Embracing diversity in worship
There’s an enormous amount of dialog in the church world about worship style. Most of that dialog deals with trying to choose the one worship style that is best for a particular church or a particular service. Most likely, whether your church or service is highly modern or highly classic, you have a particular style that is consistent for that service from week to week.
I don’t hear a lot of dialog about the idea of diversity within a particular service from week to week. Why is that?
Well, that’s a rhetorical question because I can think of a lot of reasons why. I mean, it’s pretty tough to change things up every week. You have to have the right musicians, the right rehearsal schedule, and all of the other resources you need to create your experience.
So, I’m not proposing that worship services should be edgy one week and cathedral the next. But here are a few thing I have found to be effective in pushing the diversity envelope.
- Rotating leaders. From the primary worship leader to the supporting musicians, I think it’s tremendous to rotate your worship leadership from week to week. The church where I help out does this and I love it. Not only is it great for the leaders who get rest and therefore have a better chance of avoiding burnout and staying fresh, I think it’s also great for the congregation because they don’t get attached to a personality. That way if “the one” is not there on a particular week, it doesn’t seem like a substitute, it’s just the way it is. Why not?
- Changing instrumentation. Why not vary up the instrumentation from week to week. The same musician lineup will produce about the same sound. Why not make small changes from week to week and even try something way out of the box and uncomfortable every once and a while.
- Using different songs. Probably the simplest form of diversification is just picking different songs. If you follow #1 and use different worship leaders, this will most likely happen automatically as each leader has a bent in a different direction. It’s tough to balance the use of different songs with the congregation’s need for consistency, but it’s a balancing act that I think is well worth the effort.
I just finished leading a worship service yesterday where I played piano and led the singing. The only other musicians were an acoustic double bass, aux percussion and two other vocalists. That’s it. The sound was dramatically different from what I’m used to and it was difficult for me. It stretched me and made me a bit uncomfortable.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot, trying to determine if that’s a bad thing, and I don’t think it is. I believe that God works on us when we are outside of our comfort zones in so many ways. I don’t see why worship would be any different. I pray that yesterday’s service was as much a stretch for our congregation as it was for me, and that God can somehow use this element of diversity for his glory.
Most of the time, I judge the success of worship services by how good I feel about them. I just wonder if that is the right standard to be using. If it’s not, then no matter how I feel, I can never know the true impact of a service, so I shouldn’t worry about it. I should just do the best I can, humbly, to worship God and edify a community of believers.