For Worship Leaders | Category Archive

After the Together for the Gospel conference, I received a lengthy e-mail from a worship pastor in attendance who shared a current dilemma his pastoral team is facing. They have been “wrestling with how to best be obedient to Scripture in our corporate worship through song.” His church contains people who are “naturally NOT very expressive AT ALL” during that time. So he asks:

“Exactly how, and how much should we encourage our people to follow the numerous commands throughout Scripture of bodily expression (as a natural outpouring of the heart)?

First, I want to thank this pastor and his team for their humility in seeking to wrestle through this issue from a biblical perspective. His background and training have minimized physical expression, but he is realizing that although bodily expression …

continue reading…

In 1971, the great 20th century preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, brought these remarks to an annual Minister’s conference:

“We must not be content until we have had some manifestation of the activity of God. We must concentrate on this. This is my plea, that we concentrate on this, because it is the great message of the Bible, so substantiated by the lessons of history. That is obviously today the only thing that gives us any hope as we face the future. And God seems to be saying that to us. ‘Prove Me now. Try Me. Risk your everything on Me. Be fools for My sake. Cast yourselves utterly upon this belief.’ Let us put it like this: Do we really believe that God can still act? That is the question; that is

…

continue reading…

This question came from a gentleman who works at a Christian school. Every Friday a 4-5 piece band has been leading the 6th through 12th graders in a time of “praise and worship.” However, most of the students aren’t Christians. The leadership is changing so he wrote in:

“This year the students have really got into creating motions akin to "Christian line dancing" in a very "worshiptainment" atmosphere. I don’t like it but have been powerless to change it. There has been a lot of disagreement over the years as to the proper focus of our Friday service. Do we try to have a worship focus or, because so many of our students are lost, do we have a Christian concert/evangelism approach, or is it possible to do both?”

Thanks for

…

continue reading…

In the latest issue of Christianity Today, Chuck Colson has an article entitled “Soothing Ourselves to Death.” He begins with this paragraph:

When church music directors lead congregations in singing contemporary Christian music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We’d been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called “Draw Me Close to You,” which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed. “Let’s sing that again, shall we?” he asked. “No!” I shouted, loudly enough to send heads all around me spinning while my wife, Patty, cringed.

He goes on to say that much of the music written for the church has …

continue reading…

I’m in the middle of a writing retreat, working on a book for Crossway Publishers. I mentioned a while back that this book was going to cause me cut back on blogging somewhat.

However, I wanted to finish this series today so that I could move on to other things next week. Watts’ final chapter is called “Persuasive Arguments to Learn to Pray.” He begins:

“It is to little purpose that the nature of prayer is explained, so many rules framed and directions given to teach persons this divine skill of prayer, if they are not persuaded of the necessity and usefulness of it.” (p. 167)

In other words, it’s useless talking about it if we don’t actually do it. He lays out six reasons why we should learn to pray.

1. 

…

continue reading…

Over the past few weeks I’ve been sharing summaries of chapters from the book A Guide to Prayer by Isaac Watts. I’ve been using it in my own prayer times, and want to share the benefits. I know I could be addressing many other topics, and will eventually get to them. But if my sense is right, I think that prayer, both public and private, is an area of our relationship with God that we would all love to grow in.

In his chapter on The Spirit of Prayer Watts reminds us that all the rules and directions he’s laid out for praying will be ineffective without the aid of God’s Spirit. After providing extensive Scriptural support for the Spirit helping us in prayer ( Zeph. 12:10ERROR: No passage found for your query.

…

continue reading…

I’m continuing my summary of the chapters from Isaac Watts A Guide to Prayer, which is enriching my communication with God. Today, I’m reviewing Chapter 3, The Grace of Prayer.

Watts distinguishes the gift and the grace of prayer in this way:

“The gift chiefly consists in a readiness of thought appropriate to the various parts of prayer, and a facility of expressing those thoughts in speaking to God. The grace consists in the inward workings of the heart and conscience toward God and religion.”

In other words, the grace of prayer refers to the life, affection, sincerity, and vigor that characterize our praying. It stems from an awareness of God’s favor and a dependence on His work in us. Although this is a short chapter, it’s a significant topic. It’s hard

…

continue reading…

Yesterday I shared my burden for giving more attention to the way we pray, both publicly and privately. This is an area I very much want to grow in. For that reason I picked up Isaac Watts’ A Guide to Prayer. I’ve been so encouraged by it, I wanted to give you a synopsis of the chapters to motivate you in your own pursuit of a rich prayer life.

Today, I’m looking at Chapter 2, The Gift of Prayer. Watts defines the gift of prayer as:

“An ability to suit our thoughts to all the various parts and designs of this duty, and a readiness to express those thoughts before God in the fittest manner to profit our own souls as well as the souls of others that join with us.”

…

continue reading…

While I was in India, I finished reading A Guide to Prayer, by the well known hymn writer, Isaac Watts. I was impressed by his humble, practical, and biblical approach to this topic that is more often discussed than done.

I’ve asked Mark Mullery to address the issue of praying publicly at this year’s WorshipGod06 conference. I think we often don’t realize what a significant means of edification, training, and grace public prayer can be for the people we serve. Of course, it might be difficult to imagine when our prayers often sound something like this:

Father God, we just come before you today, Lord, to say we love you, Jesus, and Spirit, we just want you to be blessed by our coming together today, Lord God, and

…

continue reading…

I was going to entitle this post “Final Thoughts,” but that’s probably not going to happen. One of the reasons I started this blog was to explore this role in an ongoing way. But this does mark the end of the series on the role of the corporate worship leader. Really.

If you’re a musician who is responsible to lead others in praising God, I pray you’ve been served by this series. I’m grateful for those of you who have taken the time to post an encouraging comment, expand upon my thoughts, or ask questions. We need to continually ask ourselves if what we’re doing is lining up with Scripture.

On most Wednesday mornings I have the joy of meeting with the 19 men who are currently in the Sovereign Grace Pastor’s …

continue reading…