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?

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.

Weekend Worship Warm-Up

I recently challenged the worship team at APC to memorize Psalm 40 together. My desire with this is to be more active in preparing our hearts for the weekend worship. What better way to do this than to memorize God’s Word together? Memorizing Scripture is probably the best way to prepare yourself to be a worshipper through the difficult times in life. When the storms hit, you have a bedrock of truth to recall to mind.

I sent this encouragement out today. I hope it blesses you.

“He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord” (Psalm 40:3).

When people see your life and hear your words, what are they taking in? Our daily experience of God’s love and faithful help through pleasure and pain should result in songs of praise.

Now, I don’t mean you should start singing random lyrics and melodies in public when God does something. That’s a bit on the creepy side. Go watch ELF if you don’t know what I mean.

All this means is that as a worshipper of God, you are also a declarer to others. If others are not hearing your praise and declarations of faith, you are probably not worshipping. Silent, undeclared worship is no worship at all. People need to SEE your song in action. People need to FEAR GOD through it. And they will PUT THEIR TRUST in God because of your living testimony.

A Worship Leader's Playlist

On this blog I talk a lot about the heart of a worship leader. The bottom line is we need to worship if we want to be a worship leader. Worship leading doesn’t begin with musical talent, great vocals, music knowledge, or leading a team. It starts with worship. What is your story? How are you pressing into God on a daily basis? That’s where we must begin.

However, worship leading involves music. It involves writing music, listening to music, arranging music, leading music. To focus solely on the heart at the expense of the practical is irresponsible and wrong. The music needs to serve the heart but the music cannot be ignored.

In this post I would like to ask you, what are you listening to? What inspires you? Here is my opinion as to what a worship leader should listen to. This is not found in the Bible. This is a personal suggestion and a look into what is on my playlist:

  • Worship Music – a worship leader should listen to a wide variety of worship music. We need to be constantly inspired by what is happening globally in the church. This should be a mixture of studio and live albums. I recommend studio for hearing the songs and live for learning from the experience.
  • Creative Music – too often we listen to the same music over and over and it is reflected in our boring sounds. Listen to music that is a bit different than what you’re used to. Experiment with using a different instrument in your services. Be inspired by some artists who are different. What I’m liking right now: Sigur Ros, Fanfarlo, The Album Leaf, Phoenix. Helps to inspire.
  • Hymns – There are a lot of great modern hymn records out. Modern in the musical sense. Ancient in the lyrical sense, which is what makes it awesome. We stand on the shoulders of incredible men and women of God who have lead worship through the centuries. We would be wise to listen. Suggestions: Passion Hymns: Ancient & Modern, Keith Getty, Stuart Townend.

Anything else you would suggest?

Worship Team Refresh Night

In this post I would like to share with you something we have done for the last few years as a worship team. We call it “Refresh Night”. All good things in life have the tendency to drift from special to mundane over the course of time. Think about it. If you don’t continually invest in your marriage and keep it fresh by ‘pursuing’ your spouse, it drifts into simply a ‘tolerating’ of one another. If you don’t keep in touch with friends, the relationship dies. If you are a musician and you choose to stop learning, the boredom leads to stagnation.

This is true of local church worship ministry as well. The awe-inspiring truth that we have access to approach the Holy God of all creation as a corporate body every week is truly a miraculous event. Yet often it becomes: “What musical arrangements will intrigue me this week?” or “Are we doing my favorite song?” or “Crap, I messed up that chord progression!”

With our annual ‘Refresh’ Night we have tried to breathe some vision into the beginning of our year as a worship team. We want to approach our weekend services prepared to meet with God and connect with a people on a journey with Christ. We want to be God-centered, Christ-enabled, Spirit-led, Missionary-minded, Glory-expectant, Acts-balanced, and Willfully-expressed. “Refresh” Night helps us do this. We take a normal Thursday night rehearsal, meet in a home, and spend some time in worship, prayer, vision, and fellowship. The Holy Spirit always does something very special.

What do you do to focus as a worship team?