When I started leading worship, I looked for a metric that would show me my effectiveness as a worship leader. The first metric I looked to was engagement. Naturally, this made sense because our debriefs always began with the same observation: “Yeah, they were super engaged today” or “That seemed difficult, they didn’t seem too engaged.”

I’ve seen this familiar with young worship leaders. The problem is, young worship leaders grow up and it becomes engrained in their methodology.

After years of chasing the right kind of engagement, I was brought to understand two things: my approach and definitions are wrong.

First, to base your entire methodology of worship leading on whether people were visibly “in it” is incredibly irresponsible. The process of planning corporate worship then becomes a game of drawing the most self-gratifying reaction – not pastoring and growing the congregation.

Second, expression and engagement are two very different things.

Expression
My best definition is it’s external and horizontal – we can see it clearly. Think raised hands, tears and voices singing.

Engagement
This one is mostly internal and vertical – meaning we can’t honestly see it. That’s between the person and God.

The problem is we often derive engagement from expression. 1 Samuel 16:7 tells us that God isn’t concerned about external appearances, rather the state of the heart. Hebrews 4:13 tells us that the playing field is levelled because only God sees our true intentions, good and evil.

When it comes to expression and engagement, the metrics of observation must be forsaken for metrics of the Gospel.

Where two or more are gathered in Jesus’ name, there he is. Where His Spirit is, there is freedom. The Spirit opens eyes to the reality of God’s love through Christ’s finished work on the cross to reconcile us to our Father.

Don’t judge what you aren’t capable of seeing. Trust that as you faithfully prepare to lead your congregation, God’s Spirit is working, transforming and drawing people to Him.