Worship Leader Blog

I've touched on this topic before, but when I saw this photograph by Reggie Joiner, of ReThink, I decided to revisit it. The crowd in the picture sure seems to be engaged--just look at the raised hands, the mouths that are obviously singing along, the closed eyes--looks like a worshiping crowd to me.

I suspect that many, many worship leaders across the country have never seen anything like this in the congregations they serve. If you rounded up the one or two percent or so of our congregation that gets into worship like this on any given Sunday morning, you'd have a crowd of...well, three to five people, and that's on a "good" Sunday. (I'm only half-kidding about that.)

The fact that you can't snap a photo like this in your sanctuary or auditorium on a Sunday morning doesn't necessarily imply that your people aren't worshiping--our congregation never looks like this, and it could simply mean that they are characteristically reserved Midwestern folks who don't express themselves with quite as much abandon in worship as these folks obviously do. But what else could it mean?

Maybe they've never experienced worship like this before. It's possible that most of the people in your congregation have never been in a worship service where they felt the freedom to simply forget everything else and worship God with complete freedom.

Maybe it's peer pressure. There might be people who would like to be more free in their physical expression of worship, but they look around, see that most people aren't worshiping that way, and they follow suit.

Maybe the environment you've established for worship isn't conducive to the free expression you hope for. It could be that the setting just isn't right--the house lights are too bright, or the sanctuary just doesn't "feel" like the kind of place to just let it all go and put your hands in the air.

Maybe there are too many distractions. As members of the worship team, we rehearse and try to lead in a way that is as free from distracting mistakes as possible, but it might not take too many wrong notes or off-key vocals to "kill the mood."

Maybe your worship leading doesn't appear to be authentic. Ouch. If this is true, this one hurts. We strive for authenticity, but if it isn't real, it just isn't real. Some soul-searching could be in order.

Maybe you haven't reached the "cricital mass" for an exuberant worship experience. If there are only three of you in a particular row of pews, and the rows behind you and in front of you are the same way, you can feel awfully conspicuous. Most of the worship experiences I've had that resembled this picture were among thousands of people. Our sanctuary has been filling up pretty well for at least one of our worship services each Sunday, but in times when attendance has been sparse, I've tried getting people to all move to the center section--with very little success.

Maybe the music isn't loud enough. No, really. This may sound like a silly thing that shouldn't matter that much, but the truth is that when you can feel the music in your chest, the whole experience becomes more intense, and your voice doesn't stand out like a sore thumb. Might be time to turn it up a notch or two.

Maybe the house lights are too bright. Seriously, people feel less self-conscious when they are worshiping in a darker room. Light the stage or platform well, to focus attention forward, but keep the house lights low enough that those who might otherwise feel inhibited might let go a bit.

Maybe your worship leaders aren't strong enough. If this is true, that's going to hurt a bit, too, but honestly, it makes a difference. Have you put your best people up front? It might be better to go with fewer, more qualified personnel than to let inferior leaders/musicians bring the quality down. Relationally, that's not an easy thing to deal with, necessarily.

Maybe it's a matter of your church culture. The personality of a congregation is something that can take a very long time to change. In our city there are some churches where you probably could take a photo like this on any given Sunday, but many more where you couldn't come close. But pushing a cultural change to hard or too quickly can cause a lot of problems.

To be fair, I should mention that I've been in worship services where someone I saw in the congregation, someone I would have bet was bored out their skull, actually came up to me after the service to tell me how much the worship time meant to them. You can't really tell what's going on in people's hearts. A person who outwardly appears to be totally engaged in worship might actually be just going through the motions.

I suppose the bottom line for the worship leader and team is this: Be real, be prepared, do your best, and pray that God will be able to use what you do to help the people in the congregation connect with him in an authentic and life-changing way.