3 Tips Acting Classes Taught Me About Worship

Growing up, these were the questions floating around in my mind during church. I knew singing songs was a big thing during services, and we always had Christian radio on in the car, so it’s not like I was unfamiliar with worship music. But I wasn’t quite sure of the point of it all.

I felt uncomfortable early on just standing quietly with my hands in my pockets, so I learned all the classic worship poses by watching everyone around me. I observed that when the chorus and the bridge got loud and exciting, I should lift my hands really high, as if I were giving Jesus a high five. When the song was quieter, I noticed I should keep my hand low and open like I was waiting for a cafeteria tray. And lastly, at the end of the song, I saw how we clapped and woo’d for the worship band because the drummer was rocking the cymbals or the vocalist tried really hard to hit that high note.

It’s not to say I didn’t have meaningful experiences in Sunday worship as a kid. God was able to meet me in those moments despite my awkwardness. But for the most part, I was on autopilot and just followed what everyone else seemed to be doing. I felt that if I didn’t do all the Mr. Miyagi “wax on, wax off” motions throughout the songs, I was probably worshiping wrong. But what was worshipping right?

The Heart of Worship

As I grew older, I began to delve into Scripture and learn from people in my life about what worship is truly all about. I saw that the goal was not to check a box or seem more holy to the person across the aisle, but rather to let everything going on in life melt away and have a chance to engage in a deeply personal relationship with God. It was a chance to acknowledge God and communicate how I feel about him, and be in his presence:

“My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed…” (Psalm 71:23)

“Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously…”” (Exodus 15:1)

I was beginning to understand the heart of why we worship, but that didn’t change that I still felt awkward in Sunday services because I still felt like an imposter when raising my hands or closing my eyes. Fast forward to one summer in college, when I found myself taking acting classes in London, England. It was then, somehow, in the process of learning the basics of Shakespearean acting, that I discovered some key steps to truly start enjoying and engaging with worship.

And before we draw back the curtains and delve into my learnings in becoming a thespian, I want to acknowledge that worship is a broad topic and has many facets, and my biggest learnings were about participating in corporate worship during church services. While the wisdom I gained on my path to becoming the next Daniel Day-Lewis may be more specifically aimed at worshipping in church services, I believe practical lessons can be applied to worship as a whole.

Alright—let’s cut to the action. Here are the three lessons about how to experience worship more deeply and know God more fully as a result of getting some acting chops.

1. Focus on Your Scene Partner

I can’t emphasize enough how much I dislike being in the center of attention. I’m 6 feet 4 inches tall and tend to slouch and sit low in seats because I don’t want the slightest bit of focus on me. You can imagine, then, that having a whole room staring at me as I rehearsed my lines was difficult.

Every time we rehearsed and workshopped in front of the class, my attention moved from the person I was acting with to all my other classmates. My acting would become terrible. Granted, I wasn’t great to begin with, but it got really bad. As we rehearsed over and over again, the teacher had to encourage me to forget everyone and everything around me and focus on my scene partner.

I believe the same idea applies to worshipping at church. I realized I would karaoke in my car to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of my lungs as if I’m in Wembley Stadium (or my shower), but in church, I’d find my hands buried in pockets, worried about what others were thinking.

I realized I was cheating on my scene partner anytime I got distracted by my own self-doubt and worry about what others were thinking of me. And I saw how the same can be done in my worship, with Jesus as the scene partner.

We will always be fighting external and internal forces that are distracting us. However, if we refocus on our scene partner, we’ll eventually develop the habit of locking in with Jesus, and the rest of the world will fade away. For me, sometimes that meant closing my eyes (if I knew the song well enough, more on that later) so as not to be distracted by the crowd around me. Other times, it was praying that I’d only be fixed on thinking about God. Either way, I would slowly feel the focus shifting away from others (and myself) and more towards worshipping Jesus.

2. Meaning Over Memorizing

Knowing your lines is as 101 as it gets in an acting class. The same principle applies to worship.

During one stretch of my class, we were performing a scene from The Scottish Play. It took me three days to learn the five pages of dialogue (SNL would be tough for guys like me). I spent every spare moment poring over this old English script, starting to wonder if I was never given a Hippocampus.

I also didn’t know how to pronounce or understand a handful of the words (and I’m pretty sure the people back then didn’t either). To make matters more stressful, Shakespeare wrote in a poetic form called “iambic pentameter,” which means I had to learn the rhythm of the words to make it sound right when I spoke (apparently, I was also practicing for a musical).

