Reviving Liturgy in the Relevant Church :: Enriched Worship Experiences

Establishing a liturgical calendar not only ensures that you cover a diverse amount of material, it will also help establish sermon series' and worship themes far in advance. That will give whatever team or individual is charged with planning your worship services a big head start and a chance for true success.

Believers and seekers alike are seeking a narrative within the worship experience. If the worship leader is making a point about God's sovereignty throughout the songs, there is a video about God's love and the sermon is about forgiving others, then your congregation walks away with perhaps a nice experience, but no narrative that helped them grow and grasp the ONE main point that was essential that day. When the elements have no deep correlation, they will not lead the congregation along a worship journey throughout the service and into a deeper understanding of God's character. It remains shallow and discombobulated.

Conversely, if a worship experience is built like a narrative, the congregation goes on a spiritual, emotional and logical journey throughout the service. One element builds on the previous. There are highs and lows that help tell the story and ultimately bring restoration, hope and redemption. That is the nature of our own condition and God's plan for us - so, naturally it works.

Let me share a real, relevant example of this. My church (New Hope Adventist Church) uses the Faithweaver curriculum by the distributer Group. This weekend's worship theme is our calling to worship God in His holiness. The story that will be used for the sermon is the Prophet Isaiah's calling and his response to God's holiness. With this knowledge, my worship planning committee helped me craft this weekend's service to prepare people's hearts for this calling that would be presented in the message with songs like "Not to Us" by Chris Tomlin, "Surrender" by Lincoln Brewster and "You Are Holy" by Elevation Worship. We picked a video of a young woman's testimony of how she surrendered her personal dreams and agenda to be an influence in the lives of her young students that live in poverty - what she calls her "humble response to God's holiness." The congregational prayer will immediately follow that and give people a chance to submit to God's plan.

All of these things are intentionally built to drive home that central point, which will culminate in the message. We go through highs and lows and drive home the point using various avenues, but it all leads people to the same place - to respond to God's holiness - our main point.

All of this intentionality begins with a liturgical calendar. It will help you develop important seasonal themes and even work in the felt needs of your congregation as you cover a diverse series of topics and narratives from the Bible.

There are more resources for planning worship around themes and the liturgical year than you could ever make use of. It gives you a depth of creativity to cull from even as you implement and develop the creativity of your own team.