Planning a Worship Service
If there’s anything I’ve learned from a lifetime in church, it’s that there are many, many ways to plan a worship service. Some churches have a well-defined historical liturgy that follows the church calendar. Some have three hymns from the hymn book chosen Tuesday afternoon (or Sunday morning, if they don’t have a bulletin) by the preacher. In some churches the worship leader depends on the Holy Spirit to guide him or her through the set in the moment, and no one knows what it will be until it’s done. I’ll leave it to others to argue the merits or demerits of all these methods. Instead, I will describe my process at First Baptist San Jacinto.
Monday is usually my planning day. This is the day when I arrange all the elements of our worship service together. Our pastor prefers to preach exegetical sermons through a book of the Bible, although he will take breaks from that to address things topically that the church needs to hear. When he is in a book (for instance, Daniel, currently), I have the text ahead of time, and I’m able to do my own study to see where he’s going. He will sometimes give me a heads-up if there’s a particular song or theme he wants me to approach, but he usually lets me discern the direction and plan accordingly.
And so, preparation begins with God’s word, and with prayer for His presence to be magnified in the planning of the service. Usually, I will find a theme or an attribute of God in the text. From there, a hymn or a song will often just pop into my head. I also use the Baptist Hymnal app from Lifeway to search keywords so I can develop a theme.
Every service tells a story to the people. Though it’s not always explicit, the order of songs and pattern of worship takes the congregation from one place to another. So a pattern of revelation and response will lead the gathering to worship God for who He is. I begin the service with a hymn or song that calls people to gather, unite, and worship the Lord. Following that, we sing a hymn that focuses on an attribute of God, or I arrange for a scripture reading of a passage that relates to the direction we’re going.
We have a choir, and so the order of worship will usually include an anthem or song that proclaims God’s word. Having a choir, of course, means that there are aspects of the service that are planned several weeks ahead of time. But even these need to be flexible. For that reason, we keep several songs under our belt, so to speak, in case the direction of the message changes.
Our normal pattern of worship includes five or six congregational songs, including one hymn of response following the sermon. During the past two years, our church has begun singing a Psalm during the service, versified and set to a familiar hymn tune. We will often sing one of these following the offering, right before the message, to focus the church on hearing the word of the Lord.
As I am planning, I put the slides together, and pull up the music for the worship team and choir, so I am ready to get everything set up and distributed. I also type up the order of worship on a very basic, low-tech text file, so I am able to copy and paste it into emails, planning software, and whatever other means I need to share it with the people who receive it.
So that’s a typical planning session for me. I keep things fairly simple, and it allows me some flexibility when that becomes a necessity. I do find that the more prepared I am at the beginning of the week, the better things go when the unexpected happens. But the most important factor is knowing, trusting, and walking with the One that I’m planning for us to worship every Sunday.
