I’ll be the first to admit, leading is hard. And when you have to always be leading, it’s hard to always lead. You know what I mean. Sometimes it would be nice to just let it be, but we’re leaders.

As you may (or may not) know, I’ve recently moved into a new leadership position. I’m in a position that hasn’t had a full-time person leading for quite some time. There were some part-timers doing parts of my role, but mostly maintaining what had been done, to no fault of their own. (Having just come out of a part-time role, I fully understand you can’t always be moving forward.)

What I’m experiencing is, in many ways, the various aspects of worship ministry have been drifting. That’s what happens when you have volunteer leaders over a part of the ministry, but no one over the whole. And, metaliterally (yes I just made that word up) I’m finding myself doing the splits.

However, that said, I’m extremely excited about the future of Worship Arts at the Vancouver First Church of God. But that doesn’t mean things are going to be easy.

I’ve found myself in some situations where I have to remind myself of this truth. Lead now or be led. I believe God has called me to this specific role at this specific church. And since I believe that, I also believe he wants me to be the leader of this ministry, otherwise He wouldn’t have brought me. I also believe that God has you in your role.

If my premise is true, that God has placed us in our roles, then we are the ones to lead. We can’t let the loudest voices lead, simply because they are loud and domineering. Loud doesn’t equal Lead.

Here’s the thing about all this. Every time we let someone lead us because their personality is stronger than our own we become the followers not the leaders. Hear me clearly, we are the leaders. That doesn’t mean we don’t have leaders on our teams whom we are training and empowering to lead, but that doesn’t mean we never lead. God has put us in our roles because He has a plan he want US to put in place.

Leadership is not personality. We cannot allow those with dominant personalities to lead because of their personality. They may be dominant, but they may also be dumb.

People need leaders, humble leaders. Since God has placed us in this role, we must lead.

If you’ve allowed yourself to be led for quite some time, but you must begin making choices and charting a path of leadership. It will be difficult, trust me I know. But you will be much happier down the road if you do it now. If you don’t, at some point down the road you will find yourself in a ministry that you don’t recognize. That’s because it isn’t your ministry anymore.

So, feel empowered. God has you where you are for a reason. He has created you and the church you serve. He has put you together for this time. So lead.

Lead now or be led.

He’s a cute little guy. But he sure can cause a lot of problems.

Don’t get me wrong.

Evangelism is what we’re all about.

YES, we want to be relevant. I agree completely!

But….(and you knew it was coming)…..evangelism cannot ride on the back of worship.

We have to stop trying to make worship – evangelism. Worship is worship, evangelism is evangelism. I agree that a worshiping church is attractive to a non-believer. Far more than a non-worshiping church. I also agree that we want to be conscious of evangelism when it comes to worship. But, we as worship leaders, can’t allow evangelism to determine our worship.

We must choose our worship based on what helps our congregation worship, not on what we think will draw in the lost. Let’s be real, we’re not going to do music that they truly like anyway. Most of us don’t play songs from the top 40 in our worship services. Some do, but most don’t.

Two simple things happen when we try to combine the two:

1. Worship is Diluted.

God wants our worship. It’s that simple. When we try to turn evangelism into worship, it becomes less about worshiping God and more about attracting the lost. We want to be focused in our worship. God and God alone.

2. Evangelism is Marginalized.

When we’re trying to do worship and attach evangelism to it, evangelism becomes marginalized. We can’t focus on both. And, honestly, it becomes too easy to say that we as a church are doing evangelism, when in fact, all we are doing is worship.

Again, let me reiterate, Evangelism is what we’re all about. We have to be about reaching the lost. But, if we’re going to do evangelism, let’s do it all the way. Let’s design services and events around that purpose entirely. “Our people won’t go for that” you might say. “Lead them” I say.

When a service is a worship service, let’s worship.

(To hear more on this topic, check out episode 0093 of the podcast.)

Agree? Disagree? Why?

I just finished up another book from Dr. John Maxwell. If you’ve followed me for long, you know I’m a fan of his, and have read and recommended many of his books to you. This book was great on a few different levels so I wanted to take just a minute to share my thoughts with you in case you hadn’t heard about it. (Or in case you had heard about it, but weren’t sure it was for you.)

First, it’s not just a how-to book on achieving your dreams, it is so much more. He doesn’t say this in the book, but it’s really a book about how to lead yourself and the people around you to your dreams.

Second, it does give you some very useful ideas to help you zero in on your dream, figure out if you really believe in it, and to get you on the journey.

Third, he doesn’t tell you to blindly pursue your dream. A lot of times, it seems, people will just tell you to go after your dreams, regardless. Even if the dream isn’t good for you, or the people around you, or if you don’t have the resources of anything else required, they tell you to go for it. He doesn’t do that with this book.

But the real reason I wanted to write this post wasn’t to talk about the book, I wanted to remind us all that we are the “dreamers of dreams”. When it comes to the worship life of the body of Christ we are a part of, we are the ones that have to dream. God has put us in a leadership role for a reason, because He has a dream for the body you are a part of, and He wants to use you to accomplish that dream.

So often, it’s so easy to get into a rut. To just go with what works, and never try new things. To do what we know instead of dreaming up a new way to do what’s always been done. My charge to us is to get out of that rut. Let’s stop spinning plates and start dreaming dreams. Let’s stop this nonsense of keeping things going, and get things moving forward. Let’s stop doing the things that worked a few years ago and find the things that will work a few years from now.

The church has at it’s disposal the greatest source of creativity known to Man – the inspiration of a creator. Let’s allow Him to speak to us and give us the inspiration for what’s coming next.

Before you read this post, let me warn you, I’m 31. Not that old, but older than some. In my life, I remember a time before computers were really popular. I remember the computers I learned to type on in high school. They were the kind with only orange letters on the screen. No other colors. I remember how cool it to see a screen that was like a TV. I’ve always been intrigued by computers, and their ability to process information. But I remember a time, when they weren’t used for everything. This post is not about wishing that things would go back to a “Simpler” time. Please read on.

I also remember a time when music in church was much different than it is today, at least at most churches. We sang mostly old songs, we called them hymns, although I came to learn later that they weren’t all hymns. The songs we sang, are songs we had sung hundreds of times, my parents – thousands. They had been adopted as worthy by some church or churches somewhere along the line, and were added to they hymnal.

I also remember a time, when we would sing “choruses.” Once in a while in our Sunday evening service, Dad would pull out the over-head projector and we would sing “Choruses” like: “Behold what manner of love the father…” and “Jesus, Name above all names” among a few others.

I remember being at a church that was using a video projector to project the lyrics using powerpoint, white words on a blue background. And I remember one of the older pastors talking about a time before when we sang out of the hymnal instead of reading words off the wall.

I remember lots of changes for worship. In one way, the change is a testament to me. It shows that our worship is truly about Jesus Christ, and not about a form.

In other ways I worry. I’m sure my worries will all be proven wrong. But, maybe by drawing attention to my worries, I can help a few of us keep the focus in the right place.

We have a worship ministry, because we want to worship Jesus Christ, because we want to help others with gifts similar to ours – be able to use their gifts for something greater than self-glorification. We have a worship ministry because we want to be used by God to lead the Body of Christ each and every week to worship our Savior – Jesus Christ. We want to Lift High the Cross of Christ, and proclaim His love. And we have a worship ministry because we want the world to know how we feel about our Savior, and we want them to see how we worship at His feet so that they too can experience the redemption we have experienced.

We don’t have a worship ministry to do the latest & coolest things. Our job is not to find the most popular songs, that every other church is doing and implant them to ours. Sure, most of the songs we do are probably being done by other churches. But that isn’t a good enough reason to use a song.

We don’t have a worship ministry to make ourselves rock stars. We aren’t there to draw attention to ourselves, we are there to point people’s attention to God.

We don’t have a worship ministry to use the coolest and newest technology. There are many ways we have benefited from technology, Lyric projection, Mini-movies, loops, keyboards and keytars… We use technology as a means to an end. Technology is never the end. The use of video, in and of itself, is pointless unless it points somewhere significant.

