Beyond Sunday Worship

Worship Podcast

Archives for June 2010

How to Plan a Great Worship Set

A great worship set does not just consist in the type of songs you choose, though that is crucial. A great worship set must also have space for the Holy Spirit to do what He wants to do. I understand that some reading this post may come from an evangelical tradition that is more liturgical in form and not so contemporary. I hope we can all benefit from these tips:

  • The best songs are songs that are God-centered – songs that magnify the glory of God (Songwriters who do this well: Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Steve Fee, Stuart Townend, Reuben Morgan).
  • Choose songs that are simple and easy to engage with. If a song is too complex (thematically or musically) it will be confusing and difficult for a congregation to worship to.
  • The goal of worship music is not to be progressive musically. I encourage and love creativity but it really is not the goal. The goal is God’s presence in our midst and our congregations experiencing God.
  • It’s more important how you internalize the song than how you perform it. Do you mean what you say? Are you living the truth you are declaring? That’s the good stuff.
  • I try and include one song per set that is theologically rich and more complex lyrically. This can include hymns. I don’t recommend an entire set like this all the time because it encourages more spectating than participation; however, singing Biblical truth through hymns is so important.
  • Write your own songs that reflect what God is doing in your congregation; however, just because you wrote it doesn’t mean it’s a good song that’s good for the church to sing. Make sure it is ready. You need to write a lot of awful songs before you write a good one.
  • Plan to have a ‘prophetic moment’ in your worship set. Planning a prophetic moment doesn’t mean you KNOW what will happen, but you are focusing your faith on that moment. For most of us, we are not leading worship for an hour at a time. Typically it is 20-25 minutes. It’s OK to move from song to song, but I typically plan a lingering moment to allow the Holy Spirit to do something. If you do this after every song, the set can drag like crazy and you lose everyone. I plan my ‘prophetic moments’ around a certain song or a string of short, familiar, and engaging songs in the same key.
  • Remember that your worship planning needs to be more about ENGAGEMENT than about EXECUTION. Executing great songs with cool arrangements feels really good, but if no one was participating it wasn’t successful.

Happy planning.

DS

How to plan for a great rehearsal

Sometimes we love it. Sometimes we hate it. Rehearsal can equal a recipe for disaster – bringing together different people of different ages with different skill levels with different musical experience with different opinions and different styles. Ready for a good time? I hope to equip you in this post with practical advice on how to improve your worship team rehearsals so you can start seeing some instant improvement. It’s possible for you to look forward to rehearsal. It’s possible for you to have consistently good rehearsals. It’s even possible for your team to have fun. It just takes hard work and some time to build momentum.

I think most worship leaders leave their rehearsals up to chance. Here are some things you should begin to implement:

1. Put front end work into rehearsals

  • Prepare for your rehearsals like you would prepare for a service.
  • Give intense thought/prayer to songs, transitions between each song (musically & vocally), musical arrangements.
  • Call/Email/Facebook/Twitter/Text/Go door-to-door to make sure everyone arrives on time. Enforce this in love 🙂
  • Depending on your musical knowledge, have ideas for what each instrument should do. You need to ‘produce’ the sound so it’s not mass musical chaos, which is very distracting to the goal of worship. If you don’t have this type of musical knowledge or training, you should find someone you trust who does and work very closely with them.
  • Make sure the stage is set for your musicians! You want to minimize distractions and focus on your rehearsal. Too often loads of time is lost finding direct boxes, cords, and making sure the stage and sound is ready. Do this beforehand. TRUST ME!
  • Don’t plan a rehearsal covering 400 songs. I typically rehearse for 2 hours and plan to get through 3-4 songs. I spend the most time on one song that I know will be a challenge. I also try and leave time for spontaneous practice too. More on that later.
  • Ask the question, “What is the goal of this rehearsal?” Write it down. Plan around it. See it happen.

2. Create a fun, disciplined culture

  • RELAX! Don’t be tense, mean, impatient, and rude to your team. You may be leading worship by yourself if you are. Give them a reason to respect you.
  • Have fun! Make jokes. Laugh at yourself a lot. Something weird seems to come over us musicians when we’re on a stage with lights and a guitar in hand. You’re not really that good 🙂 It’s healthy to realize that.
  • Don’t allow everyone to say whatever they want whenever they want to. The front-end work you put in will enable you to have an organized practice with a specific goal and outcome. Definitely allow your worship team to offer ideas and give input (which may even be better than yours), but realize YOU ARE THE LEADER! Lead them!
  • Challenge your team to musical excellence. Less is more. If someone is consistently messing up, talk to them personally. Challenge them to practice on their own and come to rehearsal prepared. If they come unprepared, again, talk to them personally. If you set this standard, over time you will see dramatic improvement.
  • Don’t be afraid to confront.

3. Prepare for the spontaneous

  • I’ve noticed the best worship experiences are not my breakthrough musical ideas, drum loops, and air-tight arrangements. It’s what happens in between.
  • Reserve 10-15 minutes of your rehearsal for ‘flow time’. Take a simple chord progression and flow with it. Teach them how be spontaneous musically, follow the Holy Spirit, and be sensitive to the moment.
  • Don’t be solely ‘music-centered’. Pray. Worship during your rehearsal. Lead the way.
  • BEFORE rehearsal, take time to pray over your songs, your musicians, and ask for the Holy Spirit’s leading in your practice.

Worship Leading… In Practice

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on my recent post on worship leadership. I’d like to take some time in the next week or so to dive into some of these qualities on a deeper level. There is a way to be a worship leader that is not burned out, stressed, and just trying to survive. It’s staggering to see that the average tenure of a worship leader in the local church is 2 years. Where are the steady, passionate, vision-filled leaders who are building up a worship team of ‘on-fire’ worshipers? Hopefully this stuff will help. Some topics covered will be:

  • How to plan for a great rehearsal
  • How to plan a great worship set
  • The tension between spontaneity & preparation
  • How do I get inspired each week?
  • Getting behind the vision of your local church
  • How to approach personal practice
  • Creating a fun, disciplined culture
  • What to do when your worship team doesn’t ‘get’ your vision

Anything else I should add?

The Skinny on Worship [Video]

Hilarious.

What stereotypes of worship have you had to overcome as a leader? There are people who come into our services every weekend who have been weirded out by strange worshipers. Matter of fact, there are actually 3 levels to Sunday morning worshipers (Check out that post here).

It can be tough to balance engaging the fans while also engaging the newcomers. If you haven’t seen this incredible video, you could say it’s a prequel to this one.

So how do we “ease people in” to our services?

[Btw, I love the Skit Guys. Check out more their videos here]