Video Transcript: Worship Services

This is lecture 20 in the practical ministry skills course. We're talking about  worship services. And this is from chapter 13 of pastoring the nuts and bolts. I  believe I have two or three lectures from that chapter, and I am pretty sure this is another one of those where the order of things I'll be talking about in the lectures is different from the way that I wrote them in the book. So be aware of that if you can our key verse is, God is spirit, so those who worship Him must worship in  spirit and in truth. John 4:24, your weekly services, I'm assuming that you're  having them on every week. That's tradition. That's not required in the Bible. It's  amazing how little is written in the Bible about exactly how we're supposed to do church in the New Testament age, especially when you compare it to all the  details about the Old Testament worship in the tabernacle and temple and so on. But anyway, assuming that you have services once a week, and just for ease,  we'll assume that most of them probably are Sunday morning. They don't have  to be. But these times your weekly services are the main time that your people  come together as the church, most likely, you'll have other activities and and you may have many, or even all of your people there, but the one time that you can  regularly count on having the largest number of your people in one place at one  time is your weekly worship service. So some call it the most important hour in  the week. This means that your services should reflect the church's three  purposes, to be a comfortable home for God, to live among his people, to raise  up God's adopted children, to be like their big brother Jesus, and to invite  everyone to join God's family through powerful demonstrations of love. In other  words, you need to be sure that your services include time for worship, for  discipleship training, which will usually be through a sermon or a message of  some kind, as well as Sunday school and, of course, other midweek Bible  studies and so on. But the services, it's mainly through a message, a sermon,  testimony, and for encouraging your people to carry God's presence beyond the  walls of your meeting place. If you're lucky enough to have a meeting place that  has walls, I know some are meeting under trees and praise the Lord God. God  is there as well. That's a lot to try and fit into a little bit of time. And we're going  to talk about time in in a minute, the stereotypical American church services one  hour, and that's why I said some told the most important hour in the week. We'll  talk a little bit more later, how long your services should be. But before we get  there, I want to talk about service flow. What is flow? It's having easy transition  from one part natural transition from what's happening here to what's happening here to what's happening here. Sometimes things can happen in the middle of  the service that sound like or feel like an interruption, and on occasion, if that  happens if it's an actual interruption, if it's something the Holy Spirit is dropping  on you, or it's an interruption because a tree fell on your roof, or whatever it  might be, those things might happen. But as much as you can schedule the the  the order of service, the way things happen from this one to this one to this one,  so that there doesn't seem like an interruption, or we were doing this and then 

all of a sudden, we had to stop suddenly and shift over to doing this. You want it  to flow. So think about as you decide what order things ought to happen in your  service, what the flow should be like. The order of what happens is called the  liturgy. We tend to think when we think of the term liturgy of a written order of.  Worship, and the liturgical churches, or high churches, write it out, even with  they will write the prayers and write the responses, and the people read the  prayers out loud, read the responses out loud. That is a form of liturgy. But the  math that the fact of the matter is, if you don't have anything written down, and  you even think that you're doing everything totally spontaneously and by the  leading of the Holy Spirit, but if you look back at it, and you find that every  Sunday for the last two years, you've had exactly these same things in this  order, we open with three or four songs. We have a word of testimony. We have  this, we have that, we have that, even if it's not written down, that's what  everybody expects. That's a liturgy, and that's okay. It's all right. There's nothing  wrong with that, but see that it is. Try and fit that with the flow, and try and fit that to make sure that there is time for the three purposes of the church, the  comfortable home for God to live among his people, which, as we've talked  about, is usually most easily created Through the time of worship and the then  the discipleship training, the sermon, the raising up, the teaching, the training,  and then the encouragement to carry God's presence out into the world, to invite others. The some call that exhortation. Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. The Holy  Spirit is in charge of the service, and you want him to be able to guide the flow.  Somebody says, Well, how can he do that? If it's all written down? Well, I  believe the Holy Spirit can guide the writing down of it. The Holy Spirit knows  what he wants to do in your service ahead of time. And if he can tell you that  and gets you to write it down, that's fine. Or make sure that the way you write it  down leaves an opportunity, leaves time, leaves space for the Holy Spirit to do  other things, or if he leads you, you as the ministry leader and your worship  leaders need to be open enough to what the Holy Spirit is doing that you can  sense if the Spirit wants to go in a different direction, even though, the way you  had it planned out, maybe after you sing song X, next you're going to sing song  y, then the Holy Spirit says, No, I don't want song y right here. I want to stop and ask for testimonies right here. And then I want to sing song Z, you know. So  leave be open to the Holy Spirit. Don't stifle what the Holy Spirit is leading. Be  confident. Learn to be confident enough in your reading that you can get off of  the originally planned track and and not stifle what the Holy Spirit is trying to do.  But on the other hand, the other side of that coin is but be sure that everything is done properly and in order. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the order that  you wrote it out in, but it means not disorderly, not chaotic. Have somebody, the  ministry leader, worship leader, somebody who's ever there needs to be able to  recognize that the Holy Spirit wants to go in this direction and direct the  congregation and everybody else in that and recognize that if somebody else 