We don’t have a worship ministry to Evangelize. (Gasp! You might want to listen to the latest podcast if you want to hear more about this.) Worship can be a catalyst for drawing people to Christ, but ultimately, that is not the point. The point is to worship the ever-living God. We humble ourselves, bow at his feet, surrender, give everything over to him as a sacrifice. That’s worship. Every single Believer is responsible to share the Gospel with the people God has put in their life. I’m not saying evangelism can’t happen, or even that it shouldn’t happen during our corporate worship. I’m just saying, that we don’t do worship to reach people. We do worship to worship.

We don’t have a worship ministry to keep traditions or to kill traditions. We don’t have a worship ministry because we want to keep something going. Likewise we don’t have a worship ministry to kill something that we think should have died. Again, those aren’t the point. They are not right or wrong. Worship is the point. If we’re not worshipping, that is wrong. If we are not leading in worship, that is wrong. If the point is to keep/kill a tradition, we’ve gotten off track.

We have a worship ministry because we have been set free, and our only response is to worship. We know we can’t earn the grace that’s been given to us, but we can worship the giver. That’s why. Whatever comes or goes, We worship because the chains of sin and death have been undone, So shall our song of triumph ever be: Praise to the Crucified for victory.

That’s why we have a worship ministry.

Broken people call His name
Helpless children praise the King
Nothing brings Him greater fame
When broken people call His name

Lift high, your chains undone
All rise, exalt the Son
Jesus Christ, the Holy One
We lift our eyes to You

Sinners all exalt the Son
Your ransom paid and freedom won
We will see His Kingdom Come
When sinners all exalt the Son

Steve Fee “Lift High”

Led on their way by this triumphant sign,
The hosts of God in conquering ranks combine.

Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim,
Till all the world adore His sacred Name.

Each newborn servant of the Crucified
Bears on the brow the seal of Him Who died.

Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim,
Till all the world adore His sacred Name.

O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree,
As Thou hast promised, draw the world to Thee.

Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim,
Till all the world adore His sacred Name.

So shall our song of triumph ever be:
Praise to the Crucified for victory.

Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim,
Till all the world adore His sacred Name.

Words: George W. Kitch­in; mod­i­fied by Mi­chael R. New­bolt in 1916.

Music: Crucifer, Syd­ney H. Ni­chol­son, 1916

(Photo by Marian Trinidad courtesy www.creationswap.com)

Since Kevin and I talk about Survivor from time to time, I wanted to share two lessons I learned from Boston Rob this season on Survivor:

1.) Most people would rather be led than lead.

I was so frustrated with most of the people on Survivor this season. Especially those on Boston Rob’s team. I can’t understand why no one would stand up and try to take the narcissistic leadership belt from him. Rob would tell people what they were doing, and everyone would just do it. I just didn’t get it. If people were going to be basing their votes on who played the game the best, and Rob was the only one playing the game, wouldn’t he win?

2.) It’s easy to use people instead of lead people.

The other thing I noticed that happened this year (as has happened many times in the past) is that it’s easier to use people to accomplish your goal than to lead them to accomplish the best goal. All Rob did was figured out how to get people to do what he wanted and got them to do it. That’s not leadership, that’s manipulation.

Leadership is more work. It’s harder. Much, much harder. There is an aspect of leadership that is sacrificial, sometimes you have to do what’s best for the team, even if it’s not what’s best for you or what you want. People follow that kind of leadership. People eventually sniff out the narcissist and move on. Sure Rob could get people to do what he wanted for 39 days when they were tired and hungry, could he get them to do so for years when they’re not in the same condition? Possibly. Not likely.

So, I would just encourage you to evaluate the way you are doing leadership. Are you leading people or are you simply manipulating people? Sure it can be fun to get people to do what you want them to do. But leading people, caring for people, shepherding people is rewarding. Manipulation is something insecure people do, leadership is for the secure. Manipulation is selfish, leadership is selfless.

Leadership is a higher goal, are you aiming for it?

There are good ones and bad ones.

The good ones help, some more than others.

The bad ones hurt, most of them for a while.

I know how you feel.

Now, before you think I’m going all Whitney Houston on you, let me stop you there. I’m not trying to be sappy or overly emotional. But if I can in some way jump in front a “bullet” for you, (or catch a grenade for you:), I want to do that for you now. And yes, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve seen that movie – but I did have a sister. (My sister doesn’t account for my knowledge of Bruno Mars….)

If could funnel any of the hurt you might be feeling away from you I’d do it. For that matter, I’d do it for myself too. But the hurt comes, and we have to deal with it, and we have to deal with it in the right way.

We have to deal with the good in the right way too.

We can’t let the hurt drag us down & keep us from giving our best. But we can’t let the good delude our efforts either. We don’t have time to get beaten up. Neither do we have the time to get lazy.

I confess, I’ve done both. When things have gone well, I’ve given less effort. Thought I was good enough to coast on my abilities. When things have hurt, I’ve pouted. I’ve hung my head in shame and bathed my tattered ego in self-pity.

There, I said it.

But what I really want to say is….I BELIEVE!

If no one else believes in you today, I believe in you. Maybe you need to write it on your hand today to remind you. Don’t worry about the ink poisoning thing, (Legal jargon – I can’t be held responsible for ink poisoning….) do what you need to do to get you through the day & the week.

You might be saying, “you don’t know me, how can you possibly know if you believe in me?” Good question, glad you asked. I can say that because I believe God has all of us where we are for a purpose. And as long as God has you where you are, I can say without a doubt that I believe in you.

I can say it because it’s not about you or me. It’s about God. What we do is about God. It’s about lifting Him up to the highest place to draw everyone to Him. Could it be that when we get hurt or when we get proud it’s because it’s become something other than it should be? If this is all about God, and we’re giving Him our best, then we have to leave the results and repercussions up to Him, don’t we?

So, as you head into your week, planning another worship service after having been built up or beaten down, know that I believe in you. You are where you are for a reason. It’s all about God, and God is in control of your situation. So, rest in that. Have peace in that. If no one else believes in you, I do.

(On a final note, if you need to talk to someone, if you need some encouragement email me !)

We don’t have that much time. If you’re one of the lucky ones you have a mid-week rehearsal, then you’ve got two rehearsals to get 5, 6, 7 or more songs ready for a bunch of people to hear. And they’re not just going to hear them, they have to be good enough that they don’t distract people from worship. If you’re not that lucky, you have one rehearsal – maybe on the morning of your service – to get everything ready.

How do we do it?

First, use tools that help your people prepare ahead of time.

If you listen to our podcast, you’ve heard me rave about Planning Center Online (& here). Give your team members as many different resources as you can come up with. The more tools you give them, the better the chance they will use one of them. Even better, there’s a chance they will use more than one. And if they use more than one, they’ll be better prepared. If you don’t use planning center, then get your team members charts as early as possible, get them recordings if you can – or links to recordings.

One great resource is YouTube. There are a lot of YouTube videos that actually show the different band members how to play their part of the song. There are other great ways & ideas to help people be prepared – too many to talk about here. (Feel free to comment below with what you do!) The idea is, do as much as you can.

Second – Give them the big picture.

Let them hear the whole song if you have a recording. Of course this brings up a philosophical dilemma for some of us. You know who you are. Some of you like using a recording of how someone else has done the song isn’t musical or creative. If you’re not one of those, play them the recording – more than once. I play the recording a time or two, and then usually play the intro again to get everyone started.

If you are one of “those” – talk them through the song. Make sure your chart has as much detail as possible, and that they have the chart in front of them. Then talk them through the song. Tell them where they’re in & where they’re out. Give them rhythms & syncopations.

But don’t talk too long.  The more you talk, the less time the band will have to play. And the more they’re playing, the more they’ll be familiar with the songs. The more reps they get in, the better off they & you will be. They’ll be more confident and make fewer mistakes. That’s why it’s important to put as much information on the chart as you can. It will save you explanation time, and get you to playing music quicker.

