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February 11, 2009
use some common sense & prepare well
Here are the notes from this week’s Equipped for Life Seminar at HT Cambridge.
The notes are not as extensive as last weeks, apologies.
The practicalities of worship leading
When exploring further the calling and anointing that God has placed on your life to be a lead worshiper, it is essential that you allow space to develop these worship leading giftings: both in terms of the practical mechanics of leading congregational worship and also the vital role of being a team pastor.
These seminars have been designed to “equip you for life”: not only facilitate HT church in Cambridge but also, and more importantly that when the time comes for you as lead worshippers to leave, that you would do so sent out full of passion, excitement and an ability to facilitate the wider church to glorify God and lift high the name of Jesus. In whatever situation that you find yourself called to; be that leading at a small group or heading up a large worship ministry, it’s our desire that you would be part of a herald of fresh expressions of praise and worship.
Encouraging the development of the practical aspects of worship leading
So often when we are preparing to lead worship, we can think so much about Response – how can we get people to respond to God? – singing/clapping/dancing etc.
What we should be doing is to be thinking in terms of revelation. Worship is a response to revelation…are we allowing space for the holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to people in our worship? Are people getting a revelation of the Father in our times of sung worship?
Encouraging the development of a musical gifting
As we seek to develop our spiritual life, worship leader giftings, pastoral giftings and giftings in the practicalities of worship leading so also we should be developing our musical giftings. We have a responsibility to pursue musical excellence through the discipline of rehearsal, study, and developing our musical ear by listening to new songs and sounds.
I believe that God deserves our all and our excellence and I want to encourage you in the development of excellence in your musical gifting. It’s our responsibility to take care of and grow what we have been given.
Jesus told a parable of Talents in Matthew 25 which outlined several servants who were given talents to look after, tend and multiple, each of them responded differently to this task, some did not succeed but others did so well that they were given more and an abundance.
In Exodus 31 we read about a man called Bezalel who was chosen by God, filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts to be a priest in charge of decorating the tent of meeting as an act of worship and so other people could come and worship. This man worked hard at his gifting and was rewarded with the privilege of serving in a position of leadership and priest hood.
It is so important to push forward as much as possible in musical excellence both in terms of warming up our voices (buying a warm up CD), having new sets of strings on our guitars, making sure we have leads and tuners that work. Not being cheap on the equipment that we purchase. Learning the chords to the songs we sing, learning new chords, get help from friends who play or sing. Paying for singing lessons. Buying new CDs and learning the new songs. Learning how other musical instruments in the band work and sound and knowing how to communicate musically with them.
Encouraging the development of creative giftings
Creative giftings can be developed in many areas – song writing being perhaps the obvious one – from song arrangements, to a freshening up old hymns, playing around with the band set-up, not just having the back line (drums/bass/keys/electric) but also plugging in a string section or brass grouping or maybe doubling up the harmonies to create a more anthemic sound to a set.
A great way to explore creativity is to find out how a song might sound when it is played chordally slightly differently to usual – playing a D in a C position (sliding the C shape up to the third fret, maybe playing in C using Capo 5 and playing in a G shape. Using open chords instead or bar chords. Which keys work best in which settings? – bring it down for a smaller gathering and taking it up for a larger one.
As mentioned before the most obvious way to explore creativity in musical worship is through song writing. Song writing is a great thing to work on. Although we may not feel like we are getting anywhere with our song writing, I believe the act itself of setting time aside to explore a fresh way of expressing something lyrically and musically is such an important one and like the act of instrumental or vocal practice the harder we work on it, the better we become.
Song writing forums online
If you have melodic or lyrical idea then keep going with it, keep developing it. Learn to keep a spiritual journal and a creative journal, record ideas on your phone or computer when you get them. Be praying for God to help you to be more creative and for the gifting of creativity to grow within you.
At the same time our spiritual preparation can become so spiritual that we forget to use some common sense and prepare well.
DISCUSSION POINT:
What are the general questions that we should we ask ourselves when preparing to lead worship?
Often preparing to lead worship is all about asking the right questions.
1.What has God been saying to the group/church recently?
2. How many people will be there?
3. What type of event is it? Prayer, celebration, funeral!
4. Are the congregation musical? Males v Females split?
5. What musicians/PA will I be working with?
6. How much time do we have to practise/sound check?
In our sung worship, intimacy with God is the goal – A place of engagement or encounter. This is about taking people on a journey. Our question then becomes “where are we leading people?” We need to have the destination in our sights.
DISCUSSION POINT:
What are specific questions that we should we ask ourselves when preparing to lead worship?
1. Consistency
2. Repertoire
3. Song Selection
4. Bringing Something Fresh (introducing new songs)
5. Band Arrangements
6. Leaving Space For Spontaneity
7. Dynamics
8. Content v Engagement
9. Use of Keys
10. Leading To The Congregation – Leading Sensitively
11. Warming Up – spirit, hands and voices
12. Effective Sound Checking and Run-Through
13. Preparing Equipment – strings, batteries, song words etc
14. Good tuners/decent Equipment
I’m going to pick out some of these points now and expand on them and we will look at some of the others next week.
Consistency
It’s really important to provide consistency in a worship ministry. Consistency in the standard of the musical output, consistency in the sound quality, consistency in the repertoire lists. This can be harder to implement however when there are multiple lead worshippers, each of who may have a different ideas about things.
Consistency provides the congregation with a certain level of comfort and security and can help to provide some identity in order to feel at home.
Stylistically, the worse case scenario would be if a church was made to taste a different musical menu each week…this could be done through having songs from a different decade chosen each week, or different origin of style each week, i.e. Hillsong one week, Soul Survivor/New Wine another, Spring Harvest another, New Frontiers another etc…or even the way they are led being different each week.
Styles and creativity is important but give people a safe lead to follow. See how the styles are completely different, all expressions of praise, and could be great as individual events, but may be slightly complicating to follow if you mixed it up week in week out, people would definitely get lost and confused stylistically.
That said…It is important to mix things up every so often so people don’t get too familiar and so comfortable that they just sing the words and loose sight of why or who they are worshiping. This can be done in several ways; being musically creative, choosing songs wisely each service…i.e. not choosing the same songs each time you lead and bringing freshness to an old song through a new arrangement or teaching a completely new song.
Repertoire
Reduce the size of the repertoire list and put a limit on it.
Think of breaking up the list into different sections – a new songs section, a current repertoire section and an archive section.
Always build up your set list from the current repertoire section, introduce new songs as regularly as you can without completely overdosing the congregation. Only dip into the archive section when you really need to.
The repertoire list could be broken down even further. Think about having sections like Upbeat, Contemplative, Hymn, Children’s Songs, My repertoire list is not broken down into as many sections, simply into the following: New Songs, Current Songs – Songs, Hymns, Children’s Songs, Tags.
Another good rule to apply might be as you introduce a new song, move a couple of the existing new songs into the current list and a couple of the existing current songs into the repertoire list and then knock off a couple of the archived songs.
DISCUSSION POINT:
Song Selection
How should we go about choosing what songs to sing?
1. What has God been saying to the group/church recently?
2. How many people will be there?
3. What type of event is it? Prayer, celebration, funeral!
4. Are the congregation musical? Males v Females split?
5. What musicians/PA will I be working with?
6. How much time do we have to practise/sound check?
Thematics:
Perhaps you might want to pick up the them of Splendour & Majesty, you may have chosen songs like Wake every heart/The Splendour of the King/our God is and awesome God/Our god reigns, a good scripture here might be: Psalm 93
Keys:
What works together – one key overload!
Upbeat/downbeat:
What’s important? Where are the congregation at?
Song Maping:
Think away from a set list and think of a spider chart – a central song to start – then if it should go one the n this songs, then if it should go another way, then this song.
Where are you leading?:
Upbeat for a big congregation not always appropriate for small groups!
Bringing something fresh – introducing new songs
Ensure that you back new songs up. If there are multiple worship leaders or you are leading at different events and services make sure that you lead the new songs at each service. This plants the song into people heads and provides consistency across the ‘diet’ of repertoire.
Be constructive with how the song is introduced…consider leading it for two weeks, rest it for the third, then bring it back in the fourth whilst also teaching another new song. This is a fairly good system to ensure that new songs are always being introduced.
Be honest about whether the song is being caught by the church or not. If it’s not then don’t drag it out for weeks and weeks. However, at the same time don’t write the song off too quickly, it could be a simple thing of changing the arrangement or dropping or raising the key to make it more accessible.
It’s good to remember the entire congregation when introducing new songs think about searching out new children’s songs and songs that are more hymn like in style.
Lyrical and musically would the songs work in your setting. If you are leading at a smaller setting such as a prayer meeting or fellowship than perhaps a more anthemic song wouldn’t really work. Another consideration is if the lyrics are pretty complex in content or theology then the congregations may spend so long thinking about what is being sung then they will forget who they are singing to. More information on this is found under the content verse engagement section.
Leaving Space for Spontaneity in Worship
There is a great podcast on the worship central by Stuart Townend, which is well worth a listen, so I won’t say much more about it.
His main passage of scripture is 1 Corinthians 14: 26 which says:
Content Vs. Engagement
Perhaps wimping out a bit again but I want to draw your attention to an article by Matt Redman on the subject, which is great. He is talking primarily on the subject of song writing, but I think it is just as important when chosing songs and set lists.
content-vs-engagement-matt-redman - see me for a hand out of this article
He closes by saying “Let us aim to write songs that reveal something of the wonderful mysteries of God, and at the same give the worshipper space to respond Him simply and wholeheartedly.”
Use of musical keys
Again, wimping out, but I want to push you toward an article that I found that considers the use of keys in song writing/ score writing.
Next week we’ll carry on this discussion about the ‘mechanics’ of leading worship, in particular, focusing on leading with sensitivity, leading the congregation – not being led by the congregation, dynamics, bands arrangements,warming up – spirits, hands and voices. We’ll also be looking at how to develop a worship leader gifting with emphasis of how to get involved at HT Cambridge
February 11, 2009
angel of the south
I like what one correspondent said:
It looks extremely silly
This is going to be located between my parents house in Kent and London. So every time I drive to see them I’m going to see this giant horse. I can understand the concept of the Kentish Invicta white horse, and I like the fact that it is a bold and radical statement. A waste of money (£2m)? perhaps but fairly fun. A modernist conceptual piece of art by Mark Wallinger. It gets my vote!
