The nuts and bolts of Worship Planning
I can’t tell you how many times when I first began leading worship that I sat down to plan a worship order and the blinking cursor on the screen just sat there… and blinked… and taunted me. I mean, how are you supposed to, week after week, plan a worship order that is fresh, creative, biblical, familiar, and helps people worship? What a weight. Some weeks, I found myself just slapping some songs, Scriptures, prayers, and sermons onto the digital piece of paper in front of me and calling it a day. Other times I would spend an hour before I even began to have a clue of which direction to go first. Or I would find something in between those two extremes.
I would like to share with you some basic principles that we use in our worship planning. This is a place to start. It’s not found in the Bible nor am I saying it is the best or only way. It’s just the way we’ve found that we gives us a starting direction when we sit down to plan a worship gathering for our church. Below you will find some basic principles we use in how we craft liturgies for our church.
Always begin with prayer. We have a saying around our worship fam, “If you don’t have time to pray, you don’t have time to plan.” Bob Kauflin in his book Worship Matters very helpfully reminds us that the Holy Spirit can work just as much in the planning as He can in the spontaneous or the implementation of the plan. I know it sounds basic but ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Don’t try to do it on your own power… you don’t have enough on your own anyway.
Support the pinnacle… the preaching of God’s Word: We believe that the preaching of God’s Word is the pinnacle and premiere moment of the gathering. What is the passage for the day? What is the main point your teaching pastor wants driven home? How can the songs, readings, transitions, videos, or other elements thread to the main point of the sermon? How do you get people’s hearts thinking about what your teaching pastor is going to preach on before he even says a word?
Familiarity with a dash of new: We sometimes over think what we need in our gatherings. People need a familiarity they can grab onto, but it’s also often helpful to shake things up a bit to not let people get stuck in a rut and to do things by rote. Do new songs, but do old ones too (not just hymns, but like old worship songs). Have enough familiarity to the order that people aren’t pulled out of moments, but don’t always leave things the same where they can check out. Serve the people, not the latest and greatest trends.
Be the best you that you can be: This applies to your whole team. Try not to pick songs that your team will have a hard time executing. If you have stronger female voices one week than you do males…lean into that. Give them the songs to lead. When you plan a moment, who is the best person to speak into the room for that moment? Identify that person and lean into their leadership.
Be you. Serve your church: I’m all about stealing the best ideas from other churches and ministries I admire, but don’t get caught up in trying to be them. Contextualize all that you see to what serves your church the best. Major on what they respond to and minimize what hinders their response to the glory of God.
Be prepared: Some of this comes from just doing it over and over for years, but one thing I’ve learned is that docs can help you plan better. Have a doc of your song list and categorize it in a helpful way. (Song Selection Doc). Have a creative element doc (Creative Element Doc). Create a list of general ideas you can go to when you feel stuck. Think of these things like candy wrappers. You can wrap whatever truth your teaching pastor is leaning into on a specific morning, but the wrapper might look different. Have specific video sites you can go to to see if there is a pre-made video you can use or re-shoot in-house to better fit your sermon that day.
I could go on and on (maybe I will in future articles), but these are great starting points and principles to put into place as you begin to craft a worship order for your church.