Much of what passes for worship these days has drifted far from its biblical definition. In the minds of many, worship is the praise-singing portion of a church service and nothing more. It gets compartmentalized into a small part of life and becomes a checklist item… read my bible (check!), said grace at dinner (check!), sang a praise chorus at church (check!). This segmentation extends to the whole of our faith. Rather than faith permeating our life and all things passing through that filter, Christianity becomes simply a part of who we are.

Modern worship has become I shaped. It is still pointed at God but notice how narrow it has become. It is just a portion of our life, perhaps as little as twenty minutes on Sunday morning. We have allowed worship to become associated solely with the praise choruses of the worship. Many of these contribute to our weak worship as they encourage us to express our singular love for the Lord without expressing the magnitude of his being, his creation or his acts. Segmentation also allows for worship to be put aside as the band lays down their instruments. We fail to make it a part of everything in life.

When we decide to get in shape for worshipping God, the first improvements we see are that our worship life begins to look more like an upside-down T. Our worship is focused on our love for God but maturity helps us to see that it is a lifestyle. Being a Christian defines who we are rather than being one of many attributes. We have been reborn and given the Holy Ghost to dwell within and guide all we do. Worship is reflected in right thought and right action as we take all things captive to the will of God. The Apostle Paul spoke of this in Romans 12:1-2 in which he preaches that our (whole) lives should be an act of worship.

We can declare ourselves in shape for worship when we can see the capital I taking root. In addition to expressing worship through all aspects of our life, our worship of God is told through all available channels. We see the musical, prayer, and teaching events of Sunday service as a part of worship in which our hearts and minds are stretched by the glory of all of God’s acts laid out before us. We express awe as the psalmist did and though the seas were not parted for us, we can look to equally momentous changes in our new birth. We are unsatisfied with prom songs for our friend God and we demand depth; we are convinced that All Is Well with our souls despite the crashing waves, that the grace we know truly is amazing. Prayer encompasses the entire body and not just our own wants and desires. The words of the pastor build muscle and strengthen us in areas that we may not have even seen the weakness.

We cannot afford to continue allowing worship to atrophy, even if our intentions in restraining it seem to be good (such as seeker sensitivity.) Whether we face joy or cataclysm, our first attitude should be that of a worshipper. Remember, others are watching.

Laying out lyrics on slides seems so simple. Take the words, type them out, and flash them up onto the screen. As churches all over the world discover on Sunday mornings, there is more to the development of a presentation than meets the eye. This is the first tip posting on the topic of using our presentation tools effectively and we might as well start with something obvious.

The structure of the text on our slides should match the structure of the song.

Let’s use the song ‘Draw Me Close’ as an example. If you know the song, lift your hands and sing it so you can get the cadence and phrasing of the tune in your mind. If your church doesn’t sing this one, watch the video so you can learn it before we go on.

When I prepare the lyric text for presentation, I must always keep two things in mind. Number one, it has to be readable and number two, some people are not going to know the song. Check your assumptions on the second truth; we cannot assume that everyone is going to be familiar with the song, its tune, and its phrasing. This means that the praise leader and the accompanying musicians are going to be in the position of teaching the song to some singers and they will rely on your design to help in this process.

The first verse of this song is pretty simple. A good sized font can be used and a fair amount of whitespace allowed making for a pleasing slide. Especially note how the lines of text match the melodic structure of the song. A reader can easily understand and learn the song by matching the breaks in the text with the melody line of the song.

Building slides with this focus is not a one time process. Typefaces, font size, and changes in the background and the slide template can all cause things to go awry. When you assemble your script, you must run through all the slides with a careful eye to ensure nothing has changed or shifted unexpectedly.

Here is an example of a subtle problem that we need to watch for. Notice how the chorus lines have been broken, moving the last word down to a new line. To a singer with an unfamiliar song, this creates a struggle in learning the song. Think about the tune for this chorus. When we sing ‘want’, we hold that that note until starting the next line. Someone new to the song may also expect a whole note on the ‘ever’ in the second line since we have broken the slide there. This would have been even more troublesome if the slide had been center aligned like the top slide.

This is an easy fix if we catch it. Make the font size a few points smaller or stretch the margins a bit so that the lyric line can stretch out.

The problem here is similar to the previous one. The third line is broken in an awkward place but reducing the font enough to fit all of the words on one line makes it unreadable. The fix is found in listening for an obvious musical break in the song and using that to structure your slide. Do you hear the melodic break in the third line? It happens right after ‘else’ giving us two clean lines: “’Cause nothing else – can take your place.” (We pray never to see the word “cuz” on a screen.)

The bridge lines create a little different issue. Should we compress all of this text on one slide or break the bridge (‘Help me find the way, bring me back to you.’) out onto another slide? A case can be made for both, but readability should win out and it can be improved by moving these lyrics onto their own slide. Because the pacing is so tight in this section of the song, careful selection of a transition will be very important here.

Hope you find this helpful. If you have some additional hints and helps to offer, leave a comment below.