Then play through the whole song as a band. Don’t stop to fix stuff yet. Just get through the song. You’ll want to stop and fix the problems, but don’t. Pay attention to the problems and where they were so you can come back & fix them, but don’t stop to fix them yet. If you have a train wreck, stop, tell everyone where you are and get going again. Once you’ve gotten through the song, then you can start to woodshed.

Three – Woodshed.

Now it’s time to focus on the problem spots. Work the Introduction to the song, work through the verse, then work the chorus, the bridge & outro. If someone has a question, let them ask it. Ask for questions here. Do as much as you can to put everyone at ease.

But don’t spend too much time. If you’re doing 5 songs, and you have a two hour rehearsal, you have about 12-15 minutes max to spend on each song. You’ll want to leave yourself time to run through everything at the end, pray, etc.

Four – Work your transitions.

If you’re transitioning straight from one song to the next, you’ll want to have some kind of musical transition to get from the end of one song to the beginning of the next. You don’t want to have to stop & start each time you move to a new song. You want to move between songs as smoothly as possible. When you stop, you might as well be saying “Hey – we just finished a song, and we’re about to start the next one – but we need a minute to change this or that. Okay we’re ready to start….” Because if you don’t, they’re thinking it.

Five – Put it all together.

Run through the whole set, in order, with all your transitions. Don’t stop to fix things. You won’t be able to stop during your service, so if you can do it without stopping now, you’ll do it better in the service. Make sure your tech crew are running through everything as well – not off getting coffee or something.

A few additional notes on leading a rehearsal.

Don’t waste time. Do your best to have everything read before hand. If you can’t have everything ready, hurry. Don’t walk, run.

Be decisive. Listen to your team, especially their creative input (they need to know that you hear them when they make a suggestion – they’re putting themselves out there & we need to honor that) but, you are the one in charge. You have to decide, and you have to decide quick. You’ve had more time with the music/songs. You’re probably more familiar with them than they will be for a long time. You know how the song should feel, so you should be able to decide quickly.

Make sure everyone can hear you. You need to be able to “direct” people, and to direct them they need to be able to hear you.When you’re in the woodshedding phase – you need to stop quickly. If you can’t be heard, you won’t stop quick enough.

Of course there’s more that could be said, but this is long enough already. Feel free to leave your tips in the comments section below.

Photo by: http://denispepin.com

As the news around us is filled with horror stories pouring out of Japan, I’m finding it harder and harder to pay attention.

Not because I don’t care. I do.

It’s because the bent of the news. All of it. It’s all focused on all the bad stuff that’s happening. One of the top 5 most powerful earthquakes in hundreds of years. Towns have been lost because of the Tsunami. Nuclear reactors are melting down & blowing up. People are getting exposed to radiation. Families are looking for loved ones, and thousands upon thousands have died.

I am not trying to diminish the severity of what has happened and what is still happening. But, there is a lesson we can learn.

When we always broadcast the Worst Case Scenario, people stop listening.

People’s lives are hard. Everyone has something going on in their life that make living life a challenge. We are all surrounded, each day, with challenges that we have to overcome. We have mole hills that people around us are turning into mountains.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing, if right now, amongst the mountains of tragedy we were to hear a heart-warming story. I don’t know what it might be – perhaps a reunion of a family with a lost member. Maybe the nuclear plant isn’t going to meltdown. Or perhaps…..

My point is, if there’s a small lesson we can learn, half a world away – maybe one lesson is that we can be more positive. When there is so much bad going on around us, Japan – The Middle East – Gas Prices, what our people need from us is hope. So he’s my plea to you – be a Best Case Scenario person. Do whatever you can to give people hope.

Who knows, if we give people hope, maybe we too will find hope as well.

I want new things. I love new things. I love getting new things & even just reading and learning about new things. I think a lot of us do. The fact that there are over 500 million users on Facebook in less than a decade is evidence to the fact that we like new things.

However, in our pursuit of these new things, could it be that we’ve gotten rid of some really great things? (I’m not comparing Facebook to a worship service, although it might not be a bad comparison considering the amount of time a lot of us spend on there….he said from on the laptop from his couch on his blog…) Sure contemporary worship is a good thing, and I like it. But the shelf-life of our worship music today is shorter than ever before. And for future generations, it will be even shorter. In fact, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a time in the future, where we go to a worship service and all the songs are new – or we learned all the songs on YouTube before we sang them in church (which is already happening now).

But what about the stuff that the church had been doing up until a few years ago. When things really started changing for the church back in the 60′s and 70′s, it wasn’t just the rerouting of a generation’s preferences, a course was changed that had been set for centuries.

Before I go too far in this, and you start thinking that I’m just another one of those guys who things we all need to turn back time and go back to when things were good, let me reassure you that I’m not. I have no desire to go back to a time when tradition was the important thing, and doing what had always been done was more important than actually connecting with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

That said, I have been looking back lately. As we go through the week-to-week of preparing worship services, and working up music and what not, I’ve been wondering. As I plan a lot of the same kind of stuff each week, maybe not the same, but for all intents and purposes the same, I’ve been thinking.

Isn’t our God, the Great God that we serve, who has been faithful to us for many generations, who has been faithful to our fathers and our fathers’ fathers, the creator of the universe, the beginning and the end, Isn’t He deserving of more than more of the same?

Isn’t his faithfulness through the generations before us something we can worship Him for. Can’t we worship him because he was the same God for our great-great-great-greats? I think so.

Doesn’t His creativity we see in the world around us give us a clue to the way He would want us to worship Him?

Wouldn’t the one who has always been and will forever be want us to take into account as much as we can in our worship of Him? Wouldn’t He want us to include as much of His story as possible? After all, the whole History of The Church is about Him, it’s about His Story. Sure there are a lot of great people thrown in there, Paul, The councils, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Graham, etc. But they were only living out a part of the grand story of the Kingdom of God.

We too, are living out a part of the grand story of God’s Kingdom. And I think we have a responsibility, not only to live in the moment, filling in status updates – writing blog articles – tweetin’ and what not, but we have a responsibility to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us.

A tremendous legacy was left for us. Yes it was perverted and diluted. But it was still great. And I hope that we will delve deeper into the caverns of the story and pull out as much as we can. I hope that we will look for creative ways to bring this historic elements into our worship services.

It won’t be easy. We can’t just do it because it’s Liturgy (or can we?), we need to make sure it’s understood and meaningful & what not. But it’s good work. It’s work that needs to be done.

Like Ravi Zacharias has said “The only thing worse than Nostalgia is Amnesia.”  We don’t want to be the ones who forgot what had been. We want to be the ones who rediscovered what was and brought it back into the lives of worshippers today.

It won’t happen on it’s own. There isn’t anyone pushing this agenda much. We have to do it, and we have to do it on purpose. But I believe it will be rewarding to do. So, let’s get in there and do it. Let’s get to work looking through the caverns of history to find the gems that we are missing in our services today.

So, Kevin & I know some stuff about arranging a worship band. If you listen to the podcast, you heard us talk about it just last week. As I was doing some research to write a follow up article to our last podcast, I came across this video. It’s Bob Kauflin talking about arranging from a Worship God ’08 Conference. So, instead of me rehashing arranging stuff, I thought I’d go ahead and post the video here for you to watch. It’s about and hour & 15 minutes long, but it’s worth the time.

You can learn more about Bob by visiting his blog www.worshipmatters.com.

It’s been an argument for decades now. There are many out there among us that think choir is a thing of the past. It was something that was done 50 years ago, and should have died by now.

The people who have held on to choir have been viewed as people who just refuse to adapt to the times, clinging tightly to a tradition that has been in a constant state of decline for a while now.

Well, I happen to be one of those who have thought that choir has always been relevant. I’m the old-fashioned guy in most worship circles. At least in the sense of choir. I’ve been a champion for choir in every church I’ve been in, and I will continue to be. There’s a reason….

Music is something that’s supposed to be done with other people. Music is something that’s supposed to be done in community. It’s been a part of our church community for many millennia now. We believe in the power of community, we believe in the power of music, but for some reason we, as a church have been shrinking the size of the group of people who get to be involved in this community in the church.

