Hurried Worship
July 17th, 2006 by Matt Heerema | Posted in Ministry Philosophy, Song Selection
I was recently pointed to an interview with Jeff Johnson, discussing “Selah services”; a quieter, more contemplative style of worship service that incorporates music, reading, prayer, and extended silence. I am intrigued.
“I personally prefer this kind of worship since it tends to be less centered on those who are leading and requires a very tangible response from within our minds and hearts. My observation is that much of our contemporary forms of worship today, while very celebratory and inspirational, treats the congregation more as observers rather than participants.”
Good stuff. Something we need to consider in our services.
A semi-related thought I had was this:
I often feel the necessity to “hurry” to get as much in as possible during our limited music time. Also, the routine of 5-6 songs with an offering in the middle feels a bit limiting sometimes. Perhaps this is just because I don’t give enough though to that piece of the service, and what we have is instead a reflection of the rest of my life… hurried… pushed to produce on a limited time frame… I do try, though, to bring some sense of direction or flow to the string of songs. I try to think about where the songs are “going”.
I also feel this within an individual song as well… “hurrying” to move through it and get it over with and on to the next one. I have also heard the sentiment expressed that we should make songs last too long, and I’ve heard remarks on the “9 minute version” of songs on worship recordings as being ridiculously long. Why is that?
Again, the sense of hurry… something probably derived from our pop-music performance mindset. Why can’t we linger on a single song for 10 minutes? What is the problem with that? If it gets boring, that is either our fault for not moving the song in a direction, the listener’s fault for not engaging with the music beyond a surfacy “consumer” level… I don’t think it is the fault of the song being 10 minutes long.
We are far too hurried. Does anyone else have this experience?
This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Ministry Philosophy, Song Selection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] At Elston Heights we have a tendency to linger on songs in our musical worship. For many people this can be an annoyance and for others it can be a time to allow God to work in their hearts through the lyrics and sentiments of the song. As worship leaders we often struggle with how long to go with each song on a Sunday morning. We do our best to follow the moving of God as we see it in the congregation. This can often be extremely difficult since we are trying to ensure the excellence of the music at the same time. At rockworship.com, they recently posted about these same issues. They discuss how worship leaders often feel pressure (internally and/or externally) to hurry through songs and worship sets. Do you have any thoughts, suggestions, etc. about how we are doing at Elston? Let us know by commenting on this post. We do our best to facilitate worshipping in spirit and truth through music, and we are open to all suggestions about how to improve. Thanks. [...]
My $0.02:
Our culture has a very short attention span. We shouldn’t cater to this, but we must not forget where people are at. A few relatively short and well-written songs likely has more power than one 10-minute song with three words repeated over and over again. The flip side of the short attention span could mean that drilling a specific lyric over and over into someone’s head will encourage retention of it throughout the week, but I think at some point we risk turning the song into a sort of mantra. At what point do people get numb and turn their brains off? I think true worship requires us to be fully engaged intellectually - we don’t want to create mind-numbing repetition, so we’ve got to be careful with our song length. Why is it long - where is it taking people intellectually? Are there good lyrics to bite down on, or are we just repetitively chanting, as if we were into some sort of mind-detached eastern-style meditation?
When we were doing a college/high school aged service here in MN I brought up the idea a few times to do that but was met with a lot of resistance from leadership as they were rightfully concerned with a potential first timers experience.
I called that conclusion erroneous as my arguement was if there are people coming in for the first time who at church to want to find God that provides them with the perfect opportunity.
In a “Selah” type service there is no pressure to have to sing along or pretend like you’re able to process, understand, & agree with everything the pastor is saying, it just leaves it to you & God and any uncomfort that comes from it is probably God poking at you.
I would love to be able to walk into church on Sunday morning only to hear the pastor say that today we will be silent. At first it would be weird, awkward, even uncomfortable, people would be wondering “why am I wasting my time here?” But forcing themselves to stay and sit in silence there’s nothing to do but think. I believe in those moments is when God will strike you with truths that you wouldn’t otherwise here.
Sadly most churches would balk at the thought of a service like this because of the uncertain reaction by attenders, which I balk at that reasoning.
There are 2 different types of worship. There is Sunday morning and the typical goal of keeping the entire service in around an hour and then the mid-week more focused worship time. Speaking from a practical time management standpoint, I believe the goal is to look at the amount of time alloted and to work within that timeframe given. Generally we get about 20 minutes on Sunday to allow the pastor ample time for his message. This can comfortably fit four 4 minute songs. Now as a worship leader I have options, I could cut one song and let another stretch or use one to reprise a chorus to create a theme and/or build participation or cut a extra verse out of one song such as a repeat verse to make room for another to extend and still keep it comfortably in my 20 minute window. If I do go a couple minutes over once in awhile most people won’t mind if the quality of the worship is there. And the quality is only there if the Holy Spirit is leading the way. So instead of looking at squeezing the number of songs in and being hurried, look at the total amount of time you have to work with and configure your worship time to fit close within that window. The othe thing to remember as worship leader, once worship is underway, its up to you to take it where it needs to go unless you have a director sitting in the orchestra pit giving you the hurry up sign, then you’re no longer leading.
Now as far as mid-week extended worship time, more time, more opportunity….
[...] At Elston Heights we have a tendency to linger on songs in our musical worship. For many people this can be an annoyance and for others it can be a time to allow God to work in their hearts through the lyrics and sentiments of the song. As worship leaders we often struggle with how long to go with each song on a Sunday morning. We do our best to follow the moving of God as we see it in the congregation. This can often be extremely difficult since we are trying to ensure the excellence of the music at the same time. At rockworship.com, they recently posted about these same issues. They discuss how worship leaders often feel pressure (internally and/or externally) to hurry through songs and worship sets. Do you have any thoughts, suggestions, etc. about how we are doing at Elston? Let us know by commenting on this post. We do our best to facilitate worshipping in spirit and truth through music, and we are open to all suggestions about how to improve. Thanks. [...]