tried to do something that is disruptive, God to know how to gently but firmly, if  necessary, put that back in its place. Okay, there are, it seems, almost  conflicting instructions about that in I Corinthians 14. There are instructions in I  Corinthians 14 about how to interrupt the person that's speaking. If you look in  that, I think it's in verse 27-28 something like that. It actually tells you how to  properly interrupt the preacher or the person that's giving a testimony, or  whatever it might be. So there's an orderly way to follow the spirit. And not  instead of a disorderly way. All right, I won't, I mentioned time. How long should  a service be? There is no set standard there. I have been in good services that  were 40 minutes. I have been in good services that were two and a half or three  hours. I've been in in some very large mega churches in the United States that  had a tight schedule, and they got you in and out in 55 minutes, because they  had another service coming and another service coming after that, 1000s of  people in and out and a good message and good good stuff. I have also been in a an African American Pentecostal church with 10,000 people that it went about  two and a half hours and there were people coming in for another service when  it was over that was going to last the same length. Don't think that people won't  sit still for long services. Don't think God can't move in short services. I  personally feel like it takes at least a couple hours to really have a good, solid  worship service in time. But that's my own preference. And quite frankly, I've  never had a served a church that would stand for that I most I ever got them up  to was about an hour and 15 minutes on a regular basis, but it's what your  culture will stand for, what your people are used to, what they expect. There are  some who think that they're being abused if they have to sit in the church for  more than an hour. There are others who feel like if they give an offering to the  church, they're not getting their money's worth if they haven't heard a sermon  that's an hour long and another hour of praise and worship. So there's no right  way to do it that is not exactly the same with the sermon itself, and we'll be  talking about that in a future lecture. But the time you need to work that out with  your people, with the expectations, with the culture, with whatever works, all  right, music, I referred earlier to the worship time, and in many cases people  consider music to be the worship time. Now, in one sense, the entire thing is a  worship service. In a broader sense, our entire lives should be worship. The  entire Sunday morning service is a form of worship. The offering very definitely  is worship. I think I'll talk about that. But in many cases, when they talk about the worship service is or the worship time, they're talking about music. The worship  team is the modern language for a choir. So speaking right now about the music and the music as worship, during worship, there is only one person in the  audience, and that's God, and we've said this before, but all your people need to recognize that the worship team is not performing the songs for their benefit.  They are not singing the songs to impress the person next to them with how  nice their voice is, all of the songs, all of the prayers, all of that is to be directed 

