Category: Leading

A Prayer Before Leading Worship

This evening, before our Saturday service got started at 5:00pm, those of us involved in leading parts of the service gathered as we always do to pray for the preacher, the worship team, the congregation, and anything else that was on our minds.

Since it can be hard to know what to pray before leading worship, I thought it might be helpful for me to share what I prayed tonight, and what I often pray before a service (roughly).

“Lord, please protect me and all of us here from rushing through this service just to get it over with.

Help us to be expectant for you to be at work, help us to be present at this service and at this hour, and give us a love for these people who are coming. Some of these people have been looking forward to this service all week long. Some don’t even know why they’re here. Lord, please help us to lead these people well.

We pray that you would accomplish your purposes tonight. We don’t want to be a hindrance or lackadaisical. Help us to be ready and sensitive to your Holy Spirit. We pray that you would use us, in all our different parts, for your glory.”

It’s never a good idea to lead worship without praying for God’s help first. If I don’t pray before a service, I’ll lead worship thinking that I’m very big, I’m the boss, and it’s all up to me.

I want to be made small. I want God to take control. And I want God to do what he alone can do.

Before your rehearsals and services, make a point of praying and asking for God’s help. God knows we need it.

What is Happening Right Now?

Last night I had the joy of leading the music for our men’s ministry meeting. This happens once a month in our church’s fellowship hall, and includes some good food (Italian subs!), some announcements, a time of singing, teaching, prayer ministry, and fellowship.

Last night we sang “Blessed Be Your Name”, “It is Well with My Soul”, read Psalm 130:1-6 together, and then sang “Everlasting God” and “Be Thou My Vision”. I led from guitar and had a piano player from the worship team lead with me. There was a tangible sense of the Holy Spirit being at work as we sang, and after the last song we just spent several minutes being still before the Lord together.

Before we went into those few minutes of stillness, a few moments after “Be Thou My Vision” ended, I just said something very simple like “what we’re doing right now is just leaving some space for God to speak to each one of us individually. This is a chance for us either to listen to him speaking to us, or to articulate our own words of prayer or praise to God. Let’s wait on the Lord together and commune with him.”

It took about 15 seconds to say all of that. It wasn’t the most articulate explanation in the world, and for some men there, it might not have been totally necessary. But once in a while it can be helpful to simply explain what’s going on.

Try to be aware, as you lead worship, of points during corporate worship that might need some explanation. Pick one area every once in a while, and explain “here’s what is happening right now”.

Worship leaders can wrongly assume that, because they know what’s happening, everyone else does too. While we don’t need to go overboard and explain every little thing every single time we lead  – (and oftentimes the best thing we can do is just be quiet!)  – if we are to be effective worship “leaders”, we need to make it as easy as possible for people to follow along.

Praying for Unction

Unction isn’t a word you hear very often these days, but maybe that’s not such a good thing.

Tullian Tchividjian, the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, recently shared on his blog about how his “heart burns” for God’s “sacred anointing”, or “unction”.

While his post is written for preachers, I wanted to share it here because worship leading is another form of preaching. Every week, worship leaders have 15, 20, 30, or more minutes to point their congregations to the greatness and glory of God in Jesus Christ through music. So, read this post and where you see the words “preaching” or “preachers” – insert “worship leading” or “worship leaders”. May we all pray for God’s sacred anointing, his unction, every single time we get up to lead.

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I’m a die-hard believer in unction. Unction is an old fashioned word which describes an effusion of power from the Holy Spirit as one preaches. It is the one thing preachers need above everything else. It is the accompanying power of the Spirit. This is what Charles Spurgeon dubbed “the sacred annointing.” It is power from on high.

In his book on the preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Sacred Annointing, Tony Sargent describes unction well. He writes:

[Unction] is the afflatus of the Spirit resting on the speaker. It is the preacher gliding on eagles’ wings, soaring high, swooping low, carrying and being carried along by a dynamic other than his own. His consciousness of what is happening is not obliterated. He is not in a trance. He is being worked on but is aware that he is still working. He is being spoken through but he knows he is still speaking. The words are his but the facility with which they come compels him to realise that the source is beyond himself. The man is overwhelmed. He is on fire.

Oh how my heart burns for this sacred annointing, this unction! I hope and pray that preachers all over the world would spend much of their sermon preparation time begging God for this power on high. For, it is preachers who are borne along by the Holy Spirit that are used to effect a deep and sobering awareness of God and his truth that transforms.

In his book Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace, Iain Murray writes:

Preaching under the annointing of the Holy Spirit is preaching which brings with it a consciousness of God. It produces an impression upon the hearer that is altogether stronger than anything belonging to the circumstances of the occasion. Visible things fall into the background; the surroundings, the fellow worshippers, even the speaker himself, all become secondary to an awareness of God himself. Instead of witnessing a public gathering, the hearer receives the conviction that he is being addressed personally, and with an authority greater than that of a human messenger.

Given the fact that the ultimate factor in the church’s engagement with society is the church’s engagement with God, my earnest prayer is that, for the sake of the world, more preachers would come to know and understand what Andrew Bonar meant when he wrote: “It is one thing to bring truth from the Bible, and another to bring it from God himself through the Bible.”

Please pray, dear friends, that God would annoint my mind and mouth on Sunday as I preach so that God’s people would hear from God. Please pray that God’s Spirit would so inhabit my words that everyone would leave worship tomorrow being able to say, “God was surely in that place.”

I can’t manufacture unction regardless of how well crafted my sermon is and how well prepared I may be. The biggest work must come from God.

