Variety in Worship

by Joel Stephen Williams

The Judeo-Christian faith is a very complex religion. Since Christianity is “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3), this complexity should be no surprise. As a result, the church is a very complex system, and worship, our expression of our devotion and faith to God, is an equally intricate web of human emotions, beliefs, and relationships. Worship leaders should stop from time-to-time and take an assessment of what is being done in a congregation’s worship services. Is the bewildering variety of spiritual needs of the congregation being addressed? Is the whole range of Christian doctrine, especially core truths of the gospel, being proclaimed and confessed? Is the manifold variety of emotions Christians feel being expressed in prayer, in hymns and gospel songs, and in appropriate spoken words?

Here are a few brief ideas around which a worship service might be constructed. My recommendation is that a whole service be planned on each theme. That is, have all the hymns or songs on the theme. Ask the leaders of the prayers to frame the wording of their prayers around the theme. And, of course, build the sermon around the theme with an appropriate text and relevant application.

Confession of sin: Psalm 51 would be an ideal text. Songs in this genre are not very common. Some of them are old revival songs begging someone else to repent and confess. For example, “Why Do You Wait, Dear Brother?” or “While We Wait and While We Plead.” What is needed here are songs where we express repentance, and we confess our sins. A few traditional and contemporary songs do this, however, such as Bill Maher’s, “Lord I Need You.”

Confession of faith: Matthew 16:13–20 would be an appropriate passage. The worship service would be made more meaningful if the congregation could make confessions of faith together during the worship service, confessing not some cliché of a modern writer, but a few of the great statements of Scripture such as Matthew 16:16; John 6:69; Philippians 2:5b–11; Colossians 1:15–20; 1 Timothy 2:5–6; 3:16. Hymns and gospel songs of confession are so abundant that your only problem here is deciding which ones you will use.

Call to obedience: Matthew 7:24–27 or 21:28–32 would work well. Yes, we are saved by grace. If you have never read the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who warned of an anemic preaching which left out the gospel call to obedience – he referred to it as “cheap grace” – you should consider his warning carefully.[1] He experienced this watered-down type of preaching in his culture and saw its deadly fruits. Preacher – proclaim the full gospel. Yes, tell of the faithfulness of God but do not be silent on our obligation to be faithful and to “live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly” (Titus 2:12). And let us sing,

     My life, my love, I give to Thee,
     Thou Lamb of God, who died for me.
     O may I ever faithful be,
     My Savior and my God! [2]

Lament: The book of Lamentations or a psalm of lament (Psalm 6, 10, 38, 42–43, 130) would be useful. We can lament natural calamities or the loss of loved ones. We can lament the tragedy of our sin. We can lament how our sin brought the Son of God to die in our place on the cruel cross of Calvary. One powerful example of lament applied in a contemporary setting was when a Christian group was visiting the Watts Labor Community Action Committee in Los Angeles to try to understand better how racism had played out in their own area. At one point during the tour, they came to an exhibit of a noose hanging from a tree. The tour guide, Tina Watkins, began singing an a cappella rendition of “Strange Fruit.”

     Southern trees bearing strange fruit
     Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots
     Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
     Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Rob Muthiah, a part of the group, says that, “Many were moved to tears. The moment was an arresting example of memory, emotion, and truth telling coming together. It was a moment of lament.” Then Muthiah probed more deeply into the meaning of lament and our faith: “Lament is an act of faith, not faithlessness. You don’t lament to God if you do not believe that God is there. You don’t demand that God do something unless you believe that God can indeed act.”[3] Depending on what we are lamenting, songs like, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord,” or “Years I Spent in Vanity and Pride” might be helpful for the mood of a worship service.

Adoration and Reverence: Revelation 4:6b–11 or 5:6–14 would be excellent for this worship theme. The sermon can give examples of reverence and adoration in the Bible and church history plus reasons why we should adore and reverence our Lord and God. Hymns should be used for this service rather than gospel songs, as they should be in any context where the focus is addressing God rather than one another.[4]

Gratitude: The cleansing of the lepers in Luke 17:11–19 is a classic text for a study of gratitude, but other equally useful texts are too numerous to mention. Good prayer books might help those who are to lead prayer:

     We thank you for the life that stirs within us:
     We thank you for the bright and beautiful world in which we live:
     We thank you for earth and sea and sky, for the clouds and the birds that sing:
     We thank you for the work you have given us to do:
     We thank you for all you have given us to fill our leisure hours:
     We thank you for our friends:
     We thank you for music and books and good company and all pure pleasures.[5]

And, thankfully, prayers and hymns of thanksgiving in Scripture and contemporary hymns of thankfulness will be found in abundance: for example, “For the Beauty of the Earth.”

Mission: For mission, 1 Corinthians 12:12–31 or Romans 12:4–8 might be good texts to use, because talents or gifts which we use for mission vary within a congregation. Alternatively, Matthew 5:13–16 would work well, since we as Christians should be salt and light in the world. One person’s mission may be to help the homeless while another’s is going on short mission trips to a foreign country while another’s is to teach a children’s Bible class at church. All three are worthy. We are to bring light to a dark world, and this is done in many ways. A worship service might focus on one mission like evangelism, adoption services, feeding the hungry, caring for widows, peacemaking, or many other good works. Or the worship service could focus on our collective mission with intercessory prayers for all our different efforts to be light in a dark world.

Only a few ideas have been mentioned. If you have read this far, you have probably already thought of many more. I would encourage you to write those down and start developing other themes. If you are a worship leader, make sure that worship services are not getting into a monotonous routine where the same general theme dominates the sermons and/or the singing the lion’s share of the time. The gospel of salvation through faith in Christ and our obligation to “live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly” (Titus 2:12) are the main themes in the New Testament. There are many important sub-themes beyond them, but those two main themes alone are rich and complex in their meaning and application. Worship leaders should make sure our worship services correspond in order to aid spiritual growth and maturation.

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1959).

[2] R. E. Hudson, “I’ll Live for Him.” Arranged by C. R. Dunbar.

[3] Rob Muthiah, “The Theological Work of Antiracism Needs to Include Lament: The Bible shows us what to do with our frustration, outrage, and complicity,” The Christian Century 138, no. 2 (January 12, 2021).

[4] For the distinction between hymns (songs addressed to God) and gospel songs (songs addressed to one another), see Andy Thomas Ritchie, Thou Shalt Worship the Lord Thy God (Firm Foundation, 1969).

[5] Adapted from John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 33. A new updated and revised edition in contemporary English language is now available. John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer, updated and revised by Susanna Wright (New York, Scribner, 2014). Another helpful book is William Barclay, A Guide to Daily Prayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).