A Breakout Session for The Southern
Baptist Church Music Conference 2004
By Lee Hinson
Part-time worship leaders, both paid
and volunteer, can face huge challenges in today’s church
environment. They may face the same problems as a minister
who has full time to devote to the solutions. When they come
to a conference their needs can be quite diverse, so a
one-size-fits-all approach for sessions might not be as
productive. Therefore, this year’s conference for
bivocational church music leaders was designed around a core
of material dealing with worship, but also included a
variety of material that could supplement that depending on
the needs of those in attendance. Since there were actually
two repeated sessions this year, there was opportunity to
customize each conference.
Worship Attitudes and Actions.
We asked worship planners to
consider this accountability question: why? Why do you do
what you do in worship? Why that particular song? Why is it
in that place in worship? What happened last week in worship
at your church? Do you know what worship actions were
performed by the congregation? What actions did you plan
for? Did your people sing several “call to worship” type
songs but never get to meaty songs of worship? Did you try
to draw near to God in worship without ever dealing with
confession of sin? These questions and others set the stage
for a discussion of the inner attitudes that work themselves
out as external actions in the context of a worship service.
Some inner attitudes of worship are
praise, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, awe,
celebration, and dedication. These are emotional and mental
activities of the individual worshiper. Some outward actions
of worship that reflect these attitudes include verbal
confession, testimony, praying, singing, giving an offering,
reading scripture, bow and kneeling, and raising hands. Old
Testament worship included such worship actions as ritual
cleansing, choral and instrumental music, prayers, shouting
and dancing, processionals, testimonials (mostly re-telling
what God had done for Israel), confessions, vows, special
celebrations, and animal sacrifices. Descriptions of worship
in the New Testament were a bit sparser. But it is clear
that they engaged in the reading of scripture, preaching,
confession, singing, prayers and hand raising. But they also
added some distinctively new actions which influence us
today. They instituted the Lord’s Supper and believer’s
baptism as ordinances, changed the day of corporate worship,
and insisted that worship is not limited to a place.
All of this brings the modern
worship leader back around to the accountability question of
why. It is all too easy for the musician to concentrate on
the musical aspects of worship and miss the non-musical
actions of worship, perhaps even limiting the internal
worship attitudes of the congregation. Knowing why an
element of worship is there can help the worship planner
keep focused on biblical worship. Biblical worship should
engage the worshiper in a full response (physically and
mentally) to a full revelation of God, His actions, and His
will for the church through Jesus Christ.
Ways to Plan Worship
Bivocational worship planners need
an organized framework to plan worship on a limited time
schedule. Four main ways were discussed with conferees:
thematic, mini-themes, musical style, and by using worship
functions (or worship actions). In addition, all of these
categories can overlap and work together.
Thematic worship is very popular
with many pastors and church musicians. It does provide
direction for the worship planner. Its major weakness is
that it can focus on the theme throughout worship to the
exclusion of a full range of biblical worship responses. And
the theme needs to be very obvious to have an impact on the
uninitiated worshiper. Planning using the mini-theme
approach means taking something already planned that is not
easily changed, such as a choir anthem, and then building a
portion of the worship service around the theme of that
anthem. This can be very helpful if the worship planner is
not able to coordinate thematic planning with the pastor.
Musical style can sometimes dictate worship planning if a
musical style is considered a default, such as planning a
contemporary worship service. This will affect the sources
for songs and overall flavor of the service.
Planning by worship functions (or
actions) relates back to the earlier discussion about
attitudes and actions. The Bible describes worship not so
much in thematic ways but in terms of worship that
accomplishes certain functions, such as praise, confession,
thanksgiving, etc. Put another way, worship in scripture is
often recounted in rather progressive terms, leading from
one action to another. Within the context of modern worship,
worship planners should remember that almost any attitude of
worship can be expressed in a variety of ways: verbally,
musically, dramatically, chorally, corporately,
individually, or antiphonally.
Optional Material
One session felt the need to talk
about choirs and praise teams. Conferees were asked to
consider several things about a using a praise team: why you
need to have one, who would be involved, effect on the
current music ministry, and the available resources (both
musical and technical).
Before considering the reasons for
using a praise team, we dealt with reasons to have a choir
in these days of worship heavily influenced by contemporary
models. These include:
