I suspect every worship leader has faced one--even Crowder and Tomlin have surely walked onto a stage in a room full of people who were too quiet and not planning on getting engaged in worship (although probably not recently). You're the worship leader. Your mission statement says something about "engaging, dynamic, authentic worship, yada, yada, yada," and it ain't happenin' today, my friend.

I heard a recording of Tim Hughes at a Passion conference breakout several years ago, suggesting that the usual way of dealing with those times when the people just don't seem to be engaged is to "play 'Shout to the Lord'," and if they still don't respond, play it LOUDER. (And, yes, he was joking.)

I can think of times in my own worship ministry when we've just played our hearts out--we can't possibly squeeze another ounce of passion out of the players and singers--and...blah. It feels like nobody cares that we're worshiping a risen Savior.

It just happens that way, sometimes. I suspect it happens less in larger churches, where it's much easier to reach the critical mass with a large crowd, where the energy seems to create itself. In smaller churches, it can be tough to convince enough people that they have good reason to clap their hands and join in exuberant worship.

Lest the reader think I have this all figured out, know that I am asking these questions of myself, hoping that maybe I'll be able to come up with some reasonably reliable way to help people become engaged in worship. In the meantime, I offer some suggestions, some of which I believe have actually made a bit of a difference from time to time.

1. Don't get on the crowd's case about being unenthusiastic. It just might be that YOU haven't done much to engage them. Look at what you're doing. Ask trusted team members for critique and feedback. As someone you trust in the congregation to level with you.
2. ASK them to engage. Tell them it's okay to clap, to applaud (some people come from church backgrounds where applause is frowned upon), to worship in whatever manner is meaningful to them.
3. Mix it up. If you say exactly the same sorts of things from the stage every single week, people may go into autopilot mode the moment you step to the mic. Call them to worship with Scripture, or with a song, or with media in some way. Keep 'em guessing from week to week.
4. Make sure your team looks alive. Worship is contagious. So is boredom. Do we lead worship as if we really care about it, or are we nervous, or tired, or bored? Whatever our attitude or mood, it's probably coming through.
5. Pray for your congregation and your team. Getting prepared for leading worship is a lot of work. But even if every other little job is done, if you haven't prayed for your people, you're not ready.
6. Evaluate. Whether things go well or fall flat, it might help to sit down with the team from time to time (and/or the senior pastor) and assess how we're doing.

As I noted earlier, I'm not saying we do all of this stuff right. Maybe you've got some other ideas? I'd love to hear them.

This made me laugh out loud:

more graph humor and song chart memes

I was listening the other day to one of my favorite podcasts, Geeks and God, and heard about a new site that worship leaders need to know about: Muddy River Media. This is a ministry that provides quality video, motion backgrounds, loops, countdowns, still images and more, absolutely free to churches. Yes, you read it right--FREE. Donations are accepted, of course, but Muddy River Media views itself as a missions organization, with the purpose of providing quality media resources for worship and ministry, particularly for smaller churches that don't have the budget to go buy media, or don't have the resources and talent in-house to produce their own.

If you're a worship leader or a pastor of worship arts, particularly at a smaller church with limited resources, do yourself a big favor today and check this site out.

You can find an article about the site at the Geeks and God website--the Geeks and God guys actually helped develop the site using Drupal (the same CMS we use for our church Web site and for this blog site), and they've done a great job with it.

I'm in the process of preparing to put all of the college Bible study audio up on iTunes, so I've prepared a separate page that contains all of the audio links for each of the three studies we've recorded so far, Ephesians, Mark, and Stand Firm.

You'll notice that in the menu bar below the header for this page, there is now a "Bible Teaching" menu item--click on that and it will take you to a summary page for all three studies, and clicking on the link for any one of them will take you to the list of audio files for all of the sessions in that series.

I'll let you know when I get all this stuff up on iTunes.

The audio recording of last night's College and 20-somethings Bible Study, "Stand Firm," is now available at this link.

Enjoy!

Something I mentioned in the college Bible study I teach the other night has sort of stuck with me and been rolling around in my head for the last couple of days--it has to do with worship as a response to fear. The trigger for this thinking was a story from 2 Chronicles 20 about Jehoshaphat, who was king of Judah about 850 years before Christ. Jehoshaphat received word one day that a huge, multi-national army was assembling to the east of Judah, intent on invading Judah and taking over the nation. Not exactly good news for the king, particularly in light of the fact that his army was nowhere near capable of defending his country against that kind of onslaught. His first reaction was predictable: fear and alarm.

His second reaction was that he "resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah" (v. 3). There were a lot of things he could have done in that situation--he could have sent word to any allies of Judah that they needed military help, or he could have instituted a draft to build up his own army. He could have decided it was time to flee to safety somewhere else. But instead, he chose first to seek God's help, and to get his people on board with him, through fasting (and prayer).

God sent a message to the king through Jahaziel, the son of a priest, who told him that God was going to deliver the nation, and at that point it would have been easy for the king to write the message off and continue in panic mode, but he didn't--instead, "Jehoshaphat bowed with his face to the ground, and all the people of Judah and Jerusalem fell down in worship before the LORD."

Worship might not be at the top of the list of all the things people do in the face of great fear, but for King Jehoshaphat, it must have seemed logical, so he led his whole country in worship. It must have done wonders for his faith, because the next day he got up and began encouraging his people to have faith i God. He continued to make worship his priority, even as he prepared his army to go out and meet the invading force--he appointed singers to go in front of the army as they marched, praising and worshiping God, singing, "Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever." (I confess to having somewhat mixed feelings about this, as a singer and a worship leader.)

Of course, as the story concludes, God delivered the advancing army into Jehoshaphat's hands in a miraculous way, and that's very cool, but that's not what struck me most about this story. What has stuck with me is the thought that many of the people who enter our sanctuaries on Sunday mornings enter with great fear in their hearts--they face troubling news from a doctor, or disheartening situations with a rebellious son or daughter, or the loss of a job, or perhaps the loss of a spouse, and they are afraid, not sure what to do or where to turn, and yet they have come into our auditoriums to seek God, because somehow, worshiping the God whose love endures forever has the power to calm our fears.

In worship we replace one kind of fear with another--we may come into God's presence afraid of our circumstances, afraid of the future, afraid of things over which we have no control, but when we worship God, we fear him, not in the sense of being afraid of him, but in the sense of revering him above everything else, including the situations and circumstances that have struck fear in our hearts.

Worshiping God restores our perspective on what is really important; it reminds us that God is bigger than our fears, that his love endures in spite of the things that are happening to us--worship can release us from our fears.

Jehoshaphat put worshipers at the front of the army, to encourage his army, and to help them remember that they served a God who was afraid of nothing, who loved them eternally, and who promised to deliver them. When we walk onto the stage on Sunday morning to lead our congregations in worship, we may very well be like those singers in front of the army--we may be there partly to encourage people who are afraid, to help them to have faith in God anyway.

I'm no soldier, but I'm all in for that mission.