Jamie Brown

Made to Make Much of Something Great

Last month, I was asked by two very different groups to teach on the topic of worship. The first was a women’s bible study (about 70 women) who were having a day-long retreat in Bethesda, Maryland. The second was my church’s newly re-launched men’s ministry, about 75 guys who get together once a month.

Both of these groups had their meetings on the same day. The women in the morning, and the men in the evening.

My goal was to intersperse teaching and singing over the course of an hour, helping to lay a biblical foundation for why we worship God, and how that looks. I leaned heavily (i.e. almost entirely) on the writings and teachings of John Piper and Bob Kauflin, since they have contributed immensely to my understanding and theology of worship. Bob’s seminar from the 2008 Sovereign Grace Worship Conference, “Praising God with the Psalmist” was a model of how I felt this should look.

My title was “Made to Make Much of Something Great”, and I talked about four ways we do that in corporate worship:

By desiring God.
By singing to God.
With our bodies.
With our minds.

You can listen to the teaching below. If you’re a reader/listener of John Piper and/or Bob Kauflin, you’ll probably recognize most of this stuff. This is how I tried to cram it all into about 45 minutes.

Always Learning

Every single time worship leaders lead worship, there are certain things they could have done better.

This applies to beginner worship leaders and “seasoned” worship leaders. Whether it’s your first time or four-hundredth, there is always at least one thing you can look back on and say “I could have done that differently“.

Beginner worship leaders can run the risk of getting discouraged by all the things they could have done better, and thinking maybe they’re not cut out for it.

More seasoned worship leaders can run the risk of thinking they’ve made every mistake there is to make, and that they’ve mastered the art.

Worship leaders who are just starting out should take comfort in the fact that the process of maturing never stops – and those who have been doing it a little longer should keep that in mind too. No one ever “arrives”.

Tonight I led the music for our monthly men’s ministry gathering. In no particular order of importance, here are some things I could have done differently:

The first two songs we sang, “Blessed Be Your Name” and “Come Thou Fount”, felt a bit over-done. I think I’m doing those songs too often, especially at these monthly meetings.
The last song we sang, “Here I Am to Worship”, felt really over-done. I should put that song on hold for a while.
I got to church too late to do a sound check. Since it was just me leading on guitar, I figured it would work fine this way. My guitar ended up being too loud and my voice too quiet. I should always do a sound check with the sound engineer, if possible.
Some of the words on the slides went too far down. Since the ceiling is low, some men had a hard time reading the bottom line or two. We should make sure we adjust the slides when we’re projecting lyrics in that room.
I kept my eyes closed for much of the time. I did that this past Sunday night too. I’m getting back into that bad habit.
I went too long. I need to be sure I’m wrapping up when I’ve been asked to wrap up.

A lot of these things are relatively minor, and might not have stood out to anyone else in the room. My goal certainly isn’t to make a big deal out of these little issues or beat up on myself. But rather, I’ve found it helpful for my own growth, and a practical way to pursue humility, to be in the habit of asking “what could I have done differently or better“.

Even if there’s only one thing I can point to, and there always is at least one thing, then hopefully God will use that to keep me moving forward on the road of maturity.

When Your Pastor Asks You to Drop a Song

Yesterday morning, about two hours before our 11:00am service, I got an email from the pastor who would be leading the service, asking me to drop one of the opening songs. Here’s what he said:

JB, Morning and a question. We have the introduction of a Chinese delegation of pastors this morning, and several announcements and a video, and a really long reading, and JY doesn’t think he’ll be short (Melchizedek takes some ‘splaining). In light of that I think we should drop one of the songs from the first set. Does that work? Can you zip me a reply on that so I know how to configure the other stuff? Thanks, Dean.

I wrote back very simply:

Sure. No problem at all.

When your pastor asks you to drop a song, you should say “yes” every time.

Sure, I was looking forward to leading all four songs, and I thought doing all four songs helped the opening set be well-rounded and balanced. Part of me was bummed to have to cut one of them out. But, me being bummed doesn’t matter one bit. Submitting to my pastor(s), being a team player, and seeking to lead out of humility requires me to graciously do whatever I’m asked to do. Even dropping a song.

This doesn’t happen every week. It actually doesn’t happen very often. If it did happen regularly, it would probably be good to have a conversation about it during the week, and figure out exactly how much time we envision the different segments of a service taking. This would be the time and place to “push back” if it felt necessary. But a Sunday morning isn’t the time or place.

