Thoughts To Share With Your Worship Team

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Worshiping on the platform. It looks different in every church. Embracing these thoughts can help your worship team be even better. Strengthen your team through understanding the ins and outs of worship.

What Worship Is & Isn’t

Worship is the expression of honoring, reverencing, or adoring God. Worship can include the words we say or sing. We can demonstrate our worship of God through music, giving money, time, and talents. Worship is an act of our hearts.

Worship is personal. It is a matter of the heart. When we worship, we adore and revere. Those two things, adoration and reverence, are not emotions. They are actions connected with deeply personal feelings with roots in the deeper parts of our hearts.

Worship is a full, conscious, and intentional act. If it’s not intentional, it isn’t adoration. Some may go through the motions. They may say “the right things,” but again, if it’s not heartfelt and intentional, they are saying great words, but it isn’t worship.

Worship isn’t necessarily a great song service. We may have amazing songs and passionate singing. However, if we don’t intentionally center our hearts on adoring the Lord, God, Almighty, then we just sing a great set of songs. (And didn’t worship.)

Worship Involves Both God & Us

Worship has to involve both of us. Otherwise, there isn’t worship. God is the subject of our affection. He has to be. However, we have a part to play. There is no worship if we are taken totally out of the equation.

The Bible is full of verses encouraging us to worship the Lord. Let’s get back to what worship is. For our part, it’s personal, a matter of the heart, and a conscious and intentional act. The person of our affection is The Lord.

The first part of worship is totally about God being adored, glorified, and admired. God is the One who is worshiped. (Or should be.) The second part is this: we are the ones who worship. We are the ones giving our affections to the Lord. If we don’t do that during a church service, there isn’t worship.

We can’t have one without the other and call it worship.

How Does Music Relate To Worship?

Our adoration for God doesn’t originate with a song but with our heart. Music can be used to express our adoration and reveal the Glory and Goodness of God. What we do with music can stir up and encourage adoration in others and even reveal reasons why we should adore Him.

Music is just one tool we use to worship. Instruments are tools we use to worship. You can use a tool for whatever the purpose of your heart is.

However, music in and of itself isn’t worship. Tracks aren’t worship, even if they are worship songs. We use music as a tool, just as we use our voices and instruments as tools to help us express our adoration to God. Harmonies, drum fills, banners, and flags can also be tools to help us express our worship. They can help us in our worship.

Being On The Platform Shouldn’t Define Us

Because worship is an act of our hearts, location isn’t a requirement. We can worship God at home or in the car. We can worship the Lord when we are on vacation or walking through the hardware store. Honestly, since He is the Lord of All, worthy of glory and honor, the King of all kings, we should worship Him at all these locations.

People should recognize us as worshipers just as easily when we are sitting in the pew as much as when we are on the platform. The Lord doesn’t define us as worship leaders by the location where we lead worship. He defines us when He looks into our hearts.

Do you define your worship lifestyle by your position on the platform? If so, let me encourage you to take some time and examine how much time you spend off-platform, not practicing, with the Lord. In reality, what we do during a church service should be much less than how much we worship the Lord during the entire week.

Why We Practice For Worship

We’ll probably get various answers when we ask vocalists and musicians why they practice for a church service.

Good Reasons A Worship Team Should Practice

Know the parts
Learn a new song
Become better
Increase impact
Help the congregation to participate
To know when and when not to play
Smooth out trouble spots
Develop unity on the worship team
Want to be on the same page for the songs
Everyone knows what’s happening and when

It’s important to practice on our own. Playing together during the week and/or before the service is important. Teams need to sing and play together for all of the reasons above. Doing songs together helps our worship team learn to ebb and flow with the songs. Being together, singing and playing, helps our team grow musically and spiritually. Working together can make a big difference in strengthening our music team.

The Most Important Reason We Should Practice

We practice so our focus during the church service can be worship and not on the notes, chords, or other musicality. This reason should stand out above the others.

As worshipers, our most important goal should be to worship. Practicing on our own and rehearsing together helps us with the musicality of the song lineup. The more confident we are with our parts and knowing where we are going with the songs, the easier it is to flow in worship and magnify the name of the Almighty God.

When we don’t have to put all our focus on playing the song correctly, making sure we are on point with transitions, or hitting the right notes on the melody, it can be easier to simply worship our God with all our hearts. It’s easier to flow in heartfelt worship when we aren’t stressed or concentrating on how to play or sing a song.

How To Be Authentic On The Platform

Authentic can be defined as genuine or real. It means our words and actions are true to ourselves, our values, and our personality. No matter the stresses or pressures, we act and say things that flow from our hearts.

What we say and do is true to ourselves, whether on the platform, in the pew, at a corporate board meeting, or in the grocery store. We don’t put on airs. We don’t pretend we are anything other than we are. We don’t try to act or look “more than” or “less than” or any other way than we’d normally act or look.

Worship is the expression of honoring, reverencing, or adoring God. The fact that we worship shouldn’t change with the circumstances in our lives. We can worship and give honor to the Lord on rainy days just as much as on sunny days.

If, at home, you smile when you sing a specific line in a song, then smile at church when you sing that line. If you never raise your hands when you are in the congregation, then you may not be authentic if you often raise your hands when singing on the platform. If you have a quiet worship style when sitting in the pew for worship but have an energetic worship style when you are singing on stage, then you may want to take a deep look and see who is the real you.

How we worship may look different from one week to the next or in one season vs another. We may sing louder or softer. We may dance or raise our hands one day rather than next week. We can be filled with joy and worship just as much as we can worship while grieving the loss of a loved one.

The Key To Authentic Worship

Intentionality. We can’t worship on accident. The average person may not always understand worshiping isn’t only singing songs with everyone else. To worship the Lord, we have to do it on purpose. Our heart attitude needs to be intentionally focused on, “I’m worshiping God.”

If our focus is on worshiping God, and we aren’t trying to worship in a way that isn’t true to ourselves, we are doing authentic worship.

What Worship Looks Like At Your Church

Worship can look different from one church to the next because each church has a different culture. This is good because God gave each church different gifts, ideas, and strategies to impact different communities.

Having said that, one thing we should all have in common is an understanding of what worship is and how we can authentically worship the Lord, our God.

Take these points, pray about them, and share them with your music team.
Help those around you understand worship in a new way.
Use these to create a stronger culture of worship in your team.

Comment below and tell me what point you thought was most helpful or inspirational and why. I’d love to hear from you!

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