How to Start a God-Centered Contemporary Worship Service

by Lou Dicker

One of the questions commonly asked is: "How do we start a Contemporary worship service?" Before answering this question a more important question needs to be answered, which is "Why? Why have a contemporary service?" If the answer is because we don't like traditional music, or we want to draw more people, or the church down the road is doing it, then I believe the attempt will probably fail. If the motivation is to display the glory of God, follow God's leading and to worship and glorify Him, then I believe the Lord will bless the efforts we make to honor Him. Let us look at these reasons.

If you don't like traditional music remember that all traditional music was once contemporary! After a contemporary service someone commented that a song that had been introduced five years earlier was dated.

Both contemporary & traditional music bring glory to God when it is our heart's intent to glorify Him. Neither gives glory to God if we attempt to bring "glory" or recognition to ourselves or gratify our desires (believe me, I've tried it).

One church stated they were looking for ways to bring more people to their church. When we try to cater to the culture or to the individual preferences our deep God felt needs are not met. People will come a few times and then disappear. Only God can fill us with what we really need. Also, if the church does not offer something different than the world offers i.e.; faith, hope and love, then we cease to have a purpose to exist. The world recognizes a counterfeit or imitation of itself. Ever wonder why many churches with a liberal doctrine have poor attendance and poor financial support from the congregation? Church is just one more place to socialize.

Besides all this, God will not be involved in something that does not honor Him. The first commandment, "Thou shall not have any false gods before me," is still true.

People come to church looking for answers to questions that the world can not answer! At a friend's father's funeral service I was very sad and depressed. Not because my friend's father died, whom I had known most of my life, but the memorial service offered no hope. Only that he was a nice person and we will miss him. No hope of eternal life, no hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This man was a member of the church for most of his life. No message of hope or salvation was mentioned during the entire ceremony. Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit must be present. The reason we go to church is to worship God Almighty, to seek His glory, grace, and truth.

WORSHIP

Worship is our primary responsibility before God. It is the purpose for which we are made. God desires to be in relationship with us and we can respond to His love by worshipping Him.

How then do we worship God? Fortunately God does not ask us to perform superhuman feats and acts of great bravery. Rather He wants us to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, clap our hands, sing praises to His Name, (Psalm 47) pray (Psalm 32:6) share His word (1 Cor 1:17-18) through preaching, teaching, and testimonies. Most of us can make a joyful noise, sing, clap and share what God has done in our life, therefore we are all able to worship our holy, almighty, loving and awesome God.

GETTING STARTED

To start a contemporary worship service I suggest that you:

First approach members who have demonstrated some leadership ability and will help organize and support you. You will need both a worship leader and individuals who provided organizational support.

You can hire a music director to lead contemporary worship. Be sure you have the support of the congregation.

Assembling a worship team can be as simple as one person playing an instrument and singing. We started with 5 people, a guitarist, two vocalists, a worship leader and someone to change the overhead transparencies. We now have 35 members which include two worship teams, sound and setup crew, and several worship leaders.

Identify those with musical talents and gifts. You personally do not need these yourself. When I was introduced to the young adult member of the church who organized their contemporary service I was surprised that he could neither sing on key or clap to the beat. But he loved the Lord and got people involved who could carry out the vision.

INTRODUCTION

Once you have the leadership, musicians, singers and support, you need to determine how you will introduce the new style of worship and music to the congregation. Here are a number of ways to introduce contemporary music and worship. None are better then the other. You need to prayerfully decide what will work. A combination of these may be what is needed. This has worked well in several churches.

Start small (Matt 25:21) "He who is faithful with a few things greater things will be given to him."

Introduce one song during the service as special music.

Lead 10 minutes of music and worship right before the service begins.

Invite a contemporary worship team from another church to lead a part of the service. One church asked us to work with them and said they definitely wanted a contemporary service. After several weeks of frustration and not being able to find anyone who really had a heart or vision for contemporary worship we suggested that they experience a contemporary service hoping that they would catch the vision. The average age of the congregation was about 55 years old. We came to the church as planned and led the first half of the service with 2 guitarists, a keyboard player and three vocalists. After the service was over the congregation voted almost unanimously that they did not want contemporary worship. (We were not that bad, honest.) They just had not understood what a contemporary worship was.

Hold a special service at a time other then the regular service such as Wednesday night out or other midweek activities. Friday night or Saturday night have worked however, Sunday night did not work well for us.

Have a song fest with contemporary music.

Offer a time of Prayer and Praise for 20 to 30 minutes, earlier in the morning before the regular service. This has often been the seed for a second service.

Once you have some support, like about 15 people outside those directly involved in the worship, you may be ready to start something regular.

In one small congregation that desired to attract new members they added 15 minutes to the service. This allowed the worship team 15 minutes after the opening of the service to lead worship and did not take anything away from the existing service, but added a richness that everyone enjoyed.

Adding a second service to give the congregation and local community the opportunity a choose of traditional or contemporary worship has worked well for many churches.

WHAT'S NEEDED

One of the advantages of contemporary worship is that it can be as simple or complex as we want it to be. I have led 40 people in worship on the beach with just an acoustic guitar and song sheets; 80 people with a guitar, a microphone and an overhead projector, and 40 to 400 people with a fully equipped, 7 piece; 14 member praise band. The purpose is to glorify the Lord, not put on a performance.

Here is what you will need:

Most important is a heart that loves the Lord and a desire to help others worship God.