at God. Now this reminds me speaking of the music and so on. It reminds me  going back to where I talked about structure. There is a kind of a traditional  structure in many American mainline churches that some refer to as the hymn  sandwich instead of a ham sandwich, this is a hymn sandwich. You have the  opening hymn, then you have some various things, then you have a hymn just  before the sermon, then you have the sermon and maybe a little bit, and then  you have the closing hymn. So you have the three hymns with the other stuff in  between. And quite frankly, I think there's, there's tremendous value in coming in and going out with music. The Bible says Psalm 100 come into His presence  with singing into his courts with praise. Quite frankly, in the hymn sandwich, the  the. tradition is that you stand up to sing and you sit down to listen. And so  you've been sitting and you've been sitting and you've been sitting, and a lot of  pastors put a hymn in just to get people to stand up, to get them away awake  again before they sit down and listen to the sermon, so they're not so likely to  fall asleep during the sermon. That's a structure that works. It's most non  denominational churches, I think, just have a whole bunch of music and worship  at the beginning, and then the sermon and and then maybe a song going out, or a prayer time at the end. But however you want to structure talking about music, back to music. I'm a musician myself. I play a number of instruments. I have  written a number of praise and worship songs and things like that. And as both a musician and a preacher, I was quite shocked, oh, I discovered this about 20  years ago, to discover that some people come to church and they just tolerate  the music so that they can hear the message. And there are other people who  come to church and they just tolerate their sermon because they really want the  music. And you're going to have people like that. You may have a few who will  appreciate both. But you will have some who consider the music just to be  frivolous stuff, until you can get to the important part, which is the sermon. And  you'll have others who see it. Vice versa. The music is really coming into God's  presence, and then you have to sit there and listen to somebody talk at you so  people will think that way. Just be aware of it. Music can turn our thoughts away  from the world and help us focus. It can create an atmosphere for worship. It  can be calming and soothing, or it can be stirring and inspiring on a very  functional level, musical interludes can help, help the service flow. They smooth  the transitions from one part of the service to another part. Some songs target  the mind. The old traditional hymns put a lot of theology into those words, and  that's how people learned a lot of their theology was by singing it. Others target  the Spirit. They have simple words and tunes, maybe very repetitive, over and  over that allow people to focus on God rather than trying to remember the words and trying to remember the notes, or trying to read them, if it's something that's  just coming out of the heart. And I believe there's good space for both of those  kinds of music. Both are important. You need to pray and ask God what kind you want here or what kind you want there. But don't fall into the trap that so many 

do of saying, Well, I like modern praise and worship music, and it's so much  better than all of those boring old hymns that have so many words and so much  theology, or we have the old traditional theological hymns that the Church has  always grown on, and they're so much better. And if you, if you, the tendency is,  some people think if all you sing is the old hymns, you're not spiritual. And  others think if all you sing is the new stuff, then you're not deep. You're not really learning. You don't have the the the truth of it. Worship in spirit and truth. Do  both of them, both kinds. This is just one of the kind of conflicts that leads some  pastors to refer to their music, their musicians, their choir, their praise team,  whatever you want to call it. They call it the War Department. Some Bible  scholars believe that Lucifer was the archangel in charge of the heavenly choir,  or in more modern language, he was the worship leader in heaven before he  rebelled and became Satan, and one famous pastor said, when Satan fell out of  heaven, he fell right into the choir loft. Because I don't know what it is about  musicians. I'm a musician, but most of the musicians that I hang around with  tend to be pretty laid back. But on the other hand, I'm into jazz and blues and  jams where there's nothing written out, and everybody just kind of takes turns  and plays and supports each other. That's very different from classically trained,  where everything has to be just exactly right ah, and wonderful. Classical music  is wonderful. It's just that's not what I tend to play on my instruments. But the  pastor is about to introduce a another song, and the choir is there in the choir  loft, and looks like they've got a free for all, going there, fighting like crazy. And  the pastor says, now we'll wait a moment. Well, the love choir decides which  song they'll sing. No God wants us to sing this song. No. God wants us to sing  that song. It's one one. I have read this seriously as a serious statement that the pipe organ was invented or adapted for use in churches specifically so that the  pastor would only have to deal with one musician instead of with a whole  orchestra full of musicians. So okay, tensions. It all of this is because there can  be such tensions in the music. There can be a tension between make a joyful  noise. Psalm 101 and play skillfully Psalm 33:3, anybody can make a joyful  noise. And I have been in churches, typically smaller ones, where they let Aunt  Edna sing a solo, even though Aunt Edna's singing days ended. She looked her  voice changed for the worse 15 years ago. But everybody loves Aunt Edna, and  they still let her get up and sing a special number every now and then, just  because they love her and she's making a joyful noise, and that's wonderful  praise the Lord. But there are others who there are times when you want your  music program to be very good, very musically good, very solid. So it doesn't  turn off people, so it doesn't distract people, so it helps them worship the the  purpose of it is to help people worship and come into God's presence, and  mistakes and things out of tune and so on can really distract from that for people who have musical ears. So that's a tension that you need to work out, and the  balance is going to be different at every church and every ministry and every 

