The Worship Service at GCC (Part 1) How the Service Comes Together

Over the next few weeks I am going to be sharing thoughts about our worship services: How the service comes together, how and why we select some songs and not others (this will go into detail about our standards for songs) and what happens when we gather for worship. Many are not aware that alot of time, thought and effort goes into planning our worship services. It starts with the sermon schedule. Jesus commissioned Peter to feed his sheep and Peter has passed this task down to the elders of the church. This is the first step - determine the text. I select texts that I believe the church needs to feed on.  The text is then factored into what songs we select. The song selection process involves myself and our worship team leaders. Usually we plan for two weeks at a time because of our practice schedule. I will often pick a closing song that matches the point of the sermon, and list some other songs that I believe would be appropriate for the overall theme of the service. We also try to maintain a flow with the songs we pick by using some basic headings to help us think about what we're doing during each part of the service. We start with a song that praises God for who he is: his power, majesty, holiness, love and mighty deeds in history. We then move on to songs that speak of our need for renewal through the gospel. Such songs are usually very cross-centered, crying out for mercy and acknowledging our inability to help or save ourselves. We then move into a time of confession of faith, sin or a scripture reading that serve as a bridge for us leading into the sermon. Our intention is to select songs, confessions and so forth that will prepare our hearts to hear the word. Then our closing song is a song of commitment where we as a congregation ask God to bind our hearts to the truths we just heard from his word. We ask him to change us and to make us the kind of people he has called us to be, to do the things he commands us to do and to fill us with the power to do them. I will speak more about the content of our songs in the next post. But choosing what to sing is a collaborative effort that involves alot of thought and planning. And that's how we decide what to sing each Sunday.