I help lead musical worship at my church, and my friend and I are currently prepping our worship set for an upcoming retreat next weekend. I’ve led worship since I was in high school, and because I’ve done it for such a long time, the act of structuring, playing, and leading music for the purpose of emotionally stimulating a group of people is a process that I’ve come to take for granted. But after this week’s lecture about the correlation between music and emotional stimulation, I’m finding it interesting to unpack what exactly makes a “good” worship set: emotionally stimulating, spiritually invigorating, et cetera.
Religious music seems to have always been an interesting point of study, as its main purpose is rooted in a desire to invigorate its listeners in a spiritual sense. Because the idea of “spiritual invigoration” through music is so vague and mysterious (as the lecture on Tuesday demonstrated), I wanted to explore what seemingly instinctive decisions I am in the habit of making as a worship leader, knowing that these instinctive, second-nature-esque decisions will undoubtedly contribute to this aforementioned propulsion of spiritual invigoration.
Contemporary worship music spans a variety of genres, with many congregations adopting a musical approach that might seem more reminiscent of a rock concert than anything else. An average worship team at my church, for instance, would consist of a lead guitar, a rhythm guitar, piano, drums, bass, 2-3 vocals, and maybe a synth. There are many ways to play certain worship “standards,” leaving it up to the worship leader/team to make the creative calls in creating a song that will be musically and spiritually stimulating at the same time.
In many ways, musical and spiritual stimulation tend to be very similar. Certain chord progressions tend to affect many people in a spiritually/musically stimulative manner, and many worship songs utilize these chord progressions in order to convey this effect. Other times, the structure of the song plays a large role — perhaps the most important point of many worship songs is the bridge, especially in songs that have a very standardized verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure; the bridge brings a new idea to the song through its lyrics as well as its melody. The “build” of a song is also very important; while the climax of a given worship song is oftentimes difficult to pinpoint, there is often a marked contrast in energy between the beginning and the end of a song.
As my friend and I were preparing the worship set last night, we said things like, “Do we want to put an intense song in here, or do we want to stick with something a little more peppy?” or “I love how this song slows things down, but we need to find a good transition into the next song, which is more energetic” or “Maybe if we cut out the instruments for the last chorus and did it a cappella, it would be good.” Those who have been in the worship music fold for a long enough time know the difference between an “intense” or “peppy” or “energetic” song, and how/when they should be used in a set. Here are some examples to illustrate what I mean:
An “intense”-sounding song (in terms of lyrics, tone, and build) might be something like this:
A “peppy”, energetic song might sound like this:
A slower, more meditative song might sound like this:
And a “medium” song — that is, a song that isn’t particularly dramatic, cheerful, or meditative, but still manages to be spiritually invigorating to some degree — might sound like this.
I find the last category to be the most interesting, because usually these songs don’t exhibit the characteristics that might make a song musically/emotionally stimulating, secular or otherwise. With that, I think the spiritually invigorating qualities of such a song lies in a) the lyrics, and b) the mood that has perhaps been set with the more dynamic songs before it.
A lot goes into building a worship set, and I’ve come to realize that many of the decisions made by the worship leader in designing the set’s power to spiritually invigorate really depends on how the worship leader responds to the music his/herself. Many times we will choose songs that we’ve heard done before by other worship teams; we’ve been able to experience the emotional and spiritual impact of that song without the burden of having to lead the song or play any instruments. Through that, we know the potential that that song has to spiritually stimulate an audience. It’s a process that depends a lot on experience and instinct.