So, come thou fount of every blessing and do for your people what I cannot. Amen.

Read Tullian’s post here.

Being Led as You Lead

Whenever the worship team prays before a service, one of my prayers for us is that we would be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. He leads us in our planning and rehearsing, but we never want to walk into a service with everything completely settled. As we’re leading the congregation in singing, we need to be listening for the Holy Spirit’s prompting and guiding. If this means going with everything as we planned and rehearsed, that’s great. But if this means making some sort of change, whether it’s major or minor, skipping something, highlighting something, lingering at a certain point, or some other unplanned direction, we need to be ready.

I’ve found that the Holy Spirit will very rarely lead me or the pastor leading a service to make a drastic change on the fly. He may do that this coming Sunday – but usually if we’re praying for his guidance, and seeking to be faithful to the word of God in our planning, for the lack of a better term, “we will be close” once Sunday morning rolls around.

This past Sunday morning, January 10th, our opening three songs were “Jesus Saves” by Tim Hughes, “You Alone Can Rescue” by Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin, and “Jesus Paid All” by Elvina Hall and John Grape, with a new bridge written by Kristian Stanfill.

I felt led to choose these songs since the sermon was going to be on Romans 4:1-8, highlighting how there are no works we can do to make ourselves righteous before God. We are made righteous through Jesus Christ.

As we came to the end of “You Alone Can Rescue” I sensed the Holy Spirit prompting me to linger for a while before moving on to the next song. As the song drew to a close, I caught the piano player’s eye and motioned for him to keep playing. Then, responding to what I felt I was being led to do, I just sang out a few simple statements of thanks to God for what he has done for us in Christ.

“Oh thank you, Lord.”
“We were dead in our sin.”
“We were lost on our own.”
“You raised us to life.”
“You paid the debt we could not pay.”
“It’s the only way we can approach your throne.”
“You’ve made us sons and daughters of yourself.”
 “Thank you for saving me – all for your glory, Lord.”

Then we moved on to “Jesus Paid it All”.

It wasn’t a major change to the direction of the service. All I did was sing a few simple truths, drawing a bit from Ephesians 2, highlighting what we had just sung, and transitioning to the next song. Here’s how it sounded:

I don’t do this every week. I actually don’t do it all that often. But yesterday morning, after praying and asking for God’s help to be sensitive to his Spirit, it seemed that he was leading me to not rush into the next song.

This kind of thing can help people be more aware of God’s presence, reminded of the truth, and affected by his Spirit’s active work. In your specific church and context, he will use you in a specific way. It might not be appropriate for you to sing a spontaneous song, or you might not be comfortable with that. It doesn’t have to look or sound a certain way, or resemble how it worked at a conference you attended. Just be ready and be faithful.

If I were to do this every single week, it could become predictable and might be manufactured. If I rambled or did it in a distracting/forced way, it could have the opposite effect. I’ve made some mistakes when seeking to be responsive to the Holy Spirit during a service, and I’m sure I’ll make more.

So this weekend when I lead the congregation in singing, I’ll again pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and I encourage you to as well. He won’t do the same thing two weekends in a row, so I’m excited to see what has in store.

It’s All About Jesus

As a full-time worship leader at a church with multiple weekend services, I planned a lot of services, picked a ton of songs, ran a bunch of rehearsals, and led a good amount of singing in 2009. I made plenty of mistakes, learned important lessons, and hopefully grew in my gifting.

Personally, it was an amazing year of preparing to be a father to Megan, and continuing to learn how to be a husband to Catherine. I love my family, love my church, and love my job. There were seasons of trial and testing, but God proves himself faithful and trustworthy time after time.

Looking back on the year, most weekends, song lists, and rehearsals kind of blend together. Certain services stand out, like the one when I was fighting the stomach flu and had to throw my guitar to a vocalist while I ran to the back room to vomit during the Lord’s prayer. (I made it back out just in time for the next song.) Or there’s the time we had someone disrupt a worship service to the point where the police had to handcuff them and lead them out. But over all, it was a year of just seeking to be faithful to God and his church, and trusting that by the work of his Spirit there was slow but steady growth taking place.

The one worship leading experience that stands out the most was when, in April, I was invited by my pastor to join him in leading a Good Friday service at the CIA, organized by a group of faithful Christians there. Obviously, this was not a setting in which I was familiar operating, but I was thrilled to go and grateful for the opportunity.

I remember praying and asking God how I should lead, what songs I should sing, what the response would be, how I should prepare, etc. I heard God say to me, plainly, “point them to the cross”.

So, at a noon Good Friday service in a conference room on the first floor, I sat at a keyboard and led a group of people in singing songs about the cross, and about what God had done for us in Christ. I will never forget it.

While that experience stands out above the rest as I look back over 2009, my job at that service was no different than a typical Saturday night service in June, or a Sunday morning service in October. And as I look forward to 2010, with at least two services per weekend, retreats, and other settings (familiar or not) in which I will be asked to lead, my marching orders are just as plain. To point people to the cross.

One year from now, when I look back on 2010 – at the services, the song lists, the planning, and the rehearsals – most of which will likely blend together, my prayer is that I will able to say that in every five, fifteen, or thirty minute slot I was given, I pointed people to the centrality of the cross, to the glory of God’s grace, and to the risen and exalted Savior.

This is the job of every worship leader – in a small church meeting in someone’s living room, a big church meeting in a large room, or in a Good Friday service in a Langley conference room – to point people to the cross. It’s all about Jesus. Happy New Year.