Growing up, our services always began with a call to worship – whether it was called an invocation or something else, it was the same every week, and kind of bookended our worship service.
Today, we have the opportunity to be creative and bring variety to our opening invitation – our call to worship – yet the purpose doesn’t waver too much. It’s always an invitation to begin as a body of Christ to do a number things…
- Primarily, it’s about declaring the presence of God
- It’s about raising expectation and faith that God will do something
- It gives us opportunity to invite people to lay aside their personal issues and focus on our wonderful God.
- It’s the starting point for a journey that we get to take together
I’m sure you can add some other reasons for having a call to worship, yet today in worship services, we have drifted from making that clarion invitation for people to adjust their mindsets from the concerns of the world, to the truths of God’s kingdom. There appears (and it might be just me??) that we have left the call to worship to one side and not consciously thought through how we can help people begin the journey and shift their affections towards their loving Father.
This has become increasingly challenging with online services that have pre-recorded songs and aspects of the service sewn together to bring some sort of community worship experience. It’s really tough to bring that online. Yet equally, the call to worship is still relevant today because people – myself included – need to be reminded of why I worship, and why I worship with others.
So when crafting a worship service, whether one person or a team does it together, I would highly encourage you to include as part of your worship service, a call, and invitation to worship our amazing God. Give a purpose, a reason and a focus point (as if we really need one) as a reminder of how great He is, and how deserving of our adoration.
A call to worship isn’t new. The psalmists called people to worship all the time and it’s a great way to encourage people, to refocus them, to realign their hearts and express their gratitude and praise to God.
So, if you haven’t done a call to worship for a while, or maybe it’s not been a part of your tradition, or if you want to refresh the way you do them, then here’s some tips to reignite this vital part of worship…
- Check out how the psalmist wrote a call to worship and rewrite it in your own words. [see Psalm 95:1-2; 99:1-3; 100; 103:1-2;136:1-3; 138:1-3 just for starters]
- Keep the call brief and punchy. This is not the time for a sermon! 12-30 seconds will do it.
- Focus on God of course – His nature, His character, His works (see Psalm 103)
- Keep it positive – yep – smile! Because this is good news and we are to enter his gates with praise and thanksgiving (Psalm 100:4)
- If you want to pray, keep it brief and be thankful.
- If you read from Scripture, that can be powerful, but again, this is not the time for long passages. Keep it brief and focused.
- Invite people to respond verbally. It will involve their minds and hearts. It can be light, fun and loud but begins the journey of the worship experience.
- Write your own call to worship and keep it Christ centred.
- Segue into your opening song (if that is how you begin) with a musical segue, a phrase or concept from the song that might connect for people when they begin to sing. For example if you are singing “This is Amazing Grace”, you may pray “Thank you Jesus for Your unfailing love, for laying down Your life, for taking my place, and setting me free. We now want to give You all the glory and sing of Your extraordinary love for us.” All words and phrases from the song that they are about to sing.
- If you are doing an online worship service, simply record a call to worship and segue that into your first song.
There are endless ways to open a service of worship. Be creative, write your own, express Scripture in your own words, pray with joy, thanksgiving and excitement in God but be sure to keep Him central as He will not give His praise away to anything or anyone else (Isaiah 42:8).
If you’re leading worship each week, it can be a challenge to come up with something fresh and creative. Why not share a call to worship below, and let’s together begin to revitalise this aspect of worship in our gathered communities.