It seems to me that, we as a church have once again tossed the baby out with the bathwater. In our quest to be on the cutting edge of everything (which no longer seems to be possible, it seems as though most churches who try to be right on the cutting edge can only do so within the church community when in fact they are behind compared to the world’s standards – which is usually the justification for staying on the cutting edge, to keep up with the world…get my drift?) we’ve tossed the things that have great meaning and value because for some reason we thought they were no longer relevant.

Many Christian colleges and Universities have reduced their focus on choir and other community aspects of music because they perceive them to be irrelevant.

For those of you who like to try to keep paces with the world around us, there has never been a time when choir has been more culturally relevant (at least in the last 100 years or so – before that there was a time when the church was driving culture in terms of music & art). With shows like Glee, the Sing off, the choir and others out there, choir is “making a comeback.” (For those of you who have never let choir go, this is a great opportunity to gain some momentum with your choir.)

Sure, the way these groups are doing music might not sound and seem exactly the same, and we may have to adapt some of our ways of doing things to fit in stylistically, but how is that any different than what the church has been doing for the last 30-50 years (and throughout it’s entire history)?

To many people, choir is more work than it’s worth. They don’t feel like they have the training or experience they need to be able to lead the choir effectively, therefore it takes more time than they feel it should and they don’t feel like they’re reaping rewards equivalent to the time they are putting in. Let me just encourage you to stop thinking that way if that’s you.

Do you remember when you first started building your worship band for the new style of worship? I do. I remember times of frustration, feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing, and had no idea how to get to where we were supposed to go. But we all go there didn’t we? The same is true for us now with choir. As many of us look to start up choirs in our churches, we will feel the same thing. We will experience the same frustration. We will have to jump over the same hurdles. But, if we pursue choir with the same tenacity, fervor and dedication we will get over those hurdles and get to a point with our choirs where we feel the rewards outweigh the risks and work.

If you have questions about how to do choir, how to conduct or anything else, contact me. I’d be happy to help you out. I believe in choir. I believe in community and I believe in the power of a group of people doing music together and the effect that can have on people who hear it.

Take advantage of this opportunity. Use the culture we are currently surrounded with to propel your choir to a new level.

For a little inspiration, check out the choir I was once in.

We all have a vision of a worship leader in our heads when we lead worship. At least we probably did when we started leading. At some point along the way we were impacted by someone’s worship leading and we thought it would be cool if we could be like them someday.

It doesn’t take long for us to realize that we may never be like someone else. For me, one of my worship leading heroes is Paul Baloche. I love his songwriting, his humility and his laid-back approach to leading worship. The times I’ve been under his leadership have been some of the most authentic worshipful experiences I’ve had.

So, when I think about how I want to be as a worship leader, I think of Paul, and how if I could do things like him our people would really worship. Have you found yourself doing this?

Well, I have good news for you, it’s not all bad. In fact, I would say that it’s mostly good. I think it’s great to learn from other leaders. However, we can’t let ourselves fall into the trap of judging ourselves against them. Don’t get me wrong, it is good to measure ourselves and see how we’re doing, but we shouldn’t try to gauge our success based on how we perceive the success of a completely different and unique creation of God.

So, here are my three simple tips for leading worship:

1. Be the person God made you to be.

God created you to be you. He has a dream and a vision for who you are supposed to be. He doesn’t want a bunch of cloned worship leaders, He wants the creativity with which he created each and every one of us to be an example for His glory. Have you ever thought about the fact that you, just being who you are when you go up to lead worship, are testifying to God’s creation? It’s true. And God has chosen you to be the person that will lead your body to his throne. Whether you’re the person with the mic or the person with the sticks, God has chosen you.

Have you ever been in a worship experience where you could tell the person leading worship was trying very hard to be someone they are not? I have. It was very hard for me to get over this persons desire to be someone else and get into worship. We don’t want to be that person. God created you because he loves you. Be okay with that. Thrive in that.

2. Be the person your congregation needs you to be.

This might sound like a contradiction, but it’s not. While God has created us to be who we are, He also has a vision for our lives. He has a dream for us and he will use many things and people to lead us to that end. So, we need to be learning from other worship leaders and applying the parts of their style that are consistent with our God-given personality.

Notice that I said, be the person your congregation needs you to be. I did not say, be Paul Baloche or whomever your worship leading hero may be. While we can learn from them, we are not trying to be like them. But we do need to look for ways that we can be a better leader for our congregation. We need to be in touch with the body we are leading and be making adjustments to our style that will help them be more engaged in worship.

It’s a lot like a coach does at half time. You go into the locker room and the coach will begin talking about some of the things that the team will be doing differently to be more effective in the second half. For us, we have that chance every week. Every week, we can review the weekend, get feedback from members of the congregation and make adjustments for the next weekend. Over time, the adjustments will become smaller, but there will always be room for improvement.

3. Don’t get in the way of God’s leading.

In the midst of being ourselves and being the leader the congregation needs us to be, we need to make sure that we don’t get in the way of what God wants to be doing. It’s easy. You practice, you think through the things you would like to say, do and sing differently, and before you know it, the worship set is over and God was merely the music in the restaurant. You knew it was there, but didn’t really pay any attention to it.

Listen to the promptings of the Spirit when you’re leading worship. If you feel led to raise your hands, but you don’t normally do that, do it. If you feel led to sing the chorus again, even though you didn’t practice it that way, do it. If you feel led to ask the congregation to close their eyes, or to kneel, or to pray silently, do it.

God wants to use you to do amazing things. But, just like He has a vision for you and your life, He has a vision for His church. While you are an important part of that, God is still the reason everyone is gathered there. People have come to connect with an eternal God. Make sure you don’t do anything to keep that form happening.

I know that I’m walking a tight-rope with this post, but it’s something I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about (as with worship services in general). (This post is only meant to invoke thought, not bash sermons.)

I know the history.

I know that Jesus taught.

I know that Peter and Paul and others preached.

But why sermons? Why the passive listening? Do we actually learn from sermons anymore? Are that many people’s lives being changed through the power of sermons?

Or could it be, that they were powerful for a time and that time is coming to an end? Could it be that sermons were powerful through the reformation and with revivalists, but that now they’re just what you do at church and no one is willing to bring up the topic of change?

We’ve seen change in other part of the worship service. Music has changed with the times. Some churches have changed the way we take offering, others the way we take communion. Some churches have changed the venue in which we meet and others the venue through which we see the sermon, but how many have changed the sermon?

Sure some have made some changes. A video here. A drama there. A costume here. A song there. But, for the most part and for the majority of the weeks out of the year, the format stays the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily have some other idea for teaching/preaching/sermons (by the way, what’s the point of sermons – to teach?). And I’m not just trying to get more time for the worship guys (though I most certainly wouldn’t be opposed to that). It just seems that, for the most part, with all the change the church has been through the biggest piece of the puzzle remains unchanged. And as culture changes faster than I can type the word change, shouldn’t the biggest portion of our services also be thought through just as carefully as every other slice of the pie?

(Now, I just want to go eat my last piece of birthday apple pie. Maybe pie is the answer….)

If Jesus were to have chosen now to come and show us the way the truth and the life, do you think he’ be preaching sermons? As for me, I don’t know. Jesus’ messages are timeless, transcend all human teaching ability and will never be replaced other than by Jesus himself. But in the time in which Jesus came, that’s what people did. Rabbi’s of the day didn’t have to fight for people’s attention because what else was there? Hanging out with tax collectors?

I just wonder what means of communication Jesus would choose to use in this day and age. Sure it’s kind of a hypothetical question, but from where I sit, it’s a question we need to ask. We may never agree on an answer. We may fail in our attempts to communicate more effectively. But then again, we may become more effective at reaching people for Christ. People who have already heard sermons and found no reason to continue listening.

Let me ask you this, how many people’s lives are being changed (I’m talking real change, not Sunday change) as a result of the sermons that are being preached at your church? If the answer to that question is many, then maybe you don’t need to change anything. Maybe you do. If the answer to that question is few, then maybe you need to change something. Then again, maybe it’s the worship guy’s spiky hair that needs to be changed.