Music that is God centered, Biblically correct, and singable. Be flexible, not all songs that we like work for congregational worship. There seems to be an endless supply of great music from which to choose. Try Maranatha, Integrity Music, Vineyard, Hillsongs, contemporary artists such as Twila Paris, Wayne Watson and Michael W. Smith. We have had great success jazzing up songs from the hymnal. Many know the words and a new melody or rhythm gives a fresh meaning to the text.

Words. Often new music is introduced so you need to make the words available to the assembly. An overhead projector and a screen are not too expensive and using them helps avoid violating copyright laws. (Yes, Christian musicians have to eat too.) Purchasing song books also works but limits you to the songs in the book.

Instruments. The easiest instrument to sing along with is the piano because it can play the melody. We started our first services with one acoustic guitarist and two vocalists who could sing loud enough to be heard. Over time we added a pianist, drummer, bass guitarist, synthesizer, electric guitar, congos and more vocalists. On some Sundays we invite other musicians and singers who can not play on a regular basis but are willing to share their gifts and talents. We have had a flutist, organist, dulcimer, trumpets and even a shofar (ram's horn). On the Sunday they play we invite them to provide a piece of music or we select music that is appropriate for that instrument. This adds variety and freshness to the service. It provides others an opportunity to glorify God and gives the worship team a break. One Sunday a bag pipe player started playing in the back of the church and marched up the aisle kilt and all. People talked about it for weeks. This method also works to recruit new worship team members.

Practice. It is important to set a time to practice together REGULARLY. Not only do you learn to perform together but you learn each others strengths and weaknesses. Have you ever tried to play with a musician who changes the rhythm half way through the song. Unless you have played with others before you are use to playing on our own at your speed and rhythm. Even if you say you all know the same song, keyboard players prefer to play in keys like E flat, F, and B which are difficult keys for most guitarists.

Work out how to begin each song. It is easiest if one instrument plays the first or last few measures of the song instrumentality and then everyone joins in when it time to start singing. This sets the key and the rhythm before the singing begins. Introductions are important when you're leading the singing.

Have the vocalist nod just before the singing begins to cue everyone. This makes it easy for the congregation to worship without being distracted.

Decide how you end the song before you start playing it. The number of times the song is sung can be determined in advance or a nod from the worship leader works.

Depending on the size of the congregation and the building in which you meet you may need a sound system. Most traditional church sound systems are grossly inadequate. In the beginning you should beg and borrow what you need. However you may reach a point where a poor or inadequate sound system becomes a distraction to the worship. You will either have to build a system piece meal as the funds become available or wait until funds are available to do it right once and for all. It is easy to spend $5,000 on a portable system and $18,000 on a permanent system. Keep in mind that you will need to find people to operate the sound system. The more advanced and complicated the system, the more that can go wrong during the service!

GO IN FAITH

Phil 4:8 & 13 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things."

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

GETTING BETTER

Don't be discouraged if the service is not what you envisioned the first few months. It takes time to build something worthwhile and I believe worshipping God has eternal value. As you faithfully lead or participate God will provide what is needed. As we grow God brings us talented people. Everyone in the praise band now is a more talented musician then I. Praise God! The entire worship service is far beyond what we envisioned Our contemporary worship service celebrated its' ten year anniversary last year.

One church was discouraged. After 3 months they had only added 15 attendees. However they had been steadily losing members for several years. They were encouraged to look at the bright side. Not only had they reversed the trend but they experienced 25% growth, growing from 60 to 75.

GROWTH

As your attendance grows you will be forced to change and become more organized. Again, be flexible, willing to try new things and eliminate the things that don't work anymore. When our attendance was small (less then 100) I loved to have the break the congregation into small groups for a few minutes to share what God was doing in their lives and pray for one another's needs. As the attendance grow this very special time turned into mass confusion. People didn't understand what to do or how to do it. People who didn't know each other found it difficult to share, and young Christians didn't know how to respond to the needs and hurts of others. We now have mature Christians, male and female, who volunteer to be available at the front of the church at the end of the service to talk and pray with anyone who has a question or a need.

WATCH OUT

As the service grows continue to seek God's will and watch your pride. The Lord hates pride and arrogance (Prov 8:13) When we think we can handle things God often steps back and allows us to take over when we take credit for what he is doing. Things will begin to die and we will get very weary of doing them on our own strength.

One incident occurred within the church which almost ended our contemporary service. There were individuals in the church who got involved in the service after it took off and was considered successful. They were trying to be supportive and helpful and wanted take control of the service. However they did not understand what contemporary worship is and began to restructure and make changes. The drums were too loud. Did we really need to play songs with such strong rhythm? Shouldn't we stop people from clapping and speaking out loud during the worship, it sounds so disrespectful. After trying to work things out for several months with these well meaning individuals and watching the attendance drop and the energy draining out of the service they were very respectfully encouraged to attend the more traditional service. They introduced some good ideas which we still use but it seemed that they wanted to turn this service into a more traditional service. We all agree that there needs to order but as long as no one disrupts the flow of worship or the leading of the Holy Spirit they should be allowed to freely worship God.

GLORIFYING GOD

In Revelation chapter 4 God opens a doorway into heaven. John shares this heavenly sight of angels, saints, elders, and strange creatures worshipping God. We have the opportunity right now in worship to enter this same throne room, commune with Almighty God and sense His presence in our lives. When we truly enter God's presence we are never the same again.

Psalm 95: 2 & 6
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.

6 Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.

In future articles we can discuss the important elements of the worship service, how to lead the congregation in worship and how to select contemporary worship music.

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