How to design corporate worship (A template)
If you have gotten this far, either you’re overwhelmed with everything I’ve covered, or you’re asking “How do I put all of this together?” First of all, don’t freak out. To incorporate everything I’ve written about immediately would be ridiculously hard and unwise. It would radically change the culture and shape of your church’s time of worship. So let me make a few suggestions.
1. Start with biblical expressions of worship
If you need a refresher or haven’t read the full description you can go to this article.
Begin by asking which elements of your service already help your people express these things to God.
As you are picking music, think about what each of these songs help us express to God. There may be more than one idea per song.
Then you may ask, what expressions of worship are missing from our service? Maybe pick one expression and focus on trying to incorporate it into your service more often.
Think through the plan that would focus on adding one expression a month to your services. What would an entire service look like once you had all of these expressions of worship in practice?
Conversation/dialogue in worship
Next, I would begin looking at the eight expressions of worship and asking if they are part of the revelation/response pattern in your church.
God speaks (revelation) He reveals what he’s like, what he’s done, and what his will is.
We respond (response) The people respond with appropriate attitude and actions to God’s character, action, and will.
Consider adoration, for example. In adoration, do we encounter through scripture or song lyrics the truths about God that make us adore him? Is there a description of his power, glory, wisdom, or other major characteristics that makes him worthy of our awe and praise! Does the song or scripture describe his actions in the past/present/future that make us aware of what he’s like?
Each expression of worship should start with a truth that God reveals about himself and include a response to who he is. Learn more or refresh what you’ve learned in this article.
A great way to incorporate this into a worship service is by either using a scripture before a song or by mentioning a lyric you’re about to sing that speaks to the truth about who God is, what he’s done, and what he desires.
This is a great place to start thinking through what scriptures need to be gathered for the worship service you are designing.
2. The story of worship
After starting to compile songs and scriptures that help facilitate the biblical expressions of worship, I would suggest thinking about which parts of the story of God are present in the service you are designing.
Do the songs, scriptures, and prayers we use speak to the entire story of God when you combine them together?
Which parts of God’s story tend to be mentioned the most and which seem to be missing or rarely mentioned?
3. A basic outline
At this point you’ve picked some songs, identified their biblical expression of worship, focused on what parts of God’s story they speak of, then gathered some scriptures and prayers to help make the worship service flow in a dialogical way.
You can now begin putting things together into the 5 main blocks on a worship service. These segments correspond to everything we’ve covered so far. It’s both a big picture of God’s story as well as a container for the various expressions of worship.
This works well as an outline for the worship service.
Even if you stop here, you will have begun to create much more powerful opportunities for God’s people to worship.
However, if your desire is for people to experience deep transformation and for worship to play a pivotal role in their discipleship, then let’s move on to including spiritual practices or disciplines into our worship time.
Parts 1-3 of this series provided a big picture overview of the service and order. It included thinking through what music and scriptures were part of the service and what role they played.
Now, parts 4-5 are about making the service even more robust, integrating practices and themes to create room for God to meet with his people in even more intentional ways.
4. Practices that transform us as we worship
Every church has a tendency to emphasize a few of these disciplines, but it is rare that they are all well practiced in a single congregation. It is a natural assumption that if God’s people are not learning and practicing these things together in corporate worship, then it’s difficult to see these disciplines happening when they are on their own through the week.
During a worship service, we want to engage in these disciplines that God uses to transform us. The worship service is also a prime opportunity to teach people how to engage in the disciplines and give them a chance to practice them so the people feel comfortable doing them during their own personal worship. If you want a deeper discussion of each of these practices you can find it here.
When you are first starting to incorporate these practices into your worship service, you may choose a single practice to do for a month or two.
Take a moment and explain why we engage in spiritual disciplines. I have described it as something that we do to place ourselves in a posture of surrender, so God can do in us what we cannot do ourselves. We cannot change our own hearts. We cannot stop our anger. We cannot love our neighbor. However, we can confess our inability to do these things and express our desire for God to help us. We can be quiet and chew on God’s word so he can soften it and shape our hearts.
Next guide people into how to practice the discipline. Give them step by step instructions. This gives people a chance to gain confidence in practicing it with other people.
Repeat the practice. Many of the practices that followers of Jesus are called to engage in are counter-cultural and therefore run against our natural tendencies. The disciplines require a lot of repetition for them to become normal and comfortable. Keep integrating a practice in your service until it no longer feels like the exception, but the rule.
5. Themes of transformative worship
The major pieces of a worship service are starting to come together now. The themes of transformative worship are here to help flesh out “how” things are done. We’ve covered the themes of dialogical and formative practices. As you begin to finalize the service, this is a bit of a check list in putting the finishing touches on a service.
The Trinitarian, major redemptive acts, covenantal dynamics, and Christocentric themes are primarily focused on making sure the words we use, the songs we sing, and the prayers we pray are as wholistic and rich as possible. The last four themes are extremely powerful and are capable of helping people fully enter into worship.
How might we make each element as participatory as possible?
Is there a way for us to pay attention to each of our senses throughout the whole service? (Seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, smelling)
Are there symbols or ways we can bring from text into concrete experience?
Are we providing clarity by reminding people why we gather and what each element is teaching us or helping us experience?
Do we have clear “next steps” for people to engage in after the service and through the next week to grow as disciples?
