My wife has found time to add little things all around the house. She bought some new LED candlelights online for each of the windows. Some faux brick cardboard lines the walls of a sitting room, trimmed neatly with puffy white “snow” and all of our stockings. And we hung some paper snowflakes from the kitchen ceiling.

This Sunday, though, I get to do something I really have the opportunity to anymore: lead worship. It probably seems silly that a guy who wrote a book on worship suddenly finds himself out of the role. But part of the role I do fill now, as assistant pastor, requires filling in where other needs are, since we have a number of worship leaders in the church.

There’s just one hitch, leading worship during the month of December. How do we do justice to the season and still come out feeling like we’ve worshiped?

Many worship leaders and pastors fill the worship section with Christmas carols for the weeks leading up to Christmas.  It doesn’t help that there is no shortage of songs that are available, and there is always at least one person who likes each one.

Don’t get me wrong; the songs of Christmas fill an enormous role in our worship. I was taught once that the hymns provide us with a wealth of theology. The carols are no less important. It is important to be reminded of how angels announced the birth of God in flesh, born that man no more may die. We have tendency to build our worship, our services, our religious experiences, around themes. I only think that we miss an immense opportunity to build our worship out of these great truths.

In the interest of time, allow me to share some of my thoughts when it comes to worship at Christmastime.

1) Use the carols, don’t be used by them.

Find one song to build your worship experience upon. We have an abundance of songs that are never sung from week to week. Why throw the whole filing cabinet aside for three or four weeks in the year?

The key to this point is to understand the point of the song. My favorite Christmas song is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. It is the cry of a people (the Jews) who are spread throughout the world, looking for God to rescue and restore them through the Messiah. What power there is when we understand the meaning of a song. In this case, how simple is it to move into thoughts of the “Light of the world [who] stepped down into darkness” (Here I Am To Worship, Tim Hughes, © 2001 Thankyou Music)? Or take O Come All Ye Faithful, where the cry is “O come let us adore Him,” to move into “Let us adore Him, Jesus Christ, is the Lord” (Let Us Adore, © 2005 Reuben Morgan / Hillsong Publishing).

2) Worship must still be worship.

We have to guard against performing a show at a time when the show is easily accessible. Don’t forget that the whole world is attaching itself to the glitz of Christmas. Don’t let your worship service be transformed into a Christmas marketing campaign.

Another way of looking at it is that we have the opportunity to show seekers what church is all about. Christmas is one of two times in a year when we can count on unchurched people to sit in our pews. Why not give them a true taste of what church is the rest of the year? If we believe that the power of God is in our services the way we typically see them through, why change that just because we are in a different season? Shouldn’t we want to bring down the power of God so that those who haven’t experienced Him can do so?
Let me close off with a quick note. My first Christmas at my last church, the pastor expected me to lead in a number of carols for worship that December. The first Sunday he looked over my worship list, saw only one Christmas song to open, and kind of gave me one of those “I have a bad feeling about this” looks. After the worship, during a customary prayer time, he asked for forgiveness in losing sight of what this time of year is all about.

The angels announced the birth of Christ to shepherds, who found Him and worshiped Him. Magi from the East travelled across a continent led by a star, so that when they found Him, they might worship Him.

Don’t get so caught up in the hype that you end up losing sight. The key to worship at Christmastime is to worship.

The first time, I remember that we were so close that I couldn’t really see the stage at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, MN. I can recall being inside the building, though. The Fall of 1994 was the last, attending the performance as part of a collegiate music theory course I enrolled in that semester. This time we were up on the third tier in the theatre house, looking down on the stage and the vast audience below us.

I realize that for most of us, attending a symphony performance is a bit of a stretch. Why is it, though, that we who seek to lift our songs to praise to Almighty God overlook the musical masters who sought, rather often, to do the same?

Some Music Appreciation Notes

A portion of that tendency is found back in the Law of the Foundation. When we have little knowledge of the world of music, we are less likely to appreciate its branches that grow further from the ones we are familiar and comfortable with. The result is a limited, tunnel-vision approach to music in general, that impacts our worship.

Another reason may be the fact that when we look at the playbill for the evening, we see only three pieces listed: Bach’s Concerto No. 3, for 10 minutes; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, for 34 minutes; and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, for 45 minuts. In that moment we can see just how deep our appreciation for music truly runs. (By the way, this is an actual performance scheduled for the Minnesota Orchestra in October.)

