Dear Pastor, You Are the Primary Worship Leader in Your Church

What It Means to be a Worshipper

On most Wednesday mornings from September to May, I have the privilege of teaching the students in our Pastors College about worship. The PC is a ten-month school of intensive training for men who will serve as pastors or church planters. Every Wednesday one of the students leads us in corporate worship for thirty minutes. For the next fifteen minutes I encourage the leader and then suggest things he could have done differently.

Only a few of the students can play an instrument, and not everyone can sing. In fact, one year we were led by a student who was completely tone-deaf. He actually did a pretty good job. Why do I ask these pastors and future pastors to lead us in worship despite their lack of musical gifting? Because leading worship is a pastoral role before it’s a musical one. Music certainly plays a part, but without a pastor’s involvement, the songs we sing may do more harm than good.

You may not own an instrument or know how to play one. But your congregation looks to you to know what it means to be a worshiper. You are the primary worship leader in your church.

A church’s response to God’s greatness and grace rarely rises above the example of its pastor. Your congregation is watching and listening to you on Sunday, and not just when you preach. What are they learning? What kind of example do you provide for them?

If you fiddle with your sermon notes while everyone else is praising God, they may infer that singing is optional. If you look around anxiously to make sure the technical details are being taken care of, they might conclude that the priority of Sunday morning is the performance, not their participation. If you sing halfheartedly, they may assume that passion for God isn’t that important. But know this: your church is watching you.

God has called pastors to feed, lead, care for, and protect the members of the church. We tend to think preaching and personal pastoral care are the only ways we can fulfill those ministry responsibilities. But let’s not overlook how corporate worship—thoughtfully, passionately, and skillfully led—can be a means of fulfilling those goals.

As a pastor, you can feed the church by making sure your worship leader chooses songs for their theologically balanced lyrics, not for their popularity. You can lead the church by directing their attention to what’s important and by explaining the role of music in worship. You exercise care when you highlight songs that remind the church of God’s promises and faithfulness in the midst of their trials, especially as he has revealed them to us in the gospel. You protect your church from the world by finding songs that remind them of God’s holiness and the infinitely superior joy that Christ offers us.

A church’s response to God’s greatness and grace rarely rises above the example of its pastor.

Being the primary worship leader also means helping people understand what biblical worship entails. Because worship has become such a buzzword in recent years, we think we understand it better than ever. I think the opposite might be true. We think of worship as a feeling, a mood, or (most often) a style of music. We create Spotify playlists, sing worship songs, go to worship conferences, tune into worship radio stations, and support worship artists. You’d almost think we’re the first generation to think about worship or to worship God authentically. Hardly. The church has been wrestling through worship questions for centuries and has often come up with more compelling answers than we have. And the biblical picture of worship is far richer, more complex, deeper, more fulfilling, and more comprehensive than our present “worship” culture suggests.

That’s why pastors need to study the theology of worship. As helpful as the Christian worship industry can be, we can’t allow it to dictate and define what biblical worship is. There are an increasing number of books that ground our understanding of worship in Scripture and not in passing trends. If we want to serve our church, serve our worship leader, and please God, we’ll find the time to read them and to teach our church what we learn on this most important topic.

This article is adapted from Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God by Bob Kauflin.

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