8 powerful ways to start your worship service

  Speaker 1 If you’re looking for fresh ways to start your worship services out strong, I’m going to give you eight ways you can do that, along with an example for each. The first way is to read scripture. This is usually called a call to worship. A call to worship is simply a scripture that gathers the church, that brings them in, that centres their hearts, their minds, their attention, their affection upon the Lord, and calls out some attribute about God that makes us want to worship him. And usually these are about 2-5 verses, sometimes longer, usually not shorter. And usually you find them in the Psalms. There are a a lot of great call to worship scriptures found in the Psalms. You can find some in the New Testament and some in the Old Testament as well. If you’d like, I have about 50 call to worship scriptures that you can have for free. Just click the link below and I will send you all 50 of those for you to use as calls to worship. And if you really want help with your calls to worship, I actually have 21 completely done for you calls to worship that include talking and prayer points, and you can have those for just $2. Speaker 1 Link is also below. If you are tired of reading scriptures to start your services out and starting to feel stale because you’re doing this and you’re like, Alex, what’s something new and fresh? Well, I would encourage you to try number two, which is to corporately read scripture with your congregation. So you put it up on the screen and you have them say it out loud with you. And this is usually going to be a shorter passage. You don’t want to read too many verses together. Just maybe one or two. For example, this weekend at our church, it was Mission Sunday. So we read Psalm 117. It’s only two verses, and it talks about the nations coming to bring their praise to God. What a great way to start service. And so if you’re going to try reading it corporately together, I would encourage you to speak slowly and clearly pause at the sentence marks and even use your hand to direct them, to start and to stop and praise the Lord, so you can direct them with your body. So that’s the second way to start your service is to corporately read scripture with your congregation. Speaker 1 The third way is to read a historical creed. You maybe have never done this before, but it’s actually very powerful. There is a creed called the Apostle’s Creed. It’s an ancient agreement by the early church that I believe in God, the Father, the maker of heaven and earth. If you read that corporately together and you hear all these voices affirming what we believe out loud, it’s a very powerful way to start service. And it helps if you go into a song like Phil Wickham’s I believe that really even hammers that home even more because now you have this nice thematic tie-in. So try reading a historical creed together like the Apostle’s Creed. The fourth way you can start service is with an inspirational video. You can have your creative team make a video, or you can find one online, purchase one. It can be a one-off video that acts as a call to worship. If you just search on YouTube, Call to Worship Video, you’ll find several, where it’s basically scripture with some beautiful imagery, and it’s got some emotional music that’s really inspiring you to come and praise. So that would be one type of inspirational video. Speaker 1 The other type of inspirational video that I’ve seen churches is what’s called a culture or hype video. And this is a bunch of footage from your church of people getting baptised and people worshipping and the word of God being preached passionately. It’s all the highlight reel from your church, and it’s set to really cool music. As the countdown Timer goes down, the beats get faster and the cuts get faster. It amps people up to worship and shows them how cool your church is. It’s very American and Western and prideful, but no offence if your church has one. But that is another way to start your service. I would say, though, if you’re going to use that Hype video, that you want to rotate that out every few months because it can get really stale and boring, just like anything else. Okay, the fifth way to start your service is to do a call and response reading. This might be a psalm, like Psalm 136 that says, Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. And then all the people say, His love endures forever. And then the worship leader says, Give thanks to the God of God. Speaker 1 And then, His love endures forever, the people say. And you can go back and forth like that with Psalm 136. It can also be a responsive reading from the Book of Common Prayer. There are many of those in that book, so check that out if you’re looking for something like that. The sixth way to start your service that you may have never thought of is to practise obedience. What do I mean? Well, in some of the Psalms, it says, Shout for joy to the Lord all the Earth. And you can actually tell the church, Hey, church, we’re going to read this Psalm, and then we’re going to practise shouting. We shout at football games, we shout at UFC matches, we shout at the TV. Why can’t