Worship Pastor as Prophet: Strategic and Biblical Service Order

While on staff at Harvest Bible Chapel in Illinois, the leadership of a few men helped shape my philosophy of worship in amazing ways.  Dr. James MacDonald, Andi Rozier, Matthew Westerholm, and Rory Noland have been instrumental in the development of this particular philosophy of ordering a worship experience that I’m about to flesh out in writing.  To my knowledge, nothing has been formally published on this philosophy, so I want to be sure to give credit to the above men for their amazing influence in my life and training me in this biblically based philosophy of a strategically purposed worship experience.

How many times have you gone to a church service and before you knew it you were done with the music portion of the service and didn’t realize it? Your soul was not stirred, your heart was still not in a right place, and you felt a bit confused for some unknown reason. Before I dive into a solution to this problem, I must say that no method of rhyme or reason can consecrate the heart; only God’s word and the Holy Spirit can do that.  This particular philosophy is focused on opening the door as wide as possible for the Holy Spirit to move in the hearts of EVERYONE in the context of a corporate worship service.

The goal in this strategic ordering of music and other worship elements is to condition the heart to be consecrated and overwhelmed with the greatness of God by utilizing the Holy Spirit’s working with the word of God (Isaiah 55:11).  This means the Word of God through song, readings, prayer, and other elements. If it is not a direct quotation of God’s word, it is a well prepared and thought out paraphrase of God’s truth. EVERYTHING in a worship service must correlate to the truth portrayed in God’s word.

With that said, full consecration and humility in the heart is not something that is easy to “jump” right into. We are so prone to the prideful “closing” of our hearts that at the beginning of a worship service you may not be able to genuinely sing “Hallelujah” as an outpouring of your heart. You are distracted with life pressures or sin that has clouded your vision to what is most important. This is why you don’t want to start a worship service with a vertical worship song.  Chances are you would be excluding the majority of your congregation in your “leading” them in responding to the presence of God, because they are hindered and needing to repent of un-confessed sin in their lives.  A culture of worship formed and cultivated in your church brings your congregation READY to jump right into the vertical songs because it rightfully has been the outcry of their heart all week, living repentant lives. That is worth stating plainly:  We are to be leading and cultivating a culture of worship that results in a congregation that walks into the sanctuary already with an overflowing heart of praise to our awesome God.  But the sad truth is, this isn’t the case. We do our best to lead people in conditioning  hearts to realize greater the presence of God and to respond in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:24). Following those categories mentioned above in order, from horizontal to vertical,  lead right into the sermon.  The goal is to have hearts so in tune and overwhelmed by God’s presence that they are ready and eager to hear him speak.

When you unpack this biblically, we seek to form our worship services in a similar way that the Lord commanded his Temple to be set up. A generic setup of the Temple shows the temple mount starting with the hillside leading to the courts (outer and inner), and then leading to the holy places (holy, and most holy). Think back to the categories of worship songs into the context of how the Temple was setup.  When you view the conditioning of a heart of worship for the believer, think of the journey from the hillside going to the holy of holies. I discussed much earlier how the holy of holies was the place where the presence of God was manifest in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, upon the death of Christ as the atonement for sin, the curtain was torn making the presence of God not a place, but a reality in the life of the now reconciled believer.[1]

In this model the worship leader is standing on the hillside calling out saying “Hey everyone! Come and worship with me!” (Horizontal). As people gather with him, they move into the courts and start telling each other what the Lord has done in their lives and rejoice together in the work of the Lord through Jesus Christ (Diagonal). After the declaration of the reconciliation they have in Christ and what the Lord has done for them in Salvation they are lead into the holy place and holy of holies where they are floored with the greatness of God and respond with shouts of “hallelujah!” and declaring the majesty of God! (Vertical). When heart of the worshiper has entered the holy of holies, what is happening then is between he and the Lord. The others in the room have faded into the background of his concern and he is focused fully on ascribing glory to the Lord in thankfulness for who he is and the salvation that has been given by him. What happens next is awesome! He speaks to us through his word, and we respond again with praise.

With this in mind, the order that has worked best for our church, and correlates nicely with the Temple setup model, is to start with a 5 element worship set that leads to the sermon where God’s Word is preached without apology and authoritatively, and then ending with a 1 or 2 element worship response.

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[1] Hebrews 9 gives an amazing description of the work of Christ in being the once and for all high priest opening up the holy of holies.