Consider the artist tasked with creating a mosaic. All of those little pieces of stone need to just the right shape and placed in just the right place. If it is done well, and done correctly, from a distance it will look like a nice picture. And up close . . . like the ancient forerunner of pointillism that it is.
It’s that way with a worship service. If the songs are selected pell mell at the last minute without any prayer or thought or even possibly coordination with the message, it is likely the result will be experienced as a poorly designed work of art, a mosaic gone awry, all of the stones not quite lining up, a patchwork of unhappy disunity.
How far ahead do you plan for leading worship? A few minutes? a few hours? A few days? A few weeks? It’s obvious that there is such thing as not planning far enough ahead (picking songs five minutes before the start of service) but is it possible that you can plan too far ahead? Can you plan six months worth of songs for your worship services?
How often are you able to coordinate the selection of songs with the message?
Mosaic, Ephesus. The one at the top of this post is from Sardis.
Everett,
ReplyDeleteI find this subject one of the most fascinating among music directors. I am not the world's most organized individual, but I have song sets down for one month in advance. I always write down good medley ideas for flow and am constantly borrowing from friends. I am never able to coordinate songs with a message, and only occasionally am I asked to add a selection due to the sermon content. Our leadership team leans towards a lack of preparedness and poorly implemented ideas, so if we can prepare worship sets a month in advance I don't see why anyone can't do much more with a leadership team that is a bit more focused. We constantly address this weakness and I can speak from experience when I say that the more prepared we are the more "flow" the Spirit seems to have.