Regardless, in our quest to reach a many people for Christ, let us not leave any stone unturned. The stones you turn may bare the most fertile ground.

And all it needs is a seed.

Just one.

(Chime in! If you have input on this topic, leave your comment below. If you think I’m totally off base, feel free to let me know that you think so! If you have an idea of what sermons should look like today, or what Jesus would do, let us all know!!!)

If you’ve been leading worship for long, you’ve undoubtedly been through a summer lull. I’m definitely there right now. People go on vacation with no consideration, it seems, for your needs as a worship leader. It’s almost as if they have their own lives apart from your worship ministry and that they’d rather be on the beach than playing or singing in your team. The nerve!

Well, as I’ve been thinking about our discussion in our most recent episode of the WMC podcast, it seems that part of the issue may be our perception of what summer is. Of course, summer is a time for vacationing. Of course, summer is a time when people get out of town, restore their souls and get some much needed time with family and some even more needed perspective on life.

And as I thought about that, I thought, shouldn’t we be doing the same thing in our worship ministries? Shouldn’t there be a season in our ministry where we give people a break, where we build relationships and where we get perspective? And the answer to that is yes.

In summer, we have the unique opportunity to build momentum in a way that doesn’t happen during other times of the year. Normally we think of building momentum in terms of recruiting & equipping. We think of teaching our congregations new songs and new ways to worship. But, what if momentum during the summer was different?

What if we decided that summer wasn’t going to be about those things, but that it was going to be about what summer seems to be about? What if we decided that instead of beating down doors to have a team on the weekend, we would replace the time we’d spend on that with time spent building relationships with the people who are around? What if we intentionally gave people the weekend off, so they’d be more ready to serve the next time their name is on the list? What if instead of waiting for them to accept or decline their availability, we declined it for them? What if, instead of trying to plow our way through the summer, we took time to reflect on the last year, gain some perspective for the year to come and allow God to speak into our lives for the year to come?

So, my suggestions are simple. 1.) Give people time off during the summer without making them feel guilty for doing so; 2.)Take the time you’d be spending, preparing for the big team & spend it building relationships with people who are around; 3.)Relax, Rest, and gain some perspective. Allow the weekly grind to pass you by, and let God speak into your life for how He wants worship to look at your church this coming fall.

That’s it. It’s that simple. Re-think summer and I think you’ll be able to enjoy it much more. And in doing so, you’ll start off this fall with momentum. You’ll be ready to go. Your Team will be ready to go.

Oh yeah, and take a vacation!

If you don’t have your band playing with a metronome or click track, you most definitely should. We do, almost every song of every weekend. It was hard at first. I’ll give you that. It took us some getting used to, but once we did – oh the joy! There’s no longer a question of who was rushing what part, you can hear it.

It’s kind of natural too.

For a lot of our church musicians, playing to a click track is something they do all the time, they might just not realize it. But, when you’re playing along with a recording of a worship tune, chances are, you’re playing with a click track.

We use the Tama Rhythm Watch. It’s a pretty good metronome for only 90 bucks. It’s not perfect. But you can store presets which is essential for using live. It’s got an output on it, so we run it into our aviom in ear monitors & it’s great.

“That’s great,” you say, “but we don’t have fancy in-ear monitors like you new fangled churches.” That may be so, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (Though, in the future, I’ll talk about the advantages of that, if you don’t already know.) This one, has a little light on it, that your drummer could use. Or, you could give the drummer an ear piece to listen to the metronome. At the very least you ought to consider using one in your rehearsals. It will definitely help sharpen up your performances.

Playing with a metronome will really tighten the band up. I wasn’t a believer before we started trying it & made a commitment to stick to it. But now that we have, it makes a really big difference. Give yourself a few months, and you’ll be wanting to play with videos & loops.

Of course if you go that route, Ableton Live has a click built right in, and it can do other cool things like sync guitar pedals & other MIDI/SMPTE devices.

Below is a good self assessment to see where you are in terms of your ability to play with a click.

The original post is here http://silverlakestudio.com/2010/05/guest-post-are-you-ready-to-record/ .

• Beginner – unable to stay with the click. The playing tempo lopes in and out of time as the player(s) first rush the beat, then compensate by slowing down.

• Advancing beginner – this is where the player is now able to follow the click accurately, but his playing has become stiff and constrained. All the focus is on following the click and not much is left to create a groove or musical feel.

• Accomplished – this is where the player or the band as a whole are able to follow the click precisely while maintaining an infectious and inviting rhythm.

• Advanced – at this level, the player has mastered all aspects of playing with the click and taken it to the level of an advanced skill, or art form. One of the most fascinating tricks I’ve seen studio musicians pull off in this realm is a thing I call the “tempo illusion.” Let’s say there’s a ritard in the middle of the song. By playing ever so slightly behind the click, while gradually playing more softly and using fewer notes and less rhythm –through the course of the ritard, these players create a tempo illusion that sounds exactly like a slowing of the tempo, but the tempo has actually not changed at all. When the click is removed, the listener would swear that the music has slowed down through the “fake” ritard. It’s a fascinating and inspiring thing to watch, and I hope readers might take this as a motivation to work hard on click skills.

I was blessed today to be able to be off the stage and be in the congregation worshiping. While I was out amongst the people in a way I don’t normally get to be, I got quite a few comments. Some were along the lines of surprise: “I’m not used to seeing you there…” But the most I got were: “Looks like you got the weekend off…”

That’s never true for any of us as leaders in our church.

I’m not just talking about Worship leaders/pastors. I’m not just talking about Worship band or worship vocalists.

I could go into a few reasons as to why it wasn’t a weekend off. I was listening to the mix to get a feel for what our people are hearing on a weekly basis. I was “replacing myself” (although in reality, I’m not really doing much in terms of training the couple who led today, as they are seasoned veterans in music/worship). I was evaluating our congregation’s response to the team in worship.

Those are all very true statements and we all need to be doing those things, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is how we are all leading in worship no matter what our position in the church. Of course, our position in the church determines the amount of influence we will have on the congregation and our ability to lead them, but we all have the ability to lead.

We’ve all seen this from the stage, someone towards the front of the congregation raises their hands, and then we see several others behind them follow suit. In this sense, we never have a weekend off. We never have a weekend when we can relax and not be worship leaders.

This weekend, for instance I minimized the influence I could have on the congregation because I chose to stay in the back. It was intentional so I could move about the sanctuary and listen to the mix in different parts of the room. However, in doing so, I limited the influence I could have to the few people behind me. If I had been up closer to the front, I could have had more of an effect on people’s response in worship.

So, whatever your position in the church – whether you’re the worship leader or a worship team member, a paid staff member or a volunteer, a regular attender or a visitor, a greeter or the senior pastor – you never have a weekend off. Every weekend you have the opportunity to lead someone in worship. Every weekend, you have to make a choice about what you’re going to do with your influence. Are you going to “take the weekend off” and just observe? Or are you going to lead from wherever you are?

This was a wonderful weekend! I was able to participate from the congregation while our Husband & wife team led worship. It was great. They do a great job. It was also great to be able to hear what’s going on out in the congregation and to be able to assess some things from a different vantage point.

Here was their set:

• All Creatures of Our God and King
• Mother’s Day Video
• Shout of the King
• Shout to the King
• Speak to me
  Message
• Everlasting God.

They did a great job, transitions were good and use of scripture was great. For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over on The Worship Community.

This weekend was missions weekend for us. It was a great celebration of what our church is doing around the world in the area of missions. It was a great chance for our body to see how we are a part of a bigger picture than what we see on a weekly basis.

Here was our Set:

• Yours (Steven Curtis Chapman)
• Let All the World Sing Praises (Word Music)
• Video of one of our students who is now a missionary in India
• Great in all the Earth (Hohnholtz)
• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Comissioning prayer for student going on a summer mission trip
• Sermon from one of our over seas missionaries home for a bit
• You Said

Our choir sang with us for the first two songs. We had a pretty small choir this time, only about 10 total, Luckily I didn’t need to direct, so I could hop in the choir and sing tenor. Since choir is still a new thing for us, I’m still working on training our choir to think of choir as a year round commitment and not as a seasonal group. I know this is backwards from what most of you are doing, from what I can gather, most churches only have a seasonal choir, if they have a choir at all. I know there are still churches out there that are doing choir and doing it well, but as a trend, choirs are trending down.

