Gathered worship is in my blood. Having been raised in an Acapella tradition, the harmonies of "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" are deeply moving to me. I was ten years old when sent to a music camp and taught to lead congregational singing. Time passed. By my middle teenage years, I was regularly leading singing for small and large gatherings, for revivals, for youth rallies and soul-winning campaigns.
I loved it.
God blessed me with a big, solid, on-pitch voice. Not a particularly pretty voice - no false modesty here. I know a pretty voice when I hear one. My wife has a pretty voice. I've known song leaders with glorious voices that can move people like Gabriel in the great-gettin' up morning. I've heard myself. I do not have a Gabriel voice. I'm on pitch. I'm steady. I can be heard in the next county.
My kind of voice works well for congregational singing. Enough raw volume to guide the singing ... but know when to back it down so that the congregation actually sings. They're not just listening. They're singing! They can hear themselves singing. I love robust, open-throated congregational singing.
Unknown to me at the time, by early adulthood I had assumed responsibility for the success or the failure of "good" worship. Good worship was my responsibility. The right songs led in the right way. Just enough polish to sound professional. Just enough emotion to feel authentic. This set the table for a sermon, hopefully a knee-buckling stem-winder capped by an urgent, life or death call to salvation. Then, my role was to amplify the summons to God with a song - "Just As I Am", "All To Jesus I Surrender", "O Heart Bowed Down With Sorrow", "All Things Are Ready", "Are You Washed In The Blood".
I do not mock these precious moments. When God's call is announced a man or woman's decision is required. These are holy moments. The Holy Spirit is at work. The gospel is laid upon the heart dead in sin. God in His Sovereign grace causes that heart to pulse with new spiritual life. This is the miracle of the new birth, and I cannot explain the mystery of it. All I know is God offers His call to salvation in Jesus and that call must be either accepted or rejected.
For decades I believed it was my responsibility to so order myself, first as a song leader then as a preacher, in such a way that gathered worship resulted in public conversions. Regardless of what else happened during worship, if someone did not walk down the aisle to publicly confess Christ then that worship was ... less than. There are few things more broken in the moment than the sight of a preacher who has gravely poured out his heart calling people to Jesus only to be met in the moment with a vacant response. By practical experience that moment was received among the people, and often the preacher, as inferior worship. Worship which manifested actual public conversions among men and women: THAT WAS GREAT WORSHIP!
Any other sort of experience may have been good worship. People may have learned something from the Bible. Some of them may have had a moment of personal comfort, or conviction, or renewal. A tentative teenager may have been challenged to take a bolder stance for Christ among his peers. But absent the public confession of Christ for salvation, what was good worship in the moment would never be great worship that made a difference for eternity.
All of this changed when I realized worship was about God and not me.
(Final post in this part of the Worship series: Part 3 of 3)