Wherever I go, I meet people who hunger for a greater release of free worship and prophetic song in their churches:
- Pastors who want to include prophetic song part in their churches, but don’t know how.
- Worship leaders who are stepping into free worship and prophetic song, but the congregations don’t know how to flow with them.
- Worshipers who want to go beyond the level of worship in their churches.
To gain a full breakthrough, we all need to work together. Here are a few things we can do:
For Pastors
Make room for free, spontaneous worship in your church services. This can occur during the worship service itself or after the preaching. Encourage your worship team to break away from the songs they have rehearsed, and to sing the “new song” as the Holy Spirit leads.
Encourage the worship team to make a loop out of the last line or two of a song, and to use it as a platform for free worship. Many worship teams are already doing this, but several things that help take the team to a higher level. Encourage the team to let the vocal lead pass from one member of the team to another. Encourage the team to seek to release the congregation, not to dominate them. Encourage the musicians to think of themselves not as the players, but as the instruments – and to let God be the player.
Encourage the congregation to sing. Tell them God wants to hear their voices. Encourage them to join in when the worship team is leading a time of free worship.
Teach the whole church about worship and about prophetic ministry. Show them from scripture how to worship in Spirit and in truth. Teach about the prophets and how they heard from God. Give them guidelines so they can flow in the Spirit without getting out of bounds. For prophetic song, the life of David and the Psalms -- the Bible’s collection of prophetic songs -- will give you a lot of material to teach.
Bring in guest speakers who can teach about, model, and impart prophetic worship. God is raising up many anointed Psalmists in the church today. Your guest ministers will need the right instruments – if it costs a little extra to rent an instrument or to ship the musician’s instrument to your church, spend the money. It’ll be worth it. And take the time to make sure the sound system is set up properly. If the musician has CDs or tapes, set up a book table. Many Psalmists cannot survive financially in ministry without the income from sales of CDs and books.
Lead the worship team in times of humbling yourselves. Any of us who minister publicly will wrestle with pride. Preachers and musicians alike plunge into despair if our “performance” didn’t go well and into euphoria if it did – and both moods are lies because we are called to serve, not to perform. Good musicians are especially susceptible to these issues because a drive for perfection is part of what makes a person musically talented. As pastor, you have wrestled with the same issues as a preacher or teacher. Allow God to address these issues in your own life. Then take time to meet with your ministry team to serve one another in prayer and repentance as you seek God together for lives of brokenness, humility, and first-love.
For Worship Leaders
Seek God in secret. Cultivate a desire for more intimacy with God even when nobody will notice. Your relationship with God in secret is the key to being able to carry a rich anointing in public consistently, over the long haul.
Lead the congregation in times of free worship. Put your musical talent in the background and play just enough to help the congregation find freedom in worship.
Encourage the congregation to sing. Exhort them to step out of the comfort zone. Help them find a theme to sing about – “Tell the Lord what you love about Him the most,” or “Sing about the promises God has given you.”
Include ministry times in the worship service, if the pastor is willing and time permits. Sometimes God will lead you to give an altar call in the middle of worship. The Psalms show us that worship can be a time of coming to God and exchanging our weaknesses and failures for His strength and victory. Include these times in your worship services, as God leads.
Let the worship lead directly into the ministry of the word. You’ve seen the pattern: we go sky high in God, only to hit the ground with a thump to make the announcements. Then, when the anointing has totally dissipated, the preacher gets to preach. Many churches have started making their announcements after the first or second song, so the anointing can build during worship and then lead seamlessly into the preaching.
For Worshipers
If your church makes room for free worship, participate. Don’t just sit like a bump on a log. Let God take you as high in the Spirit as you can go. Expect God to pour out prophetic revelation as you worship, and sing what He shows you. You don’t have to prophesy every insight He gives you; learn to worship God in a river of fresh revelation.
Make free worship a regular part of your devotional life. Use your own musical instruments, or sing along with a CD. You can sing your own words while singing along with a worship song, or you can sing along with a classical or jazz CD. Sing in tongues, and look for the interpretation. Sing about the scriptures God has been bringing to your attention. The more you give yourself to free worship in secret, the more you will flow in the corporate anointing when the church gathers for worship.
If your church does not make room for free worship, don’t put pressure on your pastor to change. God made someone else the pastor, not you; it isn’t your job to reshape the church to fit your gift mix. But if you’re hearing God call you into a higher place of freedom in free worship, press in at home. God may have called you to be a pioneer in your region, flowing for now in a higher place of worship in secret. Then in God’s timing, He will bring what you’ve experienced in secret out into the open.
Finally -–
Expect your times of free worship to bring a richer release of the anointing, both in your personal devotions and in the church. As the presence of God intensifies, lives will change.
And expect God’s presence to bring prophetic gifts – everything from discerning of spirits to word of knowledge to prophecy itself. Prophetic experiences must be judged, of course; in the multitude of counselors there is safety. Submit your prophetic words to the government within your church. But as we handle prophetic words with wisdom and maturity, we will see God pouring out a rich revelation of Jesus, by the Spirit. And this will release the works of Jesus in our churches, and in our personal lives outside the sanctuary.