Active and Passive Engagement

The worship of your church should be a proper balance of preparedness and spontaneity. Different church styles certainly lean more toward one or the other end of the spectrum. Still, even the most charismatic church has at least an unwritten “liturgy.” Similarly, the most liturgical church will have elements that differ from week to week (e.g., the prayers and homily). As Pastor Jolicoeur says, “Some kind of planning has to happen.”

Part of leading worship is thus knowing the difference between the essentials and the variables. Pastor Jolicoeur suggests that there will likely be resources and guidelines at hand for you to seek out, for example, from your broader denomination. If your church is independent, there will still likely be resources available online from other individuals of a similar style and tradition.

Pastor Jolicoeur urges you to get other people involved in your worship choices. After all, congregational worship is done by a group of people rather than a single individual. It is therefore wise to have others involved in your worship planning to some degree – if for no other reason than to give feedback and help you see any imbalances or blind spots.

The default form of a worship service in your church will likely have a certain basic structure to it. There will likely be prayer at the beginning, middle, and end. There will likely be music near the beginning and possibly at the end. There will probably be an offering. About half of the service in the second half will probably be a sermon.

Pastor Jolicoeur suggests that the worship leader should strive for a balance between active participation in worship and passive observation. If the presentation of the word of God typically occupies half a service, then the worship leader should strive to shape the rest of the service with as much active participation as possible.

There are many ways to do this. Singing in worship is an obvious one. However, the congregation can also read a call to worship together. They can “pass the peace” after the opening prayer and give greetings to each other out in the congregation. They can read part of the Scripture in a litany between worship leader and congregation. Communion is typically celebrated after a sermon and can involve the physical movement of a congregation forward to stations or the front of the church.

A key goal is to move a congregation beyond thinking of worship as a group of individuals worshiping God independently of each other. Rather, this is the body of Christ, one body, worshiping together as one body. God is the object of our worship, but we worship him together.