In an earlier post entitled Defining Worship, I introduced Harold’s Best definition of worship as continuous outpouring.
If worship encompasses all of our life, then “worship” is a much bigger concept than “praise”. In fact, we can think of “praise” as a subset of “worship”. Robert Webber once said that “worship is a verb”, but I’d like to think of it as worship being a state of being and “praise” being the verb by which “worship” is expressed.
If we refine this thought further, we can say that “praise” is the ignition point, or pilot light, of “worship”.
Think about it this way: what we do in corporate praise on a Sunday is only the start of how we live a life of worship from Monday to Saturday. Our aligning of focus towards God through praise should be the inspiration and catalyst for a life of worship demonstrated in how we live for God in the workplace, in our homes and in our communities.
This has a couple of pretty significant implications which I want to explore further in this post:
1. Who is the Real Worship Leader?
I’m not one to make a fuss about nomenclature, but I remember in the early 90s how those in worship ministry made a conscious shift from referring to the guy on stage as “song leader” to “worship leader” to the more funky Matt Redman-driven “lead worshipper”.
About 10 years ago, I said that maybe a better designation would be “worship facilitator”. I said this because I thought that the role of the guy on stage would be simply to facilitate the offering of worship for which each member of the congregation was ultimately personally responsible to bring.
These days, I don’t mind what you call the guy as long as you know what role he is fulfilling. For ease, and because of general acceptance, I tend to use “worship leader” more. In fact, when I think about it, I am now more inclined to call that guy the “praise leader” for the reasons set out at the start of this post.
But if we understand that “praise” is a subset of “worship”, we need to ask ourselves: “who then really is the worship leader”? If worship is the stuff that encompasses all of our lives, then the worship leader definitely is not the guy on stage who leads the singing for the first 30 minutes of a church service. He is, as I say, just the “praise leader”.
Neither is he the preacher, because whilst the preacher gives instructions on how we worship with our whole lives, the preacher doesn’t see to those instructions being fulfilled during the week.
So if we take this a bit further, the “praise leader” and the “preacher” on a Sunday are only the initiators. The real worship leaders are those found in the worshipping community – your spiritual mentors; your peers; your family; models of character and attitude – those who see to it (perhaps sometimes inadvertently) that in your daily life, Christlikeness is being formed in you. In other words, all of us in the church are the real worship leaders!
2. Fast Songs and Slow Songs
Those of us in worship ministry for a while will remember a time when we equated the fast songs with “praise” and the slow songs with “worship”. This created an unfortunate dichotomy where fast songs were seen as a means of emotional hype (and belonging to the “outer court” experience) whereas slow songs (in which “worship” occurs) were deep and spiritual and therefore more desirable.
Also partly because the current style of fast songs were harder to execute, I have seen some worship leaders take to the extreme of ever only singing slow songs.
For those of you as shallow as I am, it meant that people got bored during the Sunday services.
If we understand that what we are doing on a Sunday is “praise” and the catalyst for our daily worship, then the distinction between fast songs being “praise” and slow songs being “worship” is no longer valid. This is a great leveller between fast and slow songs.
So, I would suggest that intimately seeking God in a slow song has just as much significance as exuberant celebration through the fast song. A cursory glance through the Psalms will confirm this: we are commanded as much to thirst and hunger for God as we are to clap our hands and celebrate his victories.
Because of this, I now try to give as much “air time” to both fast and slow songs.
One day, when the time is right, I will lead a worship set that consists only of fast songs – for no other reason than perhaps to address the imbalance and to get us thinking. For that, I’m going to need a drummer with heaps of stamina!
The Worship Revolution 