Beyond Sunday Worship

Worship Podcast

How To Dramatically Improve Your Rhythm Section Today

[This post is part of a series on Tips For Taking Your Worship Team To The Next Level. Check out the rest here.]

There is a constant friction within worship teams between the spiritual and the musical. There are some who place no value on musical improvement and focus solely on the “heart of worship”. There are others who are so heavily focused on musical precision and innovation that the heart is buried. What shall we do?

I think we should just be awesome like these guys 🙂

I’m of the opinion that we need both/and not either/or. It’s possible to be so musically excellent that the Person of Christ is no longer in focus. It’s also possible to be so musically awful that the entire worship service is a complete distraction. We need an excellence that draws attention to Christ and invites people to join in.

One of the most important dynamics of an effective worship team is a tight rhythm section. I’ve found that the more a rhythm section works together, the less distracting the music is. It’s then easier to worship without wondering if the drummer will miss his fill or the bass player actually play the bass line. When working with worship teams, rhythm section is the first dynamic I focus on.

So what can you do to improve?

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How To Blog Successfully (for more than a week)

I’ve seen it so many times.

Someone has a passion to start a blog. They get set up on a free account. They post some killer content.

After a week, they lose steam. Weeks, maybe months, go by without a post.

The first week or month of a blog is the honeymoon phase. You have tremendous vision for it only to run out of ideas after a week of sprinting.

Or, you start posting randomness that nobody cares about.

Has this been your story?

Blogger, are you hitting your target?

Maybe it’s not your desire to become a professional blogger or to blog with consistency. That is fine and wonderful if you just like to journal your thoughts and have a few readers.

But if it’s your desire to have a widely read blog, there’s a few things you should do.

With this post I hope to infuse some new life into your blog. Or maybe you’re thinking of starting a blog. This post will get you started with realistic expectations and set you up for long term success.

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5 Tips for Overcoming Songwriter’s Block

On my last post on using Evernote to help you write songs, one of my readers, Brad Lebakken, left a helpful comment on a songwriter’s inspiration. I thought it was so good that I wanted to turn it into a post.

He says:

“I love listening to a lot of bands that are doing innovative things and are on the forefront of creating good art in music. I get inspired by that a lot. Also I love writing songs on my guitar in different locations and times of day. I find I write different when I’m in my house than when I write outside at night on my deck. Sometimes I’ll write in the church sanctuary or in the sun in my yard. I also write by messing around with different instruments like drums, banjo, ukelele, or keyboard. Sometimes just putting a drum loop on and then riffing over that can be productive. Sometimes finding a good song title or lyric first can inspire a song. The best thing is to be constantly writing. Lately for every 5 -10 ok songs I write there might be one good one that makes it to the recording studio. I usually throw out a lot of songs but it’s good songwriting practice.”

Brad has left us with some extraordinary insight into overcoming songwriter’s block:

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