"Free-Flowing Praise": Psalm 95

Hey.

I have a book called The New Worship: Straight Talk on Music and the Church by a guy named Barry Liesch. In Chapter Three, he refers to a five-phase pattern of worship developed by Vineyard pastors John Wimber and Eddie Espinosa back in the 80's. [I think the intended context was corporate worship, but perhaps one should not rule out its potential usefulness in personal devotional time.] The five phases of their sequence are (1) invitation, (2) engagement, (3) exaltation, (4) adoration, and (5) intimacy.

They use as their basis the first seven verses of Psalm 95:

Invitation
Come, let us sing for joy to the lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation, (v. 1)

Engagement
Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. (v. 2)

Exaltation
For the lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. (vv. 3-5)

Adoration
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the lord our Maker; (v. 6)

Intimacy
For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. (v. 7)


While I am quite wary of formula or prescription (though I don't see this as such), I believe that there is validity to this model and sequence. It has a natural rhythm to it. It should be noted that they did not develop this "system" and then plan their corporate worship accordingly, but rather, this pattern was an outgrowth of what was already happening (further proof that theory should always follow practice, not the other way around). And while we at the Bible Church do not rigidly follow a particular format or liturgy, there are times when I as a worship planner admittedly don't know where to start!! This is helpful in giving a modicum of biblical example/motivation/kick-start to designing a worship service in our paradigm.

By the way, if you'd like to check out Chapter Three in its entirety, click here.