Advice for Worship Leaders #3 - Incorporating spontaneous worship times into your Sunday morning worship format

Incorporating spontaneous worship times into your Sunday morning worship format
Growing up I was blessed to be in a church that loved the prophetic spirit and really gave place for spontaneous times of worship. But I’ve talked to a lot of worship leaders and pastors who desire to have a spontaneous worship expression during their Sunday morning worship time but they feel there are so many obstacles to making it happen.  

Intimidation is a big one. Many worship leaders are intimidated by the church leadership, their fellow team members, or the congregation. This makes sense because it takes a lot to step out and lead people somewhere they’re not used to going. Many pastors have a desire for their worship teams to develop the spontaneous worship element but when they try and communicate it their worship leader feels judged or like they're missing the mark with their leading. Some say they just don’t have enough time to be spontaneous in a Sunday morning expression, others say their worship team only plays together once a week so there’s not really time to develop that spontaneous flow together. 

I want to encourage you that beginning to incorporate spontaneous times during your Sunday morning worship is a lot easier than you might think. The biggest component that needs to be there is confidence. Confidence accross the board: worship leader, pastor, worship team, and even the congregation. What do I mean? My point is that you want to begin moving in the direction of spontaneous worship along the normal lines of your worship service. You don’t have to have a massive chord progression shift, there doesn't have to be any shouting or dancing, you don't even have to change the inlection of your voice. It can just be the same four chords over and over again. You want to introduce spontaneous worship in a way that flows right along with the song that you’re doing. 

Here’s an example: It’s Sunday morning and you are having your pre-worship briefing/prayer time with your team. You tell the team, “Ok, we’re going to start out with ‘How great is our God’ and from there we’re going to go right into ‘Here I am to worship.” You continue, “After I do the chorus of ‘Here I am to worship’ a few times I want the band to keep playing the exact same chord progression and don’t stop.” Then you look at your singer(s) and say, “Have you bibles open to Revelation 5 and as the band keeps playing I’m going to sing verse 5.” Then point at your most confident and/or skilled singer and say, “When I’m done I want you to sing verse 13 word for word. And then I’m going to sing verse 12 again, and then we’re going to go right back into ‘Here I am to worship.”  

There you have it! You’ve got a plan to sing a spontaneous song on Sunday morning about the worth of Jesus. Though you’re planning this it's still spontaneous because you don’t know what notes you’re going to sing, you don’t know how you're going to have the words flow, you don’t know if you might erupt into an anointed chorus that the whole congregation begins singing for the next two-hours. You just never know what will happen and what God will breathe on.  

© 2011 Justin Rizzo