Beyond Sunday Worship

Worship Podcast

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]

7 Disciplines of a Good Worship Leader

A life well lived is less about instant gratification and more about steady discipline. I know, the dreaded “D” word.

But it’s true. Achieving greatness is about making great choices every day over the long haul.

John Maxwell says it best: “See what a person is doing every day, day after day, and you’ll know who that person is and what he or she is becoming.”

Good worship leaders are no different. They’ve learned to develop certain disciplines that make them effective at what they do. Here are what I would call “7 Disciplines of a Good Worship Leader”:

1. Lead out of your story

  • Are you leading out of a ‘NOW’ faith or yesterday’s encounter?
  • What has God brought you through?
  • What is God currently doing in you?

2. Worship extravagantly behind closed doors

  • Who are you when there are no lights, stage, band, etc?
  • People see right through a fake worshiper
  • Before God blesses your worship ministry, he may teach you how to worship behind the scenes for a while. Maintain that discipline.

3. Constantly improve your craft

  • Personally – practice your instrument; practice your weak areas (speaking, transitioning, flowing)
  • With your team – create a fun, disciplined culture; challenge your musicians; allow input but know what you want. Musicians like to feel their opinion matters, but they also like to be led well; put front end work into rehearsals

4. Pastor your worship team

  • Worship with your worship team
  • Prepare yourself and your team for the spontaneous

5. Passionately embrace the vision of your senior pastor

  • If you don’t agree with your senior pastor’s vision, it might be a sign that you’re in the wrong place.
  • Local church worship leading isn’t a platform for your global worship enterprise or a place to push your own agenda. Get under your pastor’s vision and pour yourself into it.

6. View the worship service through the lens of your congregation

  • People don’t care about your slick production, powers stances, and air-tight arrangements. They want to connect with a heart that loves and pursues Jesus.
  • Minimize distractions so when it’s time to lead worship you can focus on your congregation and Jesus.
  • Practice hard, but don’t just perform great arrangements of worship hits. Connect with the people. Connect with God.
  • The best worship times are usually what happens in between your well-rehearsed songs.

7. Pursue an ever-expanding view of God

  • A.W. Tozer – “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
  • Nothing inspires worship more than amazement. Seek each day to become more and more amazed by the glory of God.
  • What books are you currently reading to expand your view of God?
  • Do you view your Bible reading as a worship experience?

Question: What are some other disciplines you would add to this list? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Keep Your Passion Alive

One of the topics of discussion that has been circulating among our team on this young adult missions trip is, “Why is our faith so alive on a missions trip but dies so quickly in the everyday? How do we keep our passion alive?”

I’m convinced, 100%, that passion must be kept alive through action. If all we do is read books, attend church, listen to podcasts, go to conferences, attend prayer meetings, purchase Christian music, and have discussions with our Christian friends, we will lack in our faith and vibrant passion.

I know this firsthand because oftentimes I would rather speculate than serve.

Romans 12:11 says, “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”

“Serving the Lord” means action. Paul wrote this as, quite possibly, the most action-oriented Christian in history. The Gospel of Christ was so precious to him he had to give his life to declare it.

The glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ was not meant to be contained in your own heart, privately. It was meant to be spoken. It was meant to be preached. It was meant to be sung. It was meant to be shared with a broken world that needs salvation in Jesus Christ.

Is your passion weak? Here’s the deal: Go and bless someone. Go and do something. Don’t wait for God to reveal his ‘will’ for your life or your ‘calling’. Just go and do the will of God, which is open to us everyday.

3 Ways to Prepare for Gospel Conversations

Last night at APEX we kicked off God Questions. These questions carry such relevance for today because we live in such a pluralistic society where ‘all roads lead to God’. To claim you have the pulse on absolute truth in our culture is like saying The Pittsburgh Stealers are a ‘wrong’ football team or Starbucks coffee is demonic.

When it comes to evangelism isn’t it so much easier to be quiet – to keep your faith to yourself? We talk about ‘friendship evangelism’ but somehow never quite get to the ‘evangelism’ part.

The truth is that Christianity stands alone because of the person of Jesus Christ. While other religions show the path to ‘salvation’ or ‘enlightenment’ through good works, Jesus claims to be the Way of salvation. No one else has ever claimed that.

Here are 3 Ways to Prepare for Gospel Conversations that I shared last night:

  • LEARN – many Christians don’t know what they believe and why they believe it. Make sure you are ever deepening your knowledge of what your life is built upon so you can answer those who have questions.
  • LOVE – Is your passion for Jesus contagious? Is there deep feeling or merely facts? Nothing rubs off on others more than passion.
  • LISTEN – too often we’ve viewed evangelism as the “Jesus is coming back in 5 minutes, I need to get you saved so please sign this card so that I can feel good about myself” approach. It’s a huge turn off to people of different faiths if you don’t listen and hear their heart before you speak about yours. See everyone you come in contact with as ‘interesting’ and get to know them for who they are. This will open their hearts to your message because you are friendly and they feel you care about them and they can trust you.

I’ll add another one that doesn’t start with an ‘L’. Pray. Trust the Holy Spirit to do supernatural things through you. Don’t just think about it. Go.

DS