Worship Leader, Tell The Whole Story

If you enter the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the climax, where the One Ring is finally destroyed, chances are you may be only moderately intrigued. Without first seeing the beauty of Middle-earth the ring threatened, Frodo and Sam’s costly journey, the valorous wars fought by the fellowship against execrable evil, or Frodo’s inward turmoil from the ring’s temptations, you’d likely approach this moment with a glib half-smile and move on. You’d be robbed of experiencing the weight of evil or the strains for triumph. You’d be missing out on all this story has to tell.

As worship leaders design services, we have the privilege of inviting people into the Story of stories. In an age of dopamine media and information overload, which flood the soul with torrents of anxiety and discontent, re-presenting the gospel through worship can calm the soul in a steady stream of mercy. However, if we don’t tell the full story, we risk shaping our people with a false gospel and producing burdened believers.

To convey the story, worship leaders ought to aim for songs that convey (1) the glory of God, (2) our need for his grace, (3) his provision of that grace, and (4) our mission in response. Without each of these elements in your regular worship, your church will sing an incomplete gospel.

1. Without Glory

Contemporary culture’s aversion to authority can sometimes lead churches to make light of God’s glory and holiness. Yes, the Lord is our brother and friend. He is intimately “acquainted with all [our] ways” (Ps. 139:3). He’s gentle and lowly—the most accessible person (Matt. 11:29). Yet we can overlook that he is all these things because he’s holy. Only because he’s perfectly holy can he love so faithfully and so tenderly. It’s because he’s set apart and glorious that his heart doesn’t recoil from a sinful world but instead saves it.

Contemporary culture’s aversion to authority can sometimes lead churches to make light of God’s glory and holiness.

God is holy. We must call the church to remember. If we miss the introduction to his glory, we don’t understand the ugly offenses we’ve committed against such beauty. Why ask for forgiveness if God isn’t holy? A weak God produces brutish people who rebel against every boundary. If God isn’t holy, we feel the burden to save ourselves. We’re left dangling at the end of Romans 7 (“Who will deliver me from this body of death?”) without grasping the significance of the answer (“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”).

Songs such as “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” and “Behold Our God” (Sovereign Grace Music) remind us that the Lord is supremely holy, glorious, and marvelous.

2. Without Grace

Many churches today structure their services around redemption’s climax—our salvation purchased on the cross. This truly is the pinnacle moment of history, and songs should always be sung about it. Yet if we fail to mention our sin and miss opportunities to confess to the Lord our grievous ways, we’ll grow into followers with little understanding of our need for redemption.

What will this produce? A lack of love: “He who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). Bonhoeffer calls this “cheap grace.” He says it’s “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.” A celebration is sweet because it comes at the end of adversity. Sing of the cross, yes, but teach your people to love it all the more for how desperately they need it.

Serve your people with songs like “Lord Have Mercy” (Sovereign Grace Music), “I Need Thee Every Hour,” or “Lord from Sorrows Deep I Call” (Matt Boswell and Matt Papa). They channel our earthly groans, preparing our hearts for the heavenly chorus.

3. Without Relief

In other cases, churches burden their people with little relief from their sin. I once returned to my hometown and attended the church Christ brought me to after my conversion. While I enjoyed seeing familiar faces, I heard a sermon of only works. Not even a hymn of praise was sung afterward to relieve and remind the soul that in Christ, “it is finished” (John 19:30).

Sing of the cross, yes, but teach your people to love it all the more for how desperately they need it.

This flock will be led to think their Shepherd is frustrated as he leads them, disappointed they aren’t dining at his table enough. They’ll be led to eat, as Jesus says, “the food that perishes” (6:27). They’ll work, hoping to earn love, but even the best bites of worldly success and pleasure will not satisfy. Instead, nourish your people with songs that communicate the full satisfaction of what Christ accomplished on our behalf.

Good options include “Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me” (CityAlight), “Living Hope” (Phil Wickham), and “In Christ Alone” (Keith and Kristyn Getty). These songs raise us from the pit, reminding us we truly are seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6).

4. Without Mission

Worship produces obedience. The gospel leaves us not only saved but changed. A heart that fills up with Christ spills over with an ever-flowing stream of justice and righteousness. Services that center on the individual, that align with this age’s therapeutic deism, lack the rejuvenating call on the believer to live like Christ.

We need prayers like “May all my days bring glory to your name” (“O Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer,” Sovereign Grace Music) and “As we go forth, our God and Father, lead us daily in the fight” (“Your Will Be Done,” CityAlight). Use your worship-service liturgies to “stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24).

Gospel Story

The apostle Peter tells us to “set [our] hope fully on the grace that will be brought to [us] at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13). What helps us set our hope? People immersed in the gospel story.

May our liturgies proclaim the gospel’s story so people would fix their hope on his grace and, by that grace, run toward Christ.