Narrowing the Worship Gap
The second important feedback we need to narrow the gap is observing how the congregation responds to your leadership; did you attain your goals? If you expect 150 people in the congregation to clap, count to see it 150 clapped. If you expected 500 members to form a praise processional meandering in and out of the aisles, did it happen? If you lead a large congregation, you will need help verifying your goals were met. For example, ask the sound engineer to measure the loudness of the singing congregation because worshipping congregations usually make a lot of noise. Ask your video technician to count how many people spontaneously raise their hands, dance, kneel, bow their heads or their knees. Finally while you lead, attempt to discern the congregation's spirit. Rate their response against your goals on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of your goals. If you are leading solo, you will be limited on what you can observe from week to week. Therefore, focus on two or three different things every week.
The feedback process takes your expectations and your observations and combines them in an analysis targeted narrowing the gap. As an example, let's say we prepare a worship set to try to get people to respond earlier in the set by starting with "Forever" followed by "Come, Now is the Time to Worship" and transitioning to "My Jesus, I Love Thee (I Know Thou Art Mine). Let's also write our goals down: (1) people should anticipate the next song and posture themselves accordingly (2) during the second song's chorus, 25% of the congregation would raise their hands and (3) 50% of the congregation will be 100% worshipping during and after song 3. However, when we lead, we observe during "Forever" that more people than usual are talking with their neighbors and are generally distracted. On the second song, there are fewer people talking but there are a number of people struggling to worship, like its a chore and finally, we observe the congregation seems quiet. During the transitional third song, you notice that a lot of mom's are fussing with their kids and only about a third of the men are singing. Our expectation was that the first two songs would be have enough energy to inspire the congregation to worship earlier but our efforts and plans did not come to pass.
What do we consider in our analysis of the worship gap. First consider the environment. The environment includes everything that influences people's desire and commitment to worship. It can be the temperature, the seasons, the economy, politics or local or international affairs. We are responsible to control only the environments we can influence. We can't change the economy but we can change the temperature in the sanctuary (85 degrees is too hot especially men; 70 to 72 degrees is better). If, as in our example, our congregation is consistently slow about entering into heartfelt worship, there are several possibilities including asking the congregation before you start, "Please take care of the things that might distract you during worship right now so we can truly dedicate ourselves as a holy offering to God in our worship time" or ask the congregation to start worshipping God by speaking out their praise before you start singing. Sometimes, doing something unexpected helps to free a congregation of the routine of the service.
Not every adjustment will bring a positive result. We narrow the gap the same way humans learn; by successive approximations; changing little things one by one. By nibbling at the gap every week we can narrow the worship gap over the long term.
As worship leaders we give the congregation its primary expression of the worship. If we are not purposeful in our worship leadership, we will rarely meet our expectations no matter how talented or anointed we are or will become. We need to prayerfully and humbly prepare our sets, minister and observe and then examine our leadership. But we also need to recognize that our worship is a partnership with the congregation to provide a unique expression of love, honor, glory, worship and praise to our Lord and King who is blessed forever. Amen.
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This is the debut album by EXW friend Paul Langford. Paul is a Chicago based singer, arranger, keyboardist, producer and conductor. Paul has a career that spans 14 years. Paul's work includes arranging for groups like GLAD, Voices of Liberty, VoiceTrek, The Chicago based "Caroling Party" and Day of Discovery Singers. His arranging has appeared on recordings side by side with greats like Gene Puerling and David Maddux, and he has sung with Don Shelton, Bonnie Herman and Bob Bowker, among others.