___ “This Is Amazing Grace,” “Happy Day,” “All I Have Is Christ,” or “Victory in Jesus” (songs about the redeeming work of Christ)

___ “Whom Shall I Fear,” “Friend of God,” “One Thing Remains,” or “The Love of God” (songs about God’s nearness, love, and care for his children)

___ “Power of the Cross,” “In Christ Alone,” “Glorious Day,” or “Hallelujah, What a Savior” (songs depicting the cross/Gospel)

___ “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “God of Wonders,” “Behold Our God,” or “Indescribable” (songs that convey God’s separateness and distinction from creation)

___ “10,000 Reasons,” “All Creatures of Our God and King,” or “Here I Am to Worship” (songs that express or encourage exaltation)

___ “Lord, I Need You,” “Just As I Am,” “Give Us Clean Hands,” or “Take My Life, and Let It Be” (songs that express repentance/consecration)

___ “Thanks Be To Our God,” “Jesus, Thank You,” or “How Great Is the Love” (songs that express thanksgiving)

___ Other (please specify ______)

___ No general characterizations can be made

Analysis of responses to Q24. Q24 was designed to discover the way(s) that worship pastors most commonly sequence the songs that appear in their worship services. Table 10 indicates the only clear definitive pattern of service sequence emerging from the data.

39 – In the “Third Song” category, “Songs depicting the cross/gospel” was less than a half a percentage point away from the top place holder of “Songs that express or encourage exaltation”
40 – In the “Third Song” category, “Songs depicting the cross/gospel” was less than half a percentage point away from the top place holder of “Songs that express or encourage exaltation.”

The service order indicated in Table 10 is by no means representative of all or most orders of service. Rather, it represents the only visible pattern that frequently emerges in Southern Baptist churches.

Several observations can be drawn from the data contained in Table 9. First, worship pastors tend to begin their sequences of worship with songs about the redeeming work of Christ. Second, the sequence represented in Table 10 from the perspective of tempo could arguably be described as beginning fast/celebrative and moving to slower/contemplative. Third, potentially reflected in this common sequential order is the impact of the age of individualism on worship service beginnings. The lyrics of the often-celebrative category of “Songs about the redeeming work of Christ” frequently place emphasis on the one who needs redeeming. For example, the pronouns “me,” “my,” and “I” coupled with the expression of man’s great salvific need can be prominent features of this category of song. Finally, because only one definitive service order emerges, I conclude that many services of worship are constructed with songs whose categories have no discernable link or arc. This conclusion would be consistent with freedoms Southern Baptist worship pastors possess to construct worship services in any way they wish.

Relating to the influence of transcendence and immanence, Q24 indicates a substantially low occurrence of songs that represent God in his transcendent otherness at the beginning of a service. Q24 also highlights a very low occurrence of songs about God’s distinction and separateness from his creation (transcendence) at any point in the worship service as demonstrated in Table 11.

The category “Songs that convey God’s transcendence” in general was one of the two least selected categories of songs used by worship pastors anywhere in the sequential order. The song category entitled “Songs that express thanksgiving” was the least selected category.

To further confirm that songs conveying God’s separateness and distinction from his creation (transcendence) are not selected to either begin a worship sequence or appear in the song sequence in any role, the following questions were applied to the data collected in Q24: (1) Did the worship pastor select the transcendent song category at any point in his/her sequence of worship? (2) If selected, where does the worship pastor commonly place a song of transcendence in a service of worship? Figures 15 and 16 show the extrapolated answers to these questions.

Figure 16. Is a song of transcendence selected at any time for inclusion in worship services?

Figure 16. Is a song of transcendence selected at any time for inclusion in worship services?

Figure 17. Where do worship pastors commonly place songs of transcendence in a worship sequence? (The calculations in Figure 16 are based on n=266. However, the calculations for Figure 17 are based on n=269 due to three worship pastors selecting two options for their placement of songs of transcendence. This accounts for the slight difference in percentage of “No” in Figure 16 and “Not at all” in Figure 17.)

A related sphere of inquiry can be stated as follows: “If the sequential ordering of a worship service does not reflect the priority of representing God in his transcendent otherness prior to his immanent nearness, what are the goals, values, and objectives that most influence the way a worship pastor sequences the elements of his or her worship service?” As previously stated in the analysis for Q22, sequential ordering of a worship service is most influenced by a tempo contour that moves from fast/celebrative to slower/contemplative in addition to style and key relationships. In examining Q24, a general movement from fast to slow and from more celebrative to more reflective can be discerned, which corroborates the findings of Q22. Beyond these conclusions, I can only definitively say that the concept of God’s transcendence is not an influence on the majority of service beginnings and does not substantially affect most services at any point during the congregational singing.

Presentation of Q24 and response bank. (Results for Q23 will be considered as a part of Q24.) Worship pastors were asked to respond to the following eight-part request:

Please complete the following thought:

•   The content of the FIRST congregational song is most often like . . . .
•   The content of the SECOND congregational song is most often like . . .
•   The content of the THIRD congregational song is most often like . . . .
•   The content of the FOURTH congregational song is most often like . . .
•   The content of the FIFTH congregational song is most often like . . .
•   The content of the SIXTH congregational song is most often like . . .
•   The content of the SEVENTH congregational song is most often like . . .
•   The content of the EIGHTH congregational song is most often like . . .

Worship pastors selected their responses from the following response bank:

1. “This Is Amazing Grace,” “Happy Day,” “All I Have Is Christ,” or “Victory in Jesus” (songs about the redeeming work of Christ)
2. “Whom Shall I Fear,” “Friend of God,” “One Thing Remains,” or “The Love of God” (songs about God’s nearness, love, and care for his children)
3. “Power of the Cross,” “In Christ Alone,” “Glorious Day” or “Hallelujah, What a Savior” (songs depicting the cross/gospel)
4. “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “God of Wonders,” “Behold Our God,” or “Indescribable” (songs that convey God’s separateness and distinction from creation)
5. “10,000 Reasons,” “All Creatures of Our God and King,” or “Here I Am To Worship” (songs that express or encourage exaltation)
6. “Lord, I Need You,” “Just As I Am,” “Give Us Clean Hands,” or “Take My Life, and Let It Be” (songs that express repentance/consecration)
7. “Thanks Be to Our God,” “Jesus, Thank You,” or “How Great Is the Love” (songs that express thanksgiving)
8. Other (please specify below)
9. No general characterizations can be made

Table 9 represents the preferences indicated by the worship pastors concerning the kinds of songs and their most common sequential placement in an order of worship.

(In each cell, the top number indicates the number of responses. The bottom number indicates the percentage.) These percentage calculations in Table 9 are based on n=266, the total number of respondents to Q24 rather than the varying number of responses to each song’s ordinal placement.