situation, even within a ministry, there can be attention for ask for the old godly  way. Jeremiah 6:16, and sing to the Lord a new song. Psalm 149:1, I was  beginning my ministry at a time when there were still people who said that  guitars in church were of the devil, because, and especially if a guitar was used  with a rock and roll beat, oh my goodness, rock and roll was of the devil, and  you can't have that kind of music in church, so there can be that tension now, I  think we have resolved all of that. I was blessed to be able to start contemporary worship services in my first four appointments, my first four churches that I  served, and that was a blessing. And when I finally got to the fifth, when they  had one going, that was very good, but that can be a tension. And as I said,  there's there's wonderful old music and wonderful new music. There can be a  tension between worship and performance, and that is something that I I was in  a church where they wouldn't let anybody it was had a great band, praise praise  team, but they wouldn't let anybody do solos except the singers. Sometimes  singers could sing solos, but no musical solos because the worship leader  thought that that was performing and showing off. The fact is, sometimes an  attitude of performance, attitude that says, Look at me, aren't I great? Don't I  have a beautiful voice? Listen to these licks on the guitar that focuses on you,  that has no place in a worship team in a church, but sometimes you want to be  leading the people and singing. And sometimes you want to present something,  people can listen to and praise the Lord for the beauty of it. You can praise the  Lord for the beauty of the music, just like you can praise the Lord for the beauty  of a flower. So that can be a tension, a tension between religious style and  popular style. And that's kind of like the one that we already talked about. But  here we have a a very traditional church, pastors wearing a robe. Choir is  wearing robes, and the pastor says, Please disregard music directors  admonition to clap your hands, stomp your feet and Boogie till you drop. There's a tension there. Now, there is no one particular kind of music that is more  spiritual than another kind of music. It depends on how and why you're doing it, I want to make a quick comment. If you are lucky enough to have musicians that  work through a soundboard and you're mixing the volumes of the instruments  and the singing and so on, there's a very, very common mistake that is made  that way, and that is not recognizing the difference between music for leading  worship and music for people to listen to. People tend to want to make and the  people that are doing the mixing running the board tend to want to make it  sound just the way it sounds on the radio or on their their what they've heard the professionals do when you and that's fine if the point is to let people listen to it.  But if you are leading people in worship, if you want people to sing along and  you want them to sing along, you need one strong voice singing the melody that  they can hear and singing the words that they can hear. If they can't pick out  what you want them to be singing, because you also have all this other harmony and all these other instruments, then they're not going to be able to follow it as 

well. So make sure your sound techs know that difference offerings. Offering is  the essence of worship. In the Old Testament, worship and offering were almost  synonymous. Whenever there was worship, there was a sacrifice, there was an  

offering of a dove or a boat or a goat or a bull. And so when we offer our money,  it's not just a means of keeping the place going. Teach your people understand  that this is stands in for offering themselves worship. The essence of worship is  offering yourself, and it's represented by offering money. It's also by offering  time, by offering yourself. The essence of worship is offering so don't hide the  offering. Don't act like you're embarrassed to take an offering very quickly  announcements. Make sure they don't interrupt the service flow. There are other things in the in the chapter about that the special days, and we'll have three  lectures on preaching. So we are done with this time, and I'll see you to continue talking about worship next time