Cowden Hall’s Cornerstone Verse: Colossians 3:16
Artistic Theologian
Volume 12
Coming Summer 2025
Editor: Joshua A. Waggener
Lamm, Kenny. The Worship Ministry Guidebook: Engaging Your Congregation in Transformational Worship. Sanford, NC: WorshipLink Publishing, 2023. 282 pp. $14.99.
Too many times have worship pastors prayerfully crafted plans for a worship service, diligently prepared our worship teams, and passionately led our congregations on Sunday morning—just to look out to folded arms, tight lips, and blank stares from congregants who love the Lord but struggle to actually participate in times of corporate worship. In The Worship Ministry Guidebook, Kenny Lamm seeks to provide answers to the question: How can I help my church corporately engage with the Lord in worship? These answers are ones developed and refined through Lamm’s service as a worship ministry strategist for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, an adjunct professor of worship at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a worship pastor for over two decades. He fills the six sections of his Guidebook with biblical truth, spiritual wisdom, and practical directions for worship leaders to guide us to “get back on track with God-honoring worship that sets an environment that helps people encounter the transforming power of God” (2).
In the first two sections, Lamm begins by expressing his theology for worship and worship leadership, reorienting worship leaders to biblical truths that will ground his counsel through the book. This includes such truths as corporate worship has both “a vertical and a horizontal element” (19); one’s personal worship is a prerequisite to corporate worship (21); the role of a worship leader is to “prompt” worship, not perform (31); and that, for worship to be biblical, it should be physically demonstrative (33). His explanation of the four contexts of worship—private, small group, corporate, and festival—is especially helpful in challenging engagement expectations that may be mismatched to their venue (22–33). And his call to pursue “unified worship,” not merely blended or segregated services, is a welcome reorientation for leading through worship wars (48–67).
The rest of the book focuses on practicality as it turns to planning, preparing for, leading, and evaluating a church’s worship services. For example, Lamm provides helpful counsel for evaluating and introducing new songs (124–46), transitions and speaking between songs (155–64; 224–32), forming a worship planning team (167–69), preparing the choir or band (184–200), and improving one’s stage presence (233–36). However, some of Lamm’s advice may be difficult for some worship leaders to swallow. The every-week musician may scoff at his emphatic, all caps challenge to “LIMIT THE SIZE OF YOUR MASTER SONG LIST” (149). His charge to “identify and eliminate as many distractions as possible” when creating worship environments (255) may offend those who work hard (and are possibly paid) to produce fabulous, dynamic light shows every Sunday. And some worship team members may be embarrassed to evaluate their stage presence in response to the truth, “How we hold ourselves on stage can either help or hinder people in worship” (233).
In addition to the valuable counsel Lamm gives to the reader, his book is also filled with quotations, suggestions, and steps from other experienced leaders and theologians. This makes the Guidebook feel like a masterclass for training in worship leadership. Every few pages throughout the book, Lamm offers questions for the leader or his or her team to evaluate or brainstorm. These assist worship ministry teams as they walk through the Guidebook and apply its principles together.
One of the most helpful tools provided by the Guidebook is the Worship Evaluation Checklist (245–52). This comprehensive evaluative tool combines most of the counsel provided throughout the book and asks over 75 questions for a worship leader to answer after each corporate worship gathering. Busy worship leaders may balk at the task, but as Lamm counsels, “a much more intensive evaluation will be better at helping us give our best to God in worship” (245). A godly, biblical leader examines himself and his ways. Perhaps this evaluation, though daunting, is exactly the kind of intentionality our worship ministries need.The Checklist serves as a diagnostic capstone to the wealth of wise counsel on worship found in The Worship Ministry Guidebook. Lamm’s book does not speak to every issue a worship leader may face when trying to lead a worship ministry effectively. For example, more consideration of moral and musical qualifications for worship team membership and how to hold the team accountable to them with love and grace would be welcome. But what he has provided in his Guidebook is admirable. Worship leaders and their lead pastors, worship team members, and students of worship would all greatly benefit from working through this book, though the greatest benefit is likely to be received doing so in groups. Though no worship leader, save for the Holy Spirit, can make a congregation fully engage in worship, this book will help leaders facilitate better participation in the actions of corporate worship, to the glory of God.
