“Um, so yeah… be with us throughout our week, thank you God—amen.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve prayed this prayer (and heard others do the same) to close out worship services.

I mean—it’s not bad. But it doesn’t go very deep.

As a worship leader, there’s a calling to greater depth in prayerful exhortation meant to encourage and lead the congregation, and I’ll be the first to say that I don’t always meet that. 

If you find yourself in the same situation, where you’re unsure how to go beyond general platitudes and stock phrases, then it’s alright. You’ve come to the right spot.

Let’s work through how to approach an exhortation with intent and balance depth with brevity.

A rightly worded exhortation is neither superficial and nor at the depth of a theological treatise. Instead, it lives somewhere in between.

It should say something substantial without trying to say everything. It should have enough theological depth to actually nourish people, while remaining simple enough to hear, understand, and respond to in the moment.

That is a difficult balance to strike.

Most of the time, a worship leader has somewhere around thirty seconds to a minute to speak. Within that small window, we are trying to be specific, clear, warm, pastoral, and encouraging. There is not much room for wandering.

So what do we actually say?

One of the easiest traps is spending the first half of an exhortation telling people what you are about to say:

"We're going to talk about the Lord's faithfulness today. As we sing this next song, let's think about how faithful God has been to us."

There is nothing particularly wrong with that. But we have used precious words to announce the subject rather than actually speaking about it.

Instead, just say the thing!

"The Lord is faithful to his people, and it is a joy to respond to that faithfulness through the words we sing."

That is a more meaningful, to-the-point exhortation. It gives the congregation something to consider while connecting naturally to what they are about to sing.

The difference is small, but important. If we’re not careful, we trade out substance for a preview, which is a poor substitute. We don't need to explain that we are about to talk about hope, joy, peace, security, God's faithfulness, or our response in faith. We can simply speak those truths.

Look for ways to connect those themes to the central Scripture, sermon, or theological emphasis of the gathering without announcing the connection every time. The congregation doesn't need to know your outline. They need to hear the truth.

I often hear worship leaders default to prayers about immediate circumstances and situations:

Those things are not inherently wrong. We should definitely pray for our families. We should certainly ask God for help in our circumstances. And we should desire greater holiness.

But these phrases can become spiritual “popcorn.” They take up space, sound familiar, and briefly give us something to chew on, but there is very little spiritual nourishment in them when they are offered without any particularity.

A more concrete prayer might begin with what the congregation has actually been taught that morning.

Those prayers have purpose, and they actually allow you to lead a congregation in a clearer direction.

They give the congregation something specific to believe, confess, remember, or ask for. They also help the exhortation serve the larger gathering rather than becoming a disconnected spiritual interlude.

There is a temptation, when we know we only have thirty seconds, to say something so general that it cannot possibly be wrong.

That usually produces safe language, but safe language is not necessarily helpful language.

The answer is not to turn every exhortation into a miniature sermon. You are not delivering a lecture, and the congregation does not need a five-minute theological explanation before every song.

The answer is to distill:

A useful preparation method is to write out exactly what you intend to say. That gives you an opportunity to discover whether your thought actually has substance.

Then, begin moving away from the written words.

Your goal is not memorization for its own sake. Instead, prepare so thoroughly that the thought becomes your own. You should know what you want to say well enough that you can speak naturally.

If you need a page of notes to remember all the things you wanted to say, you probably have too many things to say, so in short:

Cut it down.

Keep cutting until you can carry the thought in your mind and speak it naturally. Then, make sure you can support that thought with specific biblical truth rather than relying on familiar Christian phrases.

There is another reason our exhortations sometimes feel thin.

On one hand, we may simply be inexperienced. Giving an exhortation is a skill, and everybody starts somewhere. You can become better at it through preparation, practice, and learning to listen carefully to what is happening in the gathering.

But on the other hand, sometimes the shallowness of our public ministry reveals the shallowness of our private walk.

(I can see the wincing now—don’t worry, I’m in the same boat!)

If you do not regularly think deeply about Scripture, pray deeply, worship deeply, repent deeply, and consider the character and works of God, there will not be much depth available to draw from when you stand in front of the congregation.

Jesus said that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). What comes out of us publicly is connected to what has been filling us privately.

This is one reason the imagery of a well is so useful throughout Scripture. A well is not sustained by what happens at the surface. You actually have to go down to where the water is.

The same is true of our spiritual lives.

If our thoughts about God remain at the surface, our words will tend to remain there too. We can learn the vocabulary of worship ministry and become very good at saying things that sound spiritual without having much spiritual substance behind them.

The answer is not to manufacture deeper-sounding language.

Just go deeper in spiritual formation—and it will bear fruit.

Spend time with Scripture. Think about what you are reading. Pray beyond the immediate circumstances of your life. Wrestle with God's character and promises. Confess sin. Give thanks. Sit with difficult truths. Let the Lord shape your understanding of who he is and what he has done.

Then, when you speak, you’ll actually have something to give.

A good exhortation does not need to impress people. AIl it needs is to give them something true.

Remind them that God is faithful. Tell them why that matters. Point them toward Christ. Give thanks for what God has done. Call them to trust a particular promise. Help them see the circumstances of their lives through the lens of God's character.

And when you pray, actually pray those things!

Bring your requests before God with the ultimate purpose of His glory in view. We certainly ask God to provide, heal, help, sustain, protect, and deliver. But Christian prayer does not ultimately terminate in the removal of our discomfort or the improvement of our circumstances.

We want God Himself, despite trials, temptations, and difficulties.

We want His name honored. We want Christ exalted. We want His kingdom to come. We want holiness to grow in us. We want the gospel to bear fruit. We want to remain faithful whether the Lord gives us ease or difficulty.

That gives our exhortions somewhere deeper to go:

When you prepare for the next worship service, leaning into a deeper sense of exhortation and refining what you say will take you from simply filling silent spaces to actually ministering to people more meaningfully. 

Be blessed 👊✌️