What is the Purpose of a Worship Leader?
Since 2019, I’ve had the privilege of serving as one of the worship leaders at Orchard Hill Church. Over the past few years, I have grown in my faith while diving deeper into understanding the role music plays within our church services.
Though there are many tasks worship leaders complete on a day-to-day basis, I've tried my best to narrow it down to three simple activities.
My job as a worship leader is to:
Choose the songs we sing in church
Learn the songs we sing in church
Teach the songs we sing in church
My primary goal as a worship leader is to choose, learn, and teach songs that are theologically sound, biblically accurate, and glorifying to God. At Orchard Hill Church I’m just one member of a team of people that work together to accomplish that goal.
So, why do we even include music and singing in our weekly gatherings?
Simply put...because God says so!
The Bible contains over 400 references to singing and 50 direct commands to sing. The book of Psalms is the largest in the Bible and is literally a book of songs!
It’s important to point out that singing in church is not devoted to only those with good voices or musical capabilities. We are all called to sing and play music to the Lord.
But don’t take my word for it. Open the book of Psalms and throughout the pages, you’ll see verses like the ones below.
I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness; I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High. – Psalm 7:17
Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. – Psalm 96:1-3Sing to the Lord with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp. – Psalm 147:7
It seems clear to me that God wants us to use the voice He has given each of us (good or bad) to sing our praises directly to Him!
Choose the Songs
We all know what it’s like to get a song stuck in our heads! For some reason, music has a way of seeping into our memories and, like a broken record, gets stuck on replay. For that reason, it is incredibly important that the songs we sing in church are biblically accurate and glorifying to God.
At a conference in 2008, well-known worship leader, Bob Kauflin, said, “God didn’t intend that music supersede the Word (of God) or that music undermine the Word (of God). God gave us music to serve the word (of God).”
While the words of the songs we sing are most important to consider when choosing songs, we must also make sure that the melodies of the songs can be easily sung by the entire congregation. We can’t sing theologically and biblically accurate lyrics if the melodies are too difficult to follow.
Our job, as worship leaders, is NOT to sing complex melodies that only attract attention to ourselves. We MUST sing melodies that everyone in the room can confidently and passionately sing!
Learn the Songs
Once we have chosen the songs, we must learn the songs, not just individually, but as a team. This includes gathering the necessary resources to distribute to our team members so that each instrumentalist and vocalist can learn their parts with ease. On top of our musical responsibilities, we complete more administrative tasks like scheduling our team members and working alongside other church staff to help produce each weekend's service.
Between all three of our Orchard Hill Church campuses, we have about 80 worship team members, all of which serve at least 1x/month. The Orchard Hill Church worship team consists primarily of volunteers, all of which have families and busy lives to attend to. The last thing that we want to do is make serving on the team a stressful activity. Therefore, we provide as many rehearsal materials as possible before our weekly Wednesday evening rehearsal (chord charts, lyrics sheets, tracks highlighting their parts, etc.).
Although there is preparation that needs to take place to execute our weekend services, the primary goal of rehearsal is to prepare BEFORE the services so that we can truly engage in worship DURING the services. I’ve heard many people say that you can’t lead people where you’ve never gone. In order to lead worship, we need to be worshippers. We are not instrumentalists, vocalists, sound engineers, video directors, or lighting operators. We are worshippers!
Teach the Songs
Lastly, we teach the songs to the congregation that we thoughtfully chose and learned. Although we lead them in learning the melody of the song musically, more importantly, we focus on explaining the themes and messages of the songs we sing. We take time to emphasize before, after, or during the song why we have chosen a particular song. We may focus on a passage of scripture that inspired the song or share a passage of scripture that came to mind as we were preparing for the services.
Additionally, and more broadly, we share with the church why we worship in the first place. We do our best to emphasize the importance of meeting and the beauty of encouraging one another through song as we walk through the bumpy terrain of life. We intentionally sing songs and focus on the words of the songs we sing, so that our attention can be corrected from the things of this world to the creator of this world.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Simply put, worship leaders help the congregation that God has placed them within by choosing, learning, and teaching the songs that we sing to glorify God and enjoy Him forever!
