Do you understand the words you are putting into my mouth? Part 2

As someone who has worked most of my life in the arena of Christian worship I know that one of the biggest struggles in worship planning, whether people know it or not, is song selection. Two posts ago I wrote about contemporary worship music and finding value in some of the more popular songs. So how does this fit with what I was rambling about in part one? It is easy to select songs on auto pilot, to just pick a song because it is powerful or emotional or says some nice things. Even when being intentional, song selection is a difficult task. This past Sunday I was in a service where a song contained one line that referenced something from the parable of the Prodigal Son, one line that referred to some Old Testament prophecy about Christ dying and one line that was something nice Christian people say – kind of like “Pray a hedge of protection.” (that wasn’t the line, but you know what I mean… who says hedge of protection anyway??). I felt like you needed a degree in Biblical Literature to figure out what the song was about. The point is, as lead worshipers, we cannot just pick songs on auto pilot, shove words, terms and phrases into peoples mouths and expect everything to be OK. Picking songs without considering its inherent context and then neglecting the context of your congregation is a travesty. Moving to a model where all imagery and metaphor is left out is not necessary. However what is needed is for song selection to become more of an art form rather than a "thing to do."

Every person has their own context; their own story. But that doesn’t mean we water down the message – Service content and structure is the most important thing. Songs shouldn’t just be thought of thoroughly, but I would take it a step further and suggest that everything that happens in a corporate worship service must flow from the same point.

The purpose of a corporate service should be obvious not because the pastor says so half way through, but because there is a clear focus on the content of worship. The beauty liturgy is that everything focuses around the content – living out God’s story for the world. The beauty of freedom in worship is that we can tailor the structure around that content to fit our local context and community. Even if common sense is untrustworthy we are not left to our own devices. Things like Calvin’s Five Points or the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (scripture, reason, tradition, experience) do come from men but have proven themselves through time. We can also look to the early church fathers and even Christ as our example. Even then we are one with Christ through the Holy Spirit. But as leaders in worship we need to start with self sacrifice; we lay down personal preference and truly consider the community. The truth in the message may only count in the hearts and minds of a specific community, so we must be careful – truth may end up being missed all together. I don’t think corporate worship will ever be perfect until we reached heaven, where we will no longer be corrupt and faulty. But I do think we need to consider the whole person, physically, mentally and spiritually, into account before when planned how they will meet God as a community.