Most of the time we find a theme from one of the movements of a symphony that is used repeatedly in various contexts. The first movement, “Allegro,” from Spring in Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” is a prime example of this. (Click here for some Four Seasons soundbytes.) However, we as the vast majority of uncultured musicians rarely understand where the music came from, much less its context in the larger composition.

One more slice of information before moving on, one that helps direct the point of the symphony question. What we learn from the classical symphonies is a natural rise and fall in the tone and tempo of the piece that helps it to move along and feel more complete. It is like reading all of a good book, instead of just the middle, or a few chapters right at the end. All together, the whole has greater meaning.

The musical term for the differences in loudness and softness is “dynamics.” Merriam-Webster defines dynamics as “variation and contrast in force or intensity.” Wikipedia similarly tells us that, “dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but also to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic . . . or functional.”

Dynamics & Worship Leading

So, how does all of this fit into worship leading? This is the part where I start to get brutally honest. But let’s start by stating the Law of Dynamic: “A musical experience finds full emotional connection in a natural rise and fall of musical dynamics.”

Here is a for instance. You walk into a worship service to the sound of “Days of Elijah.” The music is strong and the beat is lively. The song moves right into “Lord, I Lift Your Name On High” without skipping a beat. Afterwards, the leader stops to move the capo on his guitar, then begins to “Better Is One Day.” But you notice something: the key changed with the song, but the tempo and volume are the same. You find yourself trying to the words “better is one day in Your courts, better is one day in Your house” into the same amount of time as youd “behold He comes, riding on the clouds,” and it’s just not coming out right. As the leader stops to take his capo off, you take a breath and look for what might follow. “I Give You My Heart” begins, and again you find no change in the dynamics, and trying to fit your words into shortened spans of time.

Has this happened to you? This is a classic case of what I call “stylitis.” Stylitis is knowing or being comfortable with one style/tempo/etc. of music, and forcing every song through this one filter.

There is another issue that you might call “Roller Coaster” or “Stop and Go” worship. I’ll start by saying that those who find themselves leading in this style come by it innocently. Through catching on to the pattern found on most live worship CDs, or by some other means, most of these worship leaders have discovered that dynamics play a role in worship.

This type of worship service is characterized by frequent changes in tempo from fast to slow to fast to slow, etc. Many of our popular worship albums are arranged in two or three fast-to-slow sets. What we may not take into consideration is that sometimes these recordings are made over multiple evenings, or were a dedicated service rather than a 20 to 30 minute worship set.

Practically speaking, I think it’s better to move through this progression only once in a typical service, saving a multi-set model for an extended or special worship service. Build to one major climax in a service, especially if your service format moves from worship into preaching. (Watch for the Law of Climax to follow.) Roller Coaster worship can serve to yank people around too quickly, not having enough time in one part of the worship service to connect and see it to completion. Remember that as a worship leader, our first task is to great an environment of worship for the congregation as a whole to have a meaning experience.

Making Use of Dynamics

Hopefully you are beginning to see that Dynamics can affect your worship service. If so, you may be wondering how to employ them to your advantage.

One thing I’ve realized while writing this post is that the Law of Dynamic needs the Law of Climax to be used to its highest potential. In fact, though I had mixed the two together in a post a while back, I’ve come to see them as two separate Laws.

Still, I want to give you something to chew on in the time between posts. A long time ago I learned that dynamics can be applied in three different ways.

1.  Within individual lines of a song

Each line of a song has its emphasis, its own point it to drive home. I understand that you can’t apply this so much to faster songs, but it helps to deliver the message, to get the hearers and singers to think about what is being sung. For example, where do you place emphasis in these lines from “I Give You My Heart”(Reuben Morgan, © 1995 Reuben Morgan / Hillsong Publishing)? “Lord, I give You my heart, I give You my soul. I live for You alone.”

2.  Within a whole song

Which parts of a song do you take the time to emphasize? Again, this will end up being the message you communicate to the congregation. Can you think of any instances where we put the emphasis on a part of the song that may not have been intended by the original composer? (I’ll share one of my own later in the Comments section.)