This year has been good for our choir, in terms of starting to build a core group of committed people, people who are willing to make a sacrifice for a bigger picture than they can see right now.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at The Worship Community.

This was a fun weekend. As you might remember, this group is a group I’m working with to try and break out of our shells a little bit, and to get a little more creative with our playing. I want to get one of our groups to start playing music that comes out of us instead of only playing music that we hear on the recording. So, that’s what we started doing a couple of months ago, and this weekend was a good move in that direction.

That’s not to say that everything we did was original, some of it was right off a recording. That’s also not to say that there’s anything wrong with doing it like the original artist did it. All I am saying is that as musicians and artists, we need to work harder at times to come up with our own music and not only rely on what others have already done.

Here was our Set:

• Rest in Your Peace (My song – our arr.)
• You are Good (Houghton – Brewster Arr.)
• Announcements
• Just to Be With You (Baloche)
• Breathe (Our Arr.)
• Sermon
• He Reigns (kind of the Newsboys arr.)

It was great to get to work on some stuff in a way unlike we normally do, to just play and give people a chance to work out their own part and come up with something of their own. I think the musicians in our churches around the world hold great potential in terms of creating new music that the church can be proud of.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at the The Worship Community.

First it was our good old friend Ray Boltz who decided he needed to break down the door of his closet, and now we have another one, Ms. Jennifer Knapp. You can read the full interview with her on Christianity today.

Yet again we’ll have to deal with the questions. And the answers are still the same regardless of what arguments Jennifer is making on Christianity today. Homosexuality is a sin, it is not an old testament sin, it’s right there in 1 cor. 6. ⁹Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders ¹⁰nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

I cannot speak to the state of her soul, it is not my place. I can only speak of what I know. And that is that Homosexuality has become something other than what it actually is. Imagine that someone you know is addicted to Meth. They come out of the closet and tell you that they are a Methosexual. When you confront them about it, they argue that they were born that way and that it is by God’s design that they need to take Meth. Or imagine that you have a friend that is addicted to pornography. They decide to come out of the closet and tell you that they are addicted to looking at porn and that they are okay with that because they were born that way. They call themselves a Pornosexual.

We have a problem with certain sins, but because of the constant barrage we receive in our society from the media, pounding us over the head with equality we have grown weak on this sin.

Don’t get me wrong, God’s grace is sufficient for all. God’s grace is sufficient for addicts of all kinds. God’s grace is more than enough for anyone who struggles with any sin. What bothers me is when people who have been leaders in the Christian realm in some way or another get angry at the church for holding its beliefs that are true.

I don’t think it’s very wise for Jennifer to be smacking the face of the hand that fed her and got her started. Without Christianity, Jennifer Knapp would not be a name readily recognized. Yet, she feels that the church has and will treat her unfairly: “The struggle I’ve had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I’ve been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I’ve always approached my faith. I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.”

When asked about how she deals with what the Bible says about homosexuality she says this:

“The Bible has literally saved my life. I find myself between a rock and a hard place—between the conservative evangelical who uses what most people refer to as the “clobber verses” to refer to this loving relationship as an abomination, while they’re eating shellfish and wearing clothes of five different fabrics, and various other Scriptures we could argue about. I’m not capable of getting into the theological argument as to whether or not we should or shouldn’t allow homosexuals within our church. There’s a spirit that overrides that for me, and what I’ve been gravitating to in Christ and why I became a Christian in the first place.”

While she makes her arguments, I’m sure she’s convinced that Homosexuality is and old covenant, old testament thing. As I stated earlier, the truth is that it is not. She may feel clobbered by those verses, but the thing is, they are the truth. What I gather from her interview is that truth has become relative for her. That this spirit that overrides that for her is a spirit of relativity.

Just a few verses later in 1 Cor. 6, Paul says this: ” The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” God created us and our bodies to glorify Him. And even though we all sin and struggle with sins of some sort, hopefully we are all trying more and more to turn ourselves over to Christ and to be controlled by His spirit and not by our own.

I guess the reason I’m writing this long article is that I’m bothered. I have my own sins, as we all do, that I struggle with. But I keep fighting with them. I keep fighting my flesh and try to turn more of it over to the Spirit. I’m not perfect, I’m far from it. But, I’m not about to start pointing the finger at the church for my problems. I’m not going to be up in arms at other Christians because I’m still struggling with something. I recognize who and where I am and where I need to go. I recognize the truth of scripture and it’s authority in my life. I recognize that there is a story that I’m a part of that is much bigger than I and that the things I struggle with are things that will shape me for the rest of that story and I long to see that.

It frustrates me to see another musician, and person whose music I’ve worshiped to as some point in my life choosing to quit fighting, to give in to sin and to get angry at anyone who decides to stand in the truth and against them. It frustrates me that there will be those among you who will be angry with me for taking a stand about the truth. It frustrates me that the truth is questioned within the Christian community, and that we are allowing the enemy to sneak in among us and divide us in such a way. I don’t want to perpetuate that, I want to be a catalyst for change. Real change. Well sort of, change back to the truth.

Join me if you wish, slander me if you want. Just know this, you can say that this is true for you but not for me, but there is a truth and I believe it, and one day we will all see clearly the truth as we all have entered into Heaven through the way, the TRUTH and the life.

Pray for Jennifer and that she will not give up the fight against her sin and that she will stop fighting those who supported her for so many years. And continue to fight the good fight yourselves. Don’t become another headline, another story that we have to deal with.

I was back in the saddle again. I took almost two weeks off after Easter, and this weekend was my first day back. I know it’s not like I was gone forever, but it was long enough to feel like I was gone.

So, it was good to be back. It was me with some of the youth guys this weekend, and it was great. Since I was gone, I picked some of the songs the guys played this last week for youth group, which helped us be a little better prepared since we didn’t have practice this week.

Here was our set:

• Awesome is the Lord
• I Will boast
• Welcome
• The Stand
• Jesus Paid it All
• Center
• Sermon
• Here Am I

For more weekend Reviews and Sunday Setlists, check out The Worship Community.

For a direct link to the planning center outline, click here: http://www.planningcenteronline.com/plans/1264650/public

• Have three candles lit at the foot of the cross before people come in.
• God of Wonders
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading
  Vs. 1-2

  Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown
  when Thou camest to earth for me;
  But in Bethlehem’s home was there found no room
  For Thy holy nativity.

  Heaven’s arches rang when the angels sang,
  proclaiming They royal degree;
  But of lowly birth didst Thou come to earth,
  and in great humility

• Candle Instruction #1: John 1:1-5
  As a biological family, or spiritual family, go pick an unlit candle from one of the tables or from the foot of the Cross, bring it forward and light it from the candle at the foot of the cross. Then Take it back to where you found it.

  1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

  3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

• Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
• Joy to the World
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading: John 1:10-14
  Vs. 3
  The foxes found rest, and the birds their nest
  In the shade of the forest tree;
  But Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God,
  In the deserts of Galilee.

  10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

  14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

• Spirit of the Sovereign Lord (Andy Park)
• Prayer for the people we’re inviting to Easter
• All Who Are Thirsty (Kutless arr.)
• Prayer for the Easter Services
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading
  Vs. 4
  Thou camest, O Lord, with the living word
  That should set Thy people free;
  But with mocking scorn and with crown of thorn
  They bore Thee to Calvary.
• The Wonderful Cross
• The Nails in your hands with “I could sing of your love forever)
• Communion Explanation & Candle Instruction #2: Mark 15:33-39
  In the same group as from before, go & take communion together. After you have taken communion, have one member of your group blow out the candle that you lit earlier tonight. When you blow out the candle, remember that Christ died on the Cross for you. Jesus Christ Our Savior, gave his life for you. When we break bread together we do so to remember His life – broken for us. When we drink from the cup – we remember his blood, poured out for us and the new covenant he made with us.

