Today, I want to start a new occasional series called “Week 5 Chronicles”. In my church, we organise worship teams in four bands. Band 1 plays on the first Sunday of the month, Band 2 plays on the second Sunday and so forth. Every three months, however, we have a fifth Sunday of the month for which no band is rostered. We’ve now been using Week 5 as an opportunity to experiment with different worship formats.
If you attend a contemporary church, chances are your worship will involve singing 2 fast songs and 2 slow songs, accompanied by a band situated on the stage, led by a worship leader. The size of the band will often depend on the size of your congregation, but the usual setup will include singers, guitar, keyboard, bass and drums.
The congregation would face the stage and stare at a screen on which the lyrics to the songs are projected.
There’s nothing wrong with this and it seems like it has been the preferred format for congregational worship since the advent of the praise and worship movement.
But you’ve got to ask the question: where in the Bible do we find such a description of the church’s worship? In fact, whilst the Bible informs and reveals principles of worship, the New Testament is almost deliberately silent on format. This, at least, suggests that there is an almost boundless freedom in the way the church today is able to express its worship, be it in the Charismatic “in-the-spirit-spontaneous” worship, indigenous chants or liturgical high church mode.
The Week 5 Chronicles series then is an attempt to bring you on our church’s journey in experimenting with different ways of doing congregational worship. We’re not compromising on principles, because the cross of Christ and God’s glory must always remain central to our worship. Hopefully, however, it will inspire you to see that worship can be done in different ways and encourage you to “mix up” your church’s worship expression.
Change is actually a good thing. I know of one church which deliberately changes the way it does its services, even when it’s working well. This teaches the congregation to be flexible and willing to embrace new things.
Last Sunday, we stripped it back a little and did an acoustic, chapel-style set. The stage was set up with a lit-up cross at the centre, and a small group of musicians (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, cajon, keyboard and singers) sitting in a semi circle around the cross. The set up had the cross between the musicians and the congregation so that cross was (in effect) in the centre of the gathering.
For a while, even as our music team has been growing in technical excellence over the last many months, I’ve wondered whether our church has really understood the real meaning of worship, of bringing their own sacrifices, that ultimately, it didn’t matter about the music. Paring back the music was an opportunity for the congregation to hear their own voices fill the atmosphere with praises to God. It was a reminder that, sometimes, we can mask our praises underneath the sound created by the few (the musos on stage) whereas God has always been after the heartfelt offerings of the many.
So here is our songlist from yesterday’s session:
// This I Believe (The Creed) (G)
// When I Survey The Wondrous Cross (G)
// Scripture Reading – Phil 2:5-11
// This is Our God (Chorus only) (E)
// Broken Vessels (Chorus only) (E)
// This is Our God (E) (Reprise)
// No Other Name (E)
And here’s the recording:
What other ways have you tried to do your Sunday worship services differently?
The Worship Revolution 