All this said, after long days of work and study, it finally clicked. But it wasn’t because I found a foolproof strategy to just memorize the words; it was because I started to learn the heart behind them—why each word and sentence was chosen. I realized that this same approach can also be applied to worship songs, leading to a deeply relational experience with God. (Luckily, most modern worship songs are not nearly as intense as learning five pages of Shakespearean dialogue.)

When I used to hear a new song being played at church, I would find myself trying so hard to mumble my way through the track. By the end of the song, I had maybe gotten half the chorus down, but had no idea what I just sang. I was so busy trying to seem like I knew the words, I didn’t understand what the song was actually about.

My new rule? If I don’t know the song, I won’t sing it. Now, it might be two or three times before I feel comfortable singing the lyrics, and that’s OK. It’s not just about memorizing the lyrics; it’s about knowing what they mean.

When we worship with song, we are making a declarative statement that we believe these things (or, at least, want to believe them). For example, Crossroads Music has a song called “God of the Breakthrough,” and one of the lines is, “You haven’t failed us yet.” Over the past couple of years, my family has faced some truly difficult losses, and there was a season when I struggled with that line. I felt God had failed me and my family. After some time and healing, I now sing that lyric out loud and with full knowledge in my heart that, despite the circumstances my family went through, God was still good and hadn’t failed us.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, I don’t feel that God is good or loves me. And sometimes that means I don’t sing the words of a song that say that (like King David in the Psalms). I think God is OK with that. But, there are a lot of other times that I still sing the words, praying that God would help me to believe them (like the man who asked Jesus to help his unbelief, or when King David cries out for help in his unbelief).

Either way, I believe God wants to wrestle with us in that, and wants our worship of him to be genuine. I don’t think He’s here for a perfectly buttoned-up me or you (Psalm 51:17), but here for us with all the cracks, brokenness, and unbelief. And digging into the meaning of what we’re singing, rather than just trying not to be the only one in the crowd not getting the lyrics right, can put us on the path of being closer to the presence of God.

3. Acting (and Worship) is Reacting

Stella Adler is one of the most influential figures the world of acting has ever known. From her school came greats like Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, and Maya Hawke. One of her famous quotes is “Acting is reacting.” I think the same statement can be said about worship.

If our focus in worship is on presenting ourselves perfectly and hitting every note exactly right, we’ve missed the mark—because in that case, it becomes about us instead of listening to our scene partner, God.

One of the things my acting coach emphasized during our rehearsals was not just waiting for my turn to deliver my lines in the scene, but also listening and reacting to what my scene partner was saying, not just in their words, but also in their emotions.

Doing this made me more attentive, and it also altered my delivery each time we went through the scene. This is because, outside of having a literal scripted dialogue with each other, we had an unscripted emotional dialogue that was always shifting, adapting, and becoming personal.

I think the same should be done with Jesus in our worship. As we worship Him, He can often speak back to us in a personal and meaningful way. I find Jesus speaking to my current lived experience surrounding my life. I’ll hear words of affection like “I love you,” or words of encouragement, “You are doing well climbing this curtain mountain,” and sometimes it will be an outpouring of emotion that feels like a warm hug or will be the cathartic cry I’ve needed after a hard week.

Listening to and experiencing God in worship will then change my posture, volume, and feelings during worship because I am now in dialogue with my Creator. I’m sharing the scene with Jesus rather than trying to get everything right in front of him.

And…Action!

For a long time, worship felt hollow and lost a lot of meaning to me. Now, it’s a highlight. In a world more fast-paced than ever, taking the time to slow down and refocus my attention on the one thing that truly deserves it—God—has been profoundly transformational in deepening my knowledge of Him and His love for me.

By choosing God as my scene partner, focusing on meaning over memorization, and engaging in a dialogue with Jesus during worship, I’ve seen myself become increasingly in love with Jesus during worship.

Whether it’s in the pews, the car, or the shower, I’m starting to belt out (or whisper softly, depending on the mood) the truth about God. And I believe He loves my voice—even if my wife doesn’t.

Disclaimer: This article is 100% human-generated.

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At Crossroads, we major on the majors and minor on the minors. We welcome a diverse community of people who all agree that Jesus is Lord and Savior, even if they view minor theological and faith topics in different ways based on their unique experiences. Our various authors embody that principle, and we approach you, our reader, in the same fashion. You don’t have to agree with every detail of any article you see here to be part of this community or pursue faith. Chances are even our whole staff doesn’t even agree with every detail of what you just read. We are okay with that tension. And we think God is okay with that, too. The foundation of everything we do is a conviction that the Bible is true and that accepting Jesus is who he said he is leads to a healthy life of purpose and adventure—and eternal life with God.