  33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

  35When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

  36One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

  37With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

  38The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

• (Worship leader, in silence blows out one of the candles at the foot of the cross.
• Pardoning blood
• Candle Instruction #3
  Once again in the same groups, go get the candle you blew out after communion. Bring it forward, and light it from the candle at the foot of the cross. Then, take your candle and put it in the one of the windows here in the sanctuary.
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading: Matthew 5:14-16
  Read Verse 5 then sing song
  When the heavens shall ring and the angels sing
  At thy coming to victory
  Let Thy voice call me home, saying “Yet there is room-
  There is room at my side for thee.”

  14″You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

• Sing “Thou didst Leave Thy Throne.

Easter weekend, what a great weekend! We had a tremendous celebration at our church. Everything was working, everyone was firing on all cylinders and the whole thing came off great.

You can view the set on Planning Center if you’d like: http://www.planningcenteronline.com/plans/1077934/public

Here was our Set:

• Empty Tomb Video (Worship House Media)
• Christ the Lord is Risen Today (Choir)
• All Because of Jesus (Fee)
• Christ is Risen (Riddle)
• Responsive Reading
• Prayer
• Sermon pt.1 – The Grand Opening
• All Things New (Steven Curtis Chapman)
• Sermon pt. 2 – The Wrong Doors
• Prayer 2
• Fellowship
• Sermon pt. 3 – Open Arms
• Sunday’s coming video
• Sermon pt. 4 – An Open Tomb
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Sermon pt. 5 – Open the Door
• Calling out to You (My song)

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists on the Worship Community.

One of the great things about following Worship Ministry Catalyst is that you get free stuff from time to time. This happens to be one of those times. What is the NAB Show you may ask…Here’s a little info from http://www.nabshow.com

Where Content Comes to Life

For more than 80 years, there’s been only one global event for people passionate about content.

A place that fosters the convergence of industries the world turns to for information and entertainment.

An essential destination that is synonymous with next-generation technology, education and insight.

A gathering so powerful that it earns the respect of more than 80,000 digital media professionals every year.

From broadcasting to broader-casting®, the NAB Show™ has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. And while the solutions at your fingertips have changed to keep pace with consumer habits and technologies, your aspirations to produce and deliver memorable content have remained constant. From conception through distribution, the NAB Show proudly serves as the incubator for excellence – helping to breathe life into content everywhere.

The Technologies for Worship Pavilion offers comprehensive training for house of worship staff and technical volunteers and is the focal point for all things related to worship technology at the NAB Show. In addition, you may be interested in Destination Broadband – the newest broadband-centric exhibit at the 2010 NAB Show. It will be featuring technologies like online video platforms, streaming video, mobile video distribution, and much more.

To get more info about the NAB Show, click here.

Click here to register, Then enter the code A913.

NAB Show Fast Facts

More than 85,000 audio, video and film content professionals

157 countries represented

$30 billion in purchasing power

500+ conference and training sessions

1,500+ exhibiting companies and 800,000+ net square feet of exhibit space

1,300+ members of the press

82 years of industry leadership

This week I was flying solo. I rolled out the piano, got it tuned and it was just me, a few old hymns and the congregation. People seem to like it when I do that. I would have thought it would be just the opposite, but that’s just not the case. People like it when it’s simple. I took the opportunity to do some hymns that we don’t get to do very often – which was fun do.

Here was my set:

• Hosanna (Paul Baloche – but I rearranged it to be a little more interesting as a solo piano song)
• Glory to His Name (That’s right folks, that old one. I did it fairly slow because I’m sure a lot of our people didn’t know it because we never sing it, but then on the last chorus, I bumped it up and did it oompa loompa style – others call it double time)
• My Savior’s Love (How Marvelous)
• Announcements
• Nothing But the Blood (ushers passed out communion during this song)
• Communion talk
• There is a Redeemer (Melody Green)
• Sermon
• Rest in your Peace (my song)

For communion, I tied in the triumphal entry with what was happening during the rest of this week for Jesus. Here’s what I did:

All who are in a trusting relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ are invited to take communion with us today.

Jesus had just told a parable…

²⁸After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. ²⁹As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, ³⁰“Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ”

³²Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. ³³As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

³⁴They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

³⁵They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. ³⁶As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

³⁷When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
³⁸“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

³⁹Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

⁴⁰“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

⁴¹As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it ⁴²and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.

Before we take communion, let’s pause for a moment and pray for those we will be inviting next week. Those whom Jesus has wept over. Those for whom Jesus longs to be the giver of peace, and those whose eyes are hidden from the real answer they seek.

As Jesus entered the city, the people threw theirs cloaks on the road for the young colt to walk on. And as Jesus was riding this colt which no one else had ever ridden, the same people shouted out “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in Heaven and glory in the Highest!”

But, it wouldn’t be long before some of those same people who had thrown their cloaks on the ground we be shouting at Jesus. Not words of praise, but words of condemnation. They were willing to lay down their cloaks for him, but at some point over the next few days, the cost of following Jesus became to great. And they shouted at him.

Just as Jesus knew which colt he would ride on, and just as he knew the people who would be shouting his praises – he knew the people who would be shouting condemnation. And He knew that though this story began at the Mt. of Olives the next time he would return there he would be betrayed. And He knew the story would finish at Golgotha, a Hill where he would give his life as the ransom for our souls.

Just as the hundreds who praised him would later betray him, one of his own would betray him as well. And on that night, before he would return to that Mt., Jesus took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Father, as we think about the joyful celebration that surround your son’s entrance so many years ago, and as we think about those who were there – so quick to lay down their cloaks for you – we think about the way you entered into our lives. We think about the way your Son laid down His life for us, to pay sins ransom. And for that we say Thank you. Thank you for being our redeemer. Thank You Father, for sending us your son.

For more weekend Reviews – check out Sunday Setlists over on “The Worship Community.“

What would the fly on the windshield say? Nothing now. No, not the one on the outside, the one on the inside.  You know, when you get to Gateway on a Saturday evening or a Sunday morning, if the little fly followed you into church and told someone what had been going on what would he say?

I’ve heard from these flies (I don’t want to take this metaphor too far for fear that you actually start to think I talk to flies, like I’m some sort of bug whisperer so I’ll stop now.) and what I hear is that in general there are one of three things that happen in the car on the way to church. The first story I hear is nothing. People just drive to church as if they’re driving to Target and do nothing differently. The second story I hear is one of stress. Parents are stressed from trying to get everyone ready for church, kids are stressed because the parents are stressed and the poor little fly is terrified (sorry, just couldn’t resist). The third story I hear is one of preparation. There’s an understanding that what’s to come is of utmost importance and we want to be ready for it.

My goal is to give you a simple way to help prepare you and your family for worshipping with us each weekend at Gateway. All you have to remember is S.O.S. That might not be too hard to remember, depending on which scenario you fit in above. This is a different kind of S.O.S. We’re not trying to keep our ship from sinking or saving our souls from something, we’re preparing for an encounter with the Savior of our Soul.

The First “S” is Submit. “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Heb. 5:7). We need to follow the example of Christ, who was God, but was still obedient to His Father even though it cost Him everything (Phil 2:1-11).  We need to be people of prayer, but not just praying “Lord, help me to worship you today,” though, that’s a great place to start. Rather, we need to pray, Listen to the Spirit’s prompting and the follow through with what the Holy Spirit tells us to do. “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation…because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God…and by him we cry, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:1-26). When we feel the Spirit leading us to respond in worship, we have an obligation to follow through. It’s not just What Jesus would do, it’s what He did.

The “O” is for Others. We need to think about others and we need to not think about others. Make sense? Just in case it doesn’t let me explain. First we need to think about others. In any worship Service, the people leading worship aren’t just those on the stage. Everyone has the opportunity to lead someone else in worship. And when you Submit to the Spirit’s leading, the same Spirit could be at work in someone around you. That same Spirit may want to use you to lead them.

