Creative Elements to Worship - Part 3

Steve Sjogren pastors a very successful church in a denomination that traditionally spends a long time in worship. One day he brought a stopwatch with him to observe the adult men. He found them growing restless and bored after 20 minutes of song. Thus, he limited his singing in that morning service. Longer praise times could happen in services where more people were spiritually deeper, or other factors prevailed.

65. Realize that time is relative. Einstein discovered that time isn't absolute. A person going the speed of light experiences time differently from the person who's stationary. What Einstein didn't discover was that in a church setting, time flows differently for the leaders than it does for the congregation.

Tons of pastors lose their effectiveness by going 15 minutes past their congregation's attention span. A pastor is into his message. The adrenalin is flowing. He is standing, moving around. To him, 40 minutes goes by like 15. For the audience, sitting stationary on a hard seat, the 40 minutes seems like two hours.

The same goes for worship leaders and their congregations. Ignore this phenomenon to your peril. Some will object, "But I just go as long as the Spirit leads!" But from my experience, it's easy for leaders to confuse the prompting of the Spirit with their own feelings. The great preacher Spurgeon once said,

''It seems odd that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves should think so little of what He has revealed to others."

Shouldn't we take into account what our youth feel the Spirit is saying to them about the optimum length of the worship time?

66. Kill the dead time between songs. After 5 dead seconds, youth start to talk. At 10 seconds they move about to visit others. At 15 seconds, spit wads fly. You lose not only the dead time, but the recovery time trying to get their minds back on worship. Preparation is your key to killing dead time. Music must be in order. Everyone knows what comes next.

Introduce New Songs Wisely

67. Don't introduce too many new songs in one service. In a week long camp, you can teach more songs because you'll be together so much. By the third day they'll be singing lots of new songs with gusto. In a weekly meeting, introduce too many new songs to your peril. Although we need to constantly introduce fresh songs, most worship leaders I know restrict themselves to one new song per service.

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