Understanding Worship Vocabulary:
Connecting with a New Congregation
by Simon Gough
As a worship leader, have you found it hard to go and lead worship with a different congregation? It’s more than just missing the feeling of comfort with a team you normally work with or using equipment you know in familiar surroundings. At times, I find choosing songs for a congregation can be a difficult task when I am leading them for the first time.
This is a complex conversation, but I want to focus on one reason why leading a different congregation can be a challenge. I believe that it comes down to worship vocabulary. Every congregation uses different songs to interact with God through praise and worship. They have an understood and established vocabulary that they use to connect with God. As they worship, they use this vocabulary, so they don’t have to think about melody, rhythm, or working hard to understand a lyric. They can use each of these elements to interact with and focus on God. The song becomes their conversation with Him.
This is not to say that the use of an understood vocabulary is mindless. The goal is to get to a place where a song is entirely part of a congregation’s worship vocabulary. They have mastered the singing of the melody, the placement of the rhythms, and the meaning of the song is understood both corporately and personally. Your leadership is vital in helping to make sure all these elements come together so that a song becomes more than just a song.
As a guest worship leader, I am always conscious of making sure I am including some of the worship language that the congregation uses regularly. I want to encourage them to engage with God during a service, and I don’t want the service to become a concert where I’m using songs that I know, and everyone is busy trying to learn these new songs. This isn’t to say that you can’t introduce something new or bring some part of an established worship vocabulary to the congregation in a new way. Maybe it is experimenting with a different arrangement or putting songs together that adds new meaning to what is being sung.
Our worship vocabulary should always be growing and changing. As we discover new things about God, and as we experience His new mercies every morning, our interaction with Him should grow and change. The danger of an established worship vocabulary that becomes stagnant is that a congregation can become numb and “go through the motions” with the same songs. Corporate worship should be a life-giving part of our walk together in Christian community.
Bless you as you work to keep the worship vocabulary of your congregation vibrant and meaningful.