Good stuff. The part I was struggling with last week was 3 words (’of your wings’ in Your Love Oh Lord). I probably could have changed it.
(3) This is sort of what I did. I basically didn’t sing those three words when I sang the song with the group. What’s funny is that it seemed as though the entire group didn’t know exactly how that part went, which means that I should have just belted it out. The ‘version’ that I sang wasn’t off-key… it was more of a harmonized version if you catch my drift.
Thanks so much for the feedback. It really has been enourmously useful. Worship leading is probably the most nerve racking thing I’ve ever done (which is to be expected really).