How Can We Do Sung-Worship Well?

Introduction

In my (Charismatic Protestant) branch of the Church we love sung worship. Sung worship is very important to us as it has been throughout the history of the Church. 

This is not just a question of taste or preference. It expresses something profound about who we are and how we encounter God on a deep level. St Augustine wrote that “singing is for one who loves” while an ancient proverb reads that “he who sings, prays twice”.¹ In the New Testament we find Christ and his disciples singing as they head for the Mount of Olives on the night of his betrayal,  St Paul commanding the church in Ephesus to “[speak] to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Finally, John’s vision of heaven echoes with the sound of the song of the redeemed and angelic bests falling before the glorified and exalted Lamb of God.

Sung worship is powerful. It draws us close to God in our minds and our hearts. It can lift the brokenhearted and put strength in the legs of the weary. To lead sung worship is a wonderful and fearsome thing. The words we sing, particularly when we are young, are the words we carry with us and which in times of exaltation and desolation we will reach for to find comfort, hope and to direct our paths. To some extent, therefore, to lead sung worship is to stand as liturgist, preacher, counsellor and guide for the whole congregation.

The songs we sing reflect and shape who we are, who we will become and what we will become. This means we need to take sung worship seriously. Doing it well is a priority for us.  

At my church are blessed to be led in the sung parts of our services by some gifted and godly leaders and singers. We want to empower and trust you to lead in accordance with the gifts God has given each of you. These guidelines are given in order to enable us to benefit from you and you to grow as you minister to us.

Values Behind Sung-Worship

At HBC we find it helpful to think about what we do and believe in terms of core values. We want to be people who are Bible saturated, Spirit dependent, loving of others, and courageous in mission. Each of these has relevance to sung worship.

Bible Saturated

Sung worship needs to be saturated with truth both about God and about us. This flows from two ideas we find in Scripture and the Christian Tradition.

Responding to Truth

First, sung worship flows from Truth because it is a response to what we have seen of God. For example, in Revelation 14:1-3 John describes the scene in heaven as he sees “the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion” followed in response by overwhelming music “like that of harpists playing their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne.” 

Sung worship, in this sense, is not the warm up to get us in the right place to begin to worship. It is also not something that we come to “cold”, so to speak. As both worship leaders and a congregation we sing in response to the reality of who God is being revealed to us. This is why our services begin with prayer for God to draw worship from us followed by a reading from Scripture or a testimony. We sing in response to God. It also means that as worship and service leaders we need to be immersed in worship and Scripture throughout the week so that we have seen Christ and can respond to him in faith as we lead others.

Communicating Truth

Second, sung worship is Bible saturated because when we sing we are teaching. In Colossians 3:16, Paul writes:

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

Singing is teaching. Even more than a sermon, the sung worship in our services shapes how people think about God and themselves. At its most basic level this means that the songs we sing must be biblically orthodox.

In addition to each song’s content being true in itself, the balance of song themes and contents overall must be helpful, forming the congregation in a particular way. For example, we should ensure that over the course of a typical month we are singing hymns and songs  that reflect on who God is in himself, on what he has done for us (chiefly in Jesus) and on our response to, and experience of,  him.

Ensuring this happens is a partnership between the sung worship leader and the Elders and other leaders in the church. We need to be meeting regularly to reflect, pray and oversee what we are doing and ensure it is biblically sound and balanced.

Spirit Dependent

In addition to being Bible saturated, sung worship should also be Spirit dependent. Again, this has multiple dimensions.

Prepared in Prayer

Being Spirit dependent means, first and foremost, being immersed in prayer. This begins in the week prior to the service as everyone involved in leading seeks Christ for both the inspiration and the ability to worship. As the Psalmist prays:

Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.

But prayer does not cease when we begin to lead. Rather, prayer becomes for the worshipper a disposition of our hearts, orienting ourselves towards Christ, listening all the time even as we sing for what the Spirit might be saying to us and through us.

Prepared to Pray

Being Spirit dependent means being willing to pray at the front of church if it seems appropriate and right. The sung worship leader is also, at that moment, the chief liturgist in the church, shaping how we, as a people, respond to what we were heard either in prayer or, if appropriate, through the prophetic gifts. 

Obviously, this looks different at different points in the service and depends on whether there are, for example, young children present or a preacher has gone over his allocated time. What is important is the posture of prayer and a willingness and confidence to respond to it if it seems right.

Flexibility

Finally, while the Sunday worship service has a high degree of order to it both to enable us to worship well and to make it accessible for guests, especially if they were young children, part of being Spirit dependent in leading sung worship is flexibility. 

Depending on what the Spirit is doing, you might want to swap out a song for one you think is more appropriate at that moment. Generally that is fine；we would encourage and support you in that. Equally the overall service leader (if they are a different person) might want to drop or add a song or silence to enable a different form of response. Again, this is fine;  we want to listen to what the Spirit is saying and doing.

Courageous in Mission and Loving of Others

What, then, of our final two values? To be courageous in mission as a sung worship leader means to be willing to be vulnerable by being on display at the front of church. To stand in front of a room of one hundred or more people and sing is already an act of courage, not least because it requires you publicly to declare your faith in a way that is not required of an ordinary church member.

More than this, however, there is courage in leading sung worship for a church that comprises a wide range of people of different ages and backgrounds. Doing so well requires the leader to deny their own desires and preferences in order to minister effectively to the congregation.

In turn this leads us to our final value, being loving of others. For the sung worship leader this consists of two principles. 

First, they should practise so that they know the songs they are singing and are able to lead as well and as unobtrusively as they are able. To serve well is itself an act of love. 

Second, however, the sung worship leader shows love for others by denying their own preferences in relation to presentation, set length or song choice in order effectively to minister to the needs of the congregation. In this way they choose to focus their selection around how first to love and honour God and then second to serve the needs of the other. This is essentially an ascetic practice and as such is not pleasant. Yet in the midst of the discomfort, and even occasional irritation, that accompanies all forms of self-denial for the sake of another, there is the opportunity to become closer to Christ both for the leader (who embodies his self-giving love) and for the congregation (who sees the love of Christ reflected in the leader’s love for them).

1. Augustine, Sermon 336. ↩︎