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I’m teaming up with Jason Hatley (Pastor of Worship Arts at The Journey) this week to bring you 4 BIG worship planning principles from our new book, Engage: A Guide to Creating Life-Transforming Worship Services. Let’s continue today by looking at how planning your worship services in advance actually helps you listen more closely to Holy Spirit’s direction.
Have you ever come across church leaders who confuse laziness with godliness? These are the people who argue that they don’t like to put too much planning into their services because they want to leave room for God’s Spirit to work.Such thinking is not an invitation for the Holy Spirit to work, but rather a simple excuse for laziness.
Any pastor can pick up his Bible on Saturday night, read through a few verses and then get up and talk for 30 minutes on Sunday. Contrary to their popular belief, pastors who operate this way are not being more spiritual; they are actually dishonoring God. Remember our call to excellence? It’s impossible to be excellent without prayerful preparation.
Pastors who choose to adopt this mindset have always reminded me of students who wait until the last minute to study for a test they’ve known was coming for weeks. They cram for a few minutes the night before the big day and then sit down in front of the test, pencil in hand, and say, “God, please help me,” before diving in. God is not going to give such ill-prepared students the answers.
But if they had taken time to prepare for the test – to live up to their responsibility as students – then God would certainly help them stay calm, synthesize all of the information and do their best.
The Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of giving you advance insight and direction into his plan for your upcoming worship services as you honor God through preparation. He can move and inspire you just as powerfully two Thursdays before your message as he can the night before or the morning of – and you’ll be in a better position to hear from him.
Planning prepares you for God to move, and paves the way for excellence.
Not to mention, planning is extremely biblical. Again, Proverbs 21:5 says, “Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.”
Proverbs 21:31 follows that up with, “The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Both of these verses make it clear that God intends for us to plan.
“Winging it” is not an option in kingdom work. Of course we acknowledge that the ultimate result of our efforts lies in his hands, but we are in no way to use that as an excuse to shirk our God-given responsibility.
There’s an old joke about a religious devotee who visited the same saint’s statue every day and prayed, “Dear Saint, please, please, please help me win the lottery.” One day, as the man was praying this prayer for the umpteenth time, the frustrated statue came to life and said, “My son, please, please, please, buy a ticket!” This tongue-in-cheek joke underscores a reality we all need to remember – no matter what we are expecting from God, he wants us to hold up our end of the bargain.
God doesn’t reward our laziness; he works through our preparation.
Nelson
PS – Are you ready to relieve the stress of Sunday and plan your worship services weeks in advance?
That’s exactly what Jason Hatley will teach your worship leader (plus much more) in his new Worship Leader Tele-Coaching Network, beginning March 16.
In the tele-coaching network your worship leader will receive monthly hands-on coaching from Jason, including over four hours of training on how to establish the worship planning systems we talk about in Engage in your church.
Only a few spots remain . . . Learn more and sign-up at: www.worshipleaderinsights.com/coaching.
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