3.  Within a set or collection of songs

If you missed it, this is the whole point of the Law of Dynamic. But if you’re still looking for another piece to help you put it all together, I think the Law of Climax will help.

Even within a single church body style often varies from ministry to ministry, even beyond the scope of worship.  We teach Biblical truths differently from children’s church to youth group to the adult Sunday message.  Some of us use PowerPoint; some preach extemporaneously while others read their sermons; drama or video clips might be employed, or they might be considered distracting.  You’ve likely heard that the message is more important than methods used to communicate it.  As long as your message aligns with Biblical truth, the methods aren’t necessarily of importance.  Basically, you can cling to and make use of your own Style so long as you remain true to the Inspiration.

This is important because I believe that we fact the struggle of taking something like worship, applying our own flavor to it, and in doing so we lose the inspiration behind it.

Thanks to the success enjoyed by some popular Christian music artists, it seems that recording a worship album has become a trend that shows no sign of slowing.  On my own desk recently, I’ve listened to worship albums by Third Day, Michael W. Smith, and Phillips, Craig & Dean.  Other artists dabble in the worship arena as well.  Some, though, are losing the inspirational edge in their efforts.  What is needed is a look at the Law of Inspiration: Every true rendition of a song honors and reflects the inspiration that birthed the song.

There are many wonderful songs available to the Church today.  I remember one pastor I worked with thought we might be able to trim down our worship file to forty or fifty songs in order to provide some consistency, but still allow for enough variety from week to week.  A quick count on my computer tells me that I have at least 220 chord charts, and that isn’t all of the songs that I currently pull from.  While a smaller sampling sounds good in theory, it doesn’t seem to work in practice.

Of course, not every song in my file will adequately fit in every possible worship situation I might find myself in.  One of the marks of an experienced worship leader is the recognition of this truth.  For some of us, though, there is the temptation to re-invent or re-create a song so that it fits a different audience or environment then it was written for.  Because we understand the Inspiration of a song (its personal application, Biblical truth, etc.), and we want to expose it to our circle of influence, we apply our own Style to it.

I’m not saying this should never be done.  Rather, I am cautioning those who do so to be careful not to allow personal enjoyment of a Style to trump the Inspiration that provided the foundation for the song.
One album immediately comes to mind as an example of sucessfully applying the Law of Inspiration.  Known around the world for their singers and song-writers, Passion went back to some worship roots to produce the Hymns Ancient and Modern album (2004, Sparrow Records).  As someone who grew up in the church but sang few hymns, I was excited for the release of an album that would both deepen that element of worship in my own life, as well as seek to deliver these songs from a contemporary perspective.  Though I may not care for the style of a couple tracks, I cannot deny that the Inspiration remains intact.

On the other hand, I have heard first-hand accounts from many that there are some Christian music groups that are losing the inspiring element of many worship songs, though these re-creations fit into the group’s style of presentation.  One friend, a younger Christian in a church I served in, told me that he knew the song and even considered it one of his favorit songs of worship, but with this group it was more about performance than worship.

While I believe re-creating songs of old, as the Passion album does, is an excellent means of pulling our heritage and theology out of the storage closets that color projectors have driven our hymnals into, I have to say that I don’t think we should be forcing worship songs out of their intended range of usage.  Some songs are meant to be slow and contemplative, even if it can be a stretch to use them that way.  Likewise, we cannot always force a more lively number to stand still so we can use it as a transition song (a problematic tendency of my own).  Moving back and forth from mainstream congegational worship and ultra-modern youth worship is difficult because the songs are not usually meant to be that interchangeable.

The real answer is to create, not to re-create.  If you have the talent and musical know-how to reinvent these pieces, you can take that talent and hone it into a song-writing tool for the niche that you already fit into.

Some Helpful Questions

So what if we want to take the Law of Inspiration to heart and apply it?  I have some questions that I think will help you out.

1. What is the message of the song?  If we change the style or tempo of the song but cannot successfully communicate the message afterwards, it is best to leave it alone.
2. Who is the original intended audience of the song?  Is the message applicable to both the original audience and the new one?  Will the new audience understand the message in the same terms as the old?
3. If I were the song writer and I were to hear the re-creation of the song, how would I feel about it?
4. Can I better convey this message through a song already written for my audience?
5. Is there need for an original song with this same message for my audience?