Many, many years ago I was the music leader at a small, charismatic church. Back then we called the position I held the Worship leader. It was my job to prepare music and other resources like readings drama for Sunday services. I spent a lot of time and money finding, purchasing, and arranging music for the limited team that we had. Some folks might think that it’s easy to take a full band arrangement and scaling it back for 2-3 pieces and a vocalist or 2. It’s not.
I remember one time we had some visiting missionaries. One of the members of that team questioned why I had the music and stuff all ready prior to the service. She thought that true spiritual worship had to “flow” from the Holy Spirit at that very moment. Even preparing music a day ahead of time would potentially stifle the movement of the Spirit. At that time I was pretty sure that the Holy Spirit was capable of knowing what was coming in some distant future. I could prepare for that time right now and it would be perfectly in line with what God desired.
But, even that has the potential to be off the mark.
I have since begun to believe that corporate worship for the Church should contain those things that make the Church remarkable. These things are the Word and the Table. Anything more than those can be done, and usually much better, by people outside of the Church. So, I have to say that I totally agree with what Jonathan Aigner wrote below.
Please note that I think that what Aigner wrote is appropriate for corporate worship. Other forms of prayer and singing may be quite appropriate for other occasions.
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