Worship leaders can quickly become territorial and protective of the time of singing as being “their time”. When that happens, requests to cut a song and/or shorten the time can be viewed as personal attacks warranting extreme defensive measures. This is a mistake and it will put you firmly on the pastor’s bad side. You don’t want to be there.

Get into the habit of reminding yourself the entire service is “worship”, and you just help lead one small part. Then it’s not so hard to say “yes” when and if it needs to be a little smaller.

Song Recommendation – “We Have a Great Priest”

I first heard David Clifton’s “We Have a Great Priest” about ten years ago, when I picked up a copy of the CD “Praise God” that he recorded along with Andy Piercy. It struck me as a beautiful song and great setting of Hebrews 10:21-23, but I never used it in a congregational setting until last week.

After introducing it, I wondered what took me so long.

It was written in 1996, but since I just recently re-discovered it and suspect you might not be familiar with it, I’d like to recommend it. David has kindly agreed to let me share the chord chart and let you listen to a recording of the song.

Here are the lyrics:

We have a great priest
Over the house of God
So let us draw near to God with a sincere heart
In full assurance, assurance of our faith
Having our hearts touched
To cleanse us from all guilt

For he who promised is faithful
For he who promised is faithful
Is faithful to me

Give me a pure heart, holding to Your hope
The hope I profess, Lord, lead me in Your way
Be now my strength, Lord
And all of my trust, Lord
And I will fear no-one,
For You are with me.
– David Clifton © IQ Music 1996

Here’s why I like this song:
– The first verse and chorus are straight from scripture
– I don’t know of another song that lets us dwell on the words “he who promised is faithful” several times
– The simple prayer in the second verse is God-centered
– The melody is memorable and easy to sing
– The “feel” on the verses is unpredictable and different
– It helps stir up a gratefulness for Jesus

You can listen to the song below:

For a PDF chord chart, click here.

To download an mp3 of the song on iTunes, click here.

Giving Your Worship Team Options

I don’t like having to decide before a service exactly how I’m going to lead a song, how we should start it, how we should end it, or what (if anything) we’ll repeat. Until I’m actually leading the song, seeing and hearing how people are responding, and sensing where God is leading, I never quite know what will work best. Having the freedom to make last-minute (or second) decisions is helpful.

There are exceptions of course, like when a song is accompanied by a dance or a video, or when we’re following a specific arrangement, or when a lot of moving pieces are involved like choirs, organ, orchestra, etc. In those cases it can make a lot of sense to decide ahead of time the exact roadmap for a song.

But the worship team at my church has gotten used to me saying to them during rehearsal something along the lines of: “we’ll see what happens. We might do this, or we might do that.”

I’ve found it helpful to let my worship team know what the options are on a particular song. Take this past weekend for example:

We started with Sovereign Grace Music’s “Greater Than We Can Imagine”. On the recording, the band comes in together at the beginning at full volume. I told my team that we’d either do that, or I’d just come into verse one quietly, we’d slowly build, and then be in full by verse two. It depended on how it felt in the room. We ended up coming in slowly.
We sang Matt Redman’s “This is How We Know” which we had taught the week earlier. On Saturday night I made a last minute decision to skip the bridge, since I felt like people were just barely getting the feel of the verse and chorus. On Sunday morning I told them that we might do the bridge or we might not. We ended up not doing it.

Sometimes I’ll tell the worship team: “when we get to the end of verse three, we’ll do one of two things. Either we’ll play the intro and go back to verse one, or play the ending and sing the last line over it a few times. Just follow me at the end of verse three and I’ll let you know.”

On our chord charts sometimes I’ll even include “option A” after a chorus or bridge, or “option B”. During rehearsal I’ll tell the team to watch me for a cue. Usually option A is the default so my “cue” is doing nothing. Option B is something we might do – or only do once – and so my cue is looking back at them and nodding “like something is about to happen”. It sounds silly but after a few years the worship team knows what I mean when I say that.

It can be frustrating to be locked into a predetermined way of doing every song before the service starts. But it can be equally (or more) frustrating to have no idea what you’re going to do and expect it all to come together on the fly and your musicians to read your mind. As much as you can, let your worship team know what the different options are within a certain song, rehearse those parts, and make sure they’re comfortable. The more you do this the more natural it will become for everyone.