Last week, I covered the importance of prayer in planning worship. Everything is bathed in prayer from beginning to end.

From there it is a bit more difficult to determine what comes next in the planning process; it might change from week to week. If I have a clear direction for where the pastor will be heading in his sermon, then I generally start there and attempt to theme the entire service around that central idea. I read through the sermon’s focal scripture reference and pray over it to see if there are any clues as to where the other parts of the service might go. I then select a corporate scripture reading (which, at the church I currently serve, is almost always from the Psalms) and try to formulate a three-song corporate singing time, all based around the central theme if at all possible. I do this by using the indexes included in most of my source material (more on these materials in a later post).

The choral anthem is generally selected weeks in advance because it takes weeks to prepare and unless it really doesn’t fit, I generally stay on task with the anthem list. If it doesn’t necessarily fit the sermon or the congregational theme, I might place it somewhere in the service that isn’t so much dependent on that theme—the offertory, for example. If it just doesn’t work at all, I don’t try to force it. I might select another anthem that is more easily prepared or one that serves as a trusty standby (a “sugar stick” as one of my colleagues calls them), or drop the anthem in favor of a solo or drop it altogether.

The result of this type of planning process is hopefully a cohesively-themed service of worship, the planning for which has been informed by scripture and guided by the Holy Spirit.