we shout for the Lord in church? Why can’t we obey the scripture? Let’s practise this. And then you can have the band trashcan. And trashcan means swell in and make some noise and cymbal and guitar on the same key, same note, whatever. So you’re swelling in together and the church is shouting and you’re shouting, Praise the Lord, we love you, Lord, and practise obedience. Or if you read a song about raising hands, raise up holy hands, you can say, Hey, we’re going to practise this before we start to sing this song and then raise hands. Speaker 1 And then maybe you go into a song about Raising Holy Hands. There’s a couple of them that come to mind, like Unchanging by Chris Tomlin, which is, So we raise up holy hands to praise the Holy One. So Practise Obedience. That’s the sixth way. The seventh way is corporate confession. Now, this is something that one of our academy students brought to the table. They told us on Communion Sundays, they start service out with a corporate confession. They read from the Book of Common Prayer. There is a prayer in there about confession, confessing our sins, confessing our failures, confessing that we fall short of God’s standard. And then they read that together corporately. And then the worship leader pronounces a pardon over the people by reading something like 1 John 1: 9, which says, If anyone confesses his sin, he, God, is faithful and just to forgive him and cleanse him from all unrighteousness. So you have confession and then pardon granted through the scriptures. And so you can try that. They do that every Communion Sunday, and that’s how they start their Communion Sunday service. So that’s number seven. Number eight is musical reflection. Musical reflection would mean you’re going to say something along the lines of, Hey, church, we’re just going to put some scripture on the screen and let you reflect. Speaker 1 So you might put on a scripture about Christ’s sacrifice, and maybe your piano player is playing something, What can wash away my sin? Gently, lightly, quietly playing music. No vocals, just piano, maybe some pad, maybe a little bit of cymbal, ambient guitar. And there’s a scripture on the screen. And so you’re starting by giving your church space, mental space, spiritual space, to just be quiet and be still before the Lord and reflect upon his word and prepare their hearts that way. And then you can begin ramp up the song and get them to move into a time of actual singing together. So that would be the eighth way. Now, there are a lot of churches that just start the song and say, Come on, let’s worship. I will tell you, that is underserving your church. That is not a great way to get engagement. You’re almost not even acknowledging the people. But church is a corporate experience. So you want to talk to the people. You want to lead the people. You are a worship leader, not just a song leader, okay? And I’m getting on a soapbox right now, but I don’t care. So really, please engage with your church and lead your church. Speaker 1 If you’re going to just start with music, maybe start with a beat, a simple beat, and then talk on top of it. But at least welcome the church, acknowledge the church, and even better, if you can say a prayer. Because worship songs are simply prayers set to music. And so the whole service is a prayer unto the Lord. And so really help set that tone by welcoming the church, grabbing them by the hand, saying something, and praying with them as you go into your time of musical worship. Now, I will say on any of these speaking moments, I would recommend having somebody like the keyboard player underscore your speaking, your talking, because it really helps set the tone, and it makes it less awkward, and it makes it more emotional. So have your keyboard player underscore your speaking moments to make them more impactful. And I would encourage you, anything can become stale, so definitely mix it up. Use these different ways to do it. But I always recommend starting with scripture. Include scripture in your beginning of in your call to worship because biblical worship is always revelation first, then response. And so you want to help your people’s heart warm up to God by revealing who he is through his word. Speaker 1 So grab those call to worship scriptures below. I’ll also be making an anatomy of a Good Call to Worship video soon. So hit subscribe if you don’t want to miss that. And if you’re interested, this topic actually came from inside the Worship Ministry Training Academy, which I run. One of our students asked for fresh ways to start their services out. And so if If you’re interested in joining a community of over 1400 worship leaders from all over the world who are taking their craft and calling seriously, we have courses, we have coaching and community all inside the Worship Ministry Training Academy, plus a whole bunch of done for you documents and templates to streamline your ministry. And you can try it completely free for 15 days by going to worshipministrytraining. Com and signing up for your free trial. So I hope this video helped you. I hope to see you inside the academy. Otherwise, I will see you inside the next video. God bless.