Our first service today was excellent and I was extremely proud of our team. I have been talking with them lately about the importance of basic movements and being “themselves” while leading worship. Today, they did just that – they walked forward when they were leading a song, made eye contact (with each other and the congregation), smiled, and used their everyday normal expressions/movements to help people engage in worship a little more.
Now, most of you are probably already very expressive, but it has taken us a while to get to the point where we are starting to be ourselves on stage. I do realize that worship is a vertical expression towards an eternal God; however I see on a weekly basis that most people start out by looking “horizontally” at us on stage. For our band, when we are expressionless (or expression-little), it makes it difficult for people to move beyond us and actually ends up drawing more attention to ourselves. All that to say this – I was proud of how they did today and worship was great as a result. I’m curious – what do you do to interact with your congregation(s) and what are your thoughts on the subject?
You can see our setlists for the day (complete with iTunes link to the versions of songs today):
– 1st service –
1. (A) Your Grace Is Enough
2. (Ab) The New Song We Sing
3. (Bb) Fairest Lord Jesus
– Reading of Psalm 145:8-21 into –
4. (C) Doxology//All Creatures Of Our God & King//Alleluia (we do this song with a great rock groove, but this was one of the few correct versions of the song I could find on iTunes)
– 2nd service –
1. (B) Song Of Hope (Heaven Come Down)
2. (B) One Way
3. (F) So Great
4. (C) I’d Rather Have Jesus//How I Need You (awesome song, written by family – Ryan & Charity Long)
5. (D) Lead Me To The Cross
This post is part of the sunday setlists fun over at Fred McKinnon’s blog HERE. Thanks for taking a moment to check out what we’re doing here at our church and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Dan, sounds like your team is doing great, and you’re doing a great job leading them.
I’ve always said that when you’re on stage leading anything, you need to go overboard in being expressive – people can only see what’s going on inside if you show it outside, and that’s easier done than said (I really mean it that way!).
When we’re having someone lead an individual song, we have them step forward, to signify (to themselves, as well as to the congregation) that they’re going to be the one to pay attention to, to follow.
We probably need to shore up our interactivity-ish-ness. Maybe water guns?
It’s exciting to see teams growing in interaction and expression. We’re good at this but need to make sure we don’t rest on our laurels and ensure new members also soak it in 🙂
For us, interacting with the congregation means eye contact, exhorting them(often mid-song … the worship leader will do this, while the backup singers keep singing the song, or free-worshiping during an instrumental break), and being examples of King David worshippers. Sometimes this will be lots of dancing, sometimes it will be kneeling.
We’ve never gone flat on our faces as it’s a little hard to sing that way…and we don’t often go on our knees, but it has happened.
Above all, being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s prompting for how He wants a song to be communicated. Hard to learn, but once you get there…worship is never the same and you really miss it in weeks when it doesn’t happen for whatever reason.
Oh, and beach balls or huge balloons can be fun sometimes too…but, seriously, are often a bit distracting…lol
so you’re saying that I should use water guns & beachballs to help some of our newer worship leaders – great idea! 🙂 I think that we will try and implement these radical ideas soon. Seriously though – thanks for the input. I was curious what others were doing/thinking on this subject.
aaah… the arduous task of trying to get worship team members to be expressive, transparent and accessible. Still working on it. I like the water gun idea!! LOL
Seriously, I think you have to have a chat with your senior pastor (if you are not him or her) and ask what the picture of worship you would like to see over the congregation is. Do you want to see an exuberant congregation? Are things OK now? Would you like to see a more subdued response in worship? Answering this is key because the congregation is a giant mirror of what is happening on stage. You cannot expect to see something in the congregation that you do not see on stage and this is something that I tell my worship facilitation team all the time. Dont expect to see people jumping if you yourself will not jump. Dont expect to see them smiling if you yourself will not smile. Dont expect to see raised hands if yours are firmly clamped to your side. Dont expect to see clapping if you will not initiate it… etc. I’m preaching to the choir, I know, but you asked, and I run my mouth.
Here’s a blog post in which I talk a little about the issue: http://woodvaleworship.blogspot.com/2007/12/living-sacrifices.html
PS: We decided that we wanted to have an exuberant church… we are pentecostals after all!