Okay, so we’ve been praying about and discerning what it is that God is doing in our particular body (the church). Out of that, we’ve developed our “Core Songs” that are somewhere between 30 - 40 song titles for our worship sets.

So now what?

Building your weekly church set can feel overwhelming. If you’re having to do it every single week, it can also feel very repetitive and tedious and start to slip into boredom. The most important thing to remember any time you build a worship set is that it’s not your worship set. It’s God’s worship set.

Similarly to praying about the overall direction of the church, it is essential to pray about the particular service. Every week, God has a message. I like to think of it as a theme. If you charge into a service, guns blazing, without asking God what he wants to do, don’t be surprised if you end up missing it. Of course there’s grace and God always has a way of working things out, and he never lets us down. With that said, you can always just grab out whatever songs you like and put them into whatever order you think is best because God will always show up when we praise.

On the other hand, it would be so much more powerful if we were aligned with what He was doing.

I can’t remember if I said this before, but even if I did, it’s worth repeating: Prophecy plays a big part in leading worship.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” You’re saying. “I’m not one of those prophetic types.”

Prophecy is a big word. It’s loaded with tons of preconceived notions of being the almighty voice of the Almighty God, normally accompanied by rolling thunder or cherubim singing in blissful harmonies while someone, usually someone exponentially holier than you, loudly and profoundly gives you a piece of God’s mind.

No.

Prophecy is practical. Prophecy is for real people. Prophecy is for every Christian.

That means you, too.

I realize that you think I’m detracting from the main point of the series, which is to talk about church worship. This is going to come up time and time again in the series, so I’m not going to let it go. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.

Let’s forget about what we think prophecy is and lay hold of the reassuring truth: It’s just God talking you. You’re reading your Bible and a couple of key verses pop out at you. That’s God talking to you. You’re praying and suddenly you start praying in a certain direction because it’s just suddenly in your head. That’s God talking to you. You’re leading worship and in the middle of a song you just feel the need to shout out a prayer. Again, that’s God talking to you.

Oh sure, there’s that whole first person prophetic “Thus sayeth the Lord” business, but let’s face it: You don’t really like that kind of a thing anyway. The common, day-to-day hearing from the Lord (prophecy) can be just as effective as Mr. Thus-Sayeth-the-Lord — the same Spirit of God that motivated you to play “Here I Am To Worship” this coming Sunday is the same Spirit who was speaking through the Thus-Sayeth-the-Lord dude.

I don’t know if we have time to talk about why there’s a difference in the way God talks. That could take another series in itself to talk about so I won’t. What I will say is this: The grass is always greener on the other side. Maybe you’re envying the person who can deliver a first-person prophecy every Sunday morning while all you get is “well, I saw this picture of a big box of crayons…” or maybe you don’t even get something that concrete. God talks to everyone in different ways and — see, I’m already opening a whole can of worms by saying this — for all intensive purposes of the worship series, I will say that the way God talks to you is based entirely on Him and not on you.

If someone said that to me I could fire back with a bunch of reasons why that can be incorrect, but for the sake of staying on the worship topic, let’s leave it at that and move along.

The point of this sidebar on prophecy is to say that however God is talking to you, don’t shun it. You’ve gotta go with it, people. Embrace it! By doing this, you will allow God to speak to you more strongly, more frequently and, dare I say, in other ways as well. You need to hone that in order to hear what He is saying in regards to a theme for your Sunday service.

You will also need it while you are leading your worship service, but that’s for another volume.

Moving along. Once you have your theme, I would give you the following rules of thumb to keep in mind while you choose your songs:

#1. You don’t have to do the fast songs first and the slow songs last. Mix it up and be creative. For example, this past Sunday, I did the following songs:

Desire - Track 2 on the link. Not a fast song, nor is it a slow song. It has movement while being very worshipful.

God of Wonders - Track 9 on the link. Normally done as a slow, worshipful song, but we kept it moving at about the same tempo as Desire.

Come and Fill Me Up - Track 9 on the link. This marks about the middle of the worship service so we kicked it into high gear and did it at a pretty exuberant pace.

This Is Love - Track 20 on the link. After our high geared song, we break for communion. Taking advantage of the brief intermission and communion, we quickly switched gears and went into a very worshipful song. Yes, I’ve been criticized for ramping up the worship set in some fast, rocking worship and then turning a 180 on everyone. This can work but you have to make sure to do it successfully. “This Is Love” is appropriate lyrically for the communion, and also gives us a layer of depth to our worship set as we have just thrown in something very intimate and worshipful. At the end of your worship set, everyone needs that grand finale - that final “oomph,” if you will, to the end of the set where they can just let out how they feel. Throwing this worshipful song will give an added dimension to the final song:

Forever - Track 2 on the link (scroll way down). We had ramped up the worship early on and half way through and then cut everyone off. But you don’t want to leave them hanging. The final song should be your appropriate finale, to give everyone that “oomph” that they need in order to express themselves. If you don’t give that at the end of your set, you’re leaving everyone hanging. It’s like the novel that didn’t give you a satisfactory ending. Don’t do that.

#2. Change your songs to keys that everyone can sing. Yeah, it’s great to sing “I Can Only Imagine” but when everyone tries to hit that high note, suddenly no one is worshiping anymore - the congregation is sitting around feeling embarrassed because they couldn’t hit that high note.

#3. Make sure the lyrics of your songs make sense as you flow from song to song. If you change themes every single song, it’s W.W.: Worship Whiplash. Don’t do that.

I’ll try to get another volume in the next couple of weeks so we can continue some of the things I talked about in volume 1 but wasn’t able to come back to. Post any comments or questions below and I will be happy to discuss.