At the same time, we need to not think of others. We should not restrict our worship for fear of how others might perceive us, instead Fear the Lord. “The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them” (Ps. 25:14). Do not be confused by the word Fear. It is a term of worship. When used in scripture it used in terms of Reverence and Awe, a Hatred of Evil and an Obedience of God.

The last “S” is for Sacrifice. “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of Praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Heb. 13:15-16). What’s comfortable for us, isn’t a sacrifice. And don’t forget that in our corporate times of worship when you make a sacrifice you are sharing with others and that is pleasing to God.

“I will sacrifice a free will offering to you, I will praise your name O LORD, for it is Good. (Ps. 54:6)” We sing songs of praise and thanksgiving and offer them as a sacrifice not simply because we’re commanded to, but because Jesus sacrificed himself for us, and because we want to experience now as well as look forward to a time that is to come when all worshippers will worship in Spirit and Truth. (Heb. 13:12-14; John 4:23-24).

Think about it, a time when our worship will be uninhibited by our fallen state and we will always obey what the Spirit tells us to do. A time when we will see Him clearly, face to face and we will be able to worship Him without any false pretense, but based solely on the truth that we see standing before us. What a day that will be. But don’t think that’s something reserved for Heaven, because we can experience it together. We can Experience God, when we come together each weekend to worship and we Submit to the Spirit’s leading, serve the others around us, when we get outside of what’s comfortable to use and offer up to God a Sacrifice of Praise.

What a great weekend! The only huge responsibility I had this weekend was directing the choir. For the rest of the service, I got to just play the keys and nothing else. It was a ton of fun for me. I don’t get to do that all that often, so when I do, I just love it. I must admit, I go a little crazy, I break a few of the rules and play a little too much. I just can’t help myself.

Here was our set:

• Joyful, Joyful We adore Thee (Charlie Hall arr.)
• Welcome
• Mighty to Save
• Wonderful Maker
• Jeremiah Scripture
• The Potter’s Hand
• The Majesty & Glory of Your Name (Choir)
• Sermon
• All of my Days

I totally botched the into to Mighty to Save. It’s a guitar thing normally, but I was doing it & I totally destroyed it – not in a good way. Phil & Danielle did an amazing job leading (as they always do). And the choir did an awesome job. Choir is still a relatively new thing around here, so I’ve been teaching the choir some of the “classics” in terms of Church choir music. “The Majesty & Glory of Your Name” is definitely a classic. If you have a choir, and they haven’t done this song, you should dig through your library and pull it out for them to sing.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.

Granted, the people we might have watched on TV, Sunday night, March 7th, weren’t volunteers, there’s a lesson we can learn – Appreciation.

You don’t have to watch any awards show for long to recognize two things: first, people like being appreciated, second people need an opportunity to thank people who have helped them succeed.

When working with volunteers we need to create these opportunities. We need to create opportunities to thank our volunteers and we need to give our volunteers opportunities to thank others who have helped them.

The first is obvious, something we think about and probably do quite often (hopefully). If you’re not in the practice, it would be a good practice for you to get into. That practice is, regularly thanking your volunteers. Say thanks after a worship service. Say thanks after a rehearsal. When someone tells you they spend time working on their parts during the week, say thanks. Send thank-you notes as often as you can. Take every opportunity to pat your volunteers on the back.

We should also create specific opportunities to thank volunteers. I’ve done something that I call the WAMMIES (Worship Arts Ministry Most influential and exceptional service) awards. I went with that because it’s a play on Grammy’s (just in case that wasn’t obvious to you;) and because it’s kind of corny and funny. It was an event, obviously not at the same caliber as the Grammy’s or the Oscar’s, but it was a classy event in its own right. We brought in a chef to cook the food, we hired waiters and waitresses to wait on the tables. I bought personalized awards to hand out. It was a great night. And not only did it give me an opportunity to say thanks it did something else. That leads me to the second point.

We need to give people an opportunity to thank others. It’s a great example for us to be thankful to others. But we can’t stop there. Some of us hesitate to let people talk and say things impromptu, and sometimes it backfires on you. But, a lot of the time you can accomplish things while others are talking that are hard for you to accomplish on your own. When you give people the opportunity to say thanks they will inevitably reinforce your values as a worship arts ministry or whatever your volunteer organization. They can do in a quick “thank-you” speech, what you wouldn’t be able to accomplish in a 30 minute lecture on your values.

Remember this, What’s rewarded get’s repeated. John Maxwell says, if you reward your eager beavers the same as you do your goof offs, you will soon find yourself with more goof offs than eager beavers. Take time to reward the people who are doing what you want them to do and people will notice. Whatever you do, don’t reward the goof offs. This sounds like common sense, but it can be harder to do than you think. The reason is that goof offs often come in the class-clown format, and a lot of people like the class-clown. But if you have a class-clown in your ministry, who just comes and wings it, at the same time having people who have put in their time to be prepared, you must resist the urge to give in to the class clown. Pat the eager beaver on the back, not the goof off.

When you see awards ceremonies, let it be a reminder to you that we need to be thanking our volunteers. We are dependent on them, we fail without them.

This weekend was the first weekend or preparing for Easter. We taught Jeremy Riddle’s song, “Christ is Risen” today. We also had a great weekend for music. I was able to step aside from most of the leading this weekend and mostly focus on the band and playing. It was actually quite enjoyable!

Here was our set this weekend:

• Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin -did it in the original key, had an alto sing melody on the chorus and I sang melody on the verses.)
• Let the Praises Ring
• Hosanna
• Welcome
• Cannons
• Christ is Risen
• Sermon
• Here I am to Worship
• May the World See Your Light In Me (Brian Cheney)

Brian was a roommate of mine in college, and he also played in a group with Kevin for a while. We did this song in choir back in the day, and it just happen to fit perfectly with the sermon this weekend, so we did it.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists on The Worship Community.

This weekend we had the privilege of having some of the youth band play with us. It was really cool on a couple of levels. First, it’s always cool to to have the youth playing with us so the congregation could experience and get to know what the youth do on a weekly basis. It was also cool because our Youth Worship Intern was playing with us. Kyle played with me at my last church, and it was cool to get to lead worship with him again.

Here was our Set:

• O Praise Him
• Famous One
• Prayer
• From the Inside Out
• Sermon Intro
• All Who Are Thirsty
• Nothing But the Blood (Redman)
• Sermon
• Once Again

For more weekend Reviews, Check out Sunday Setlists over at The Worship Community.

Great weekend! Just loved it! So did our congregation! We had the choir join us this week for a couple of worship tunes and then the choir sang “Total Praise.” It’s an oldie, but not to our church. Since we’ve never had a choir around here, there are a lot of “classics” that our church has never heard, and that’s one of them.

We also had a smaller band this week, on purpose. It’s a group I’m working on taking in a different direction than our other groups. I’m wanting it to be a piano driven group with a jazz &/or Gospel feel to it. It’s a new venture for us, but I’m excited about it. If you have any experience with this and you would like to offer me some pointers, that would be awesome, I could use the help!

Here was our Set:

• I am Free
• Give My Praise (Mine)
• Welcome
• Your Name
• Revelation Song
• Total Praise
• Sermon
• Lord, Reign in Me.

It was great to have the choir join us, the band was fun. Just an overall great weekend! For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists on The Worship Community.

Since we’ve been “blowin’ and goin’” for about 6 weeks or longer now, with a full, rockin’ praise band each week, and since it was valetines day, I thought it would be good to change things up and just have a simple weekend. It was just myself on keys, and Trevor singing vocals. We split the singing duties 50/50, which ended up being cool and adding a little spice to the weekend.

Since it was pretty simple, I picked some songs that I thought would work well on just keys. That included a few hymns, it actually ended up being liked by a lot of people & it’s nice to score points with people who like Hymns. (I happen to be one of those people).

Here was our set:

• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC arr.)
• Blessed Assurance (My Arr.)
• My Savior My God (My Arr.)
• Amazing Grace (My chains are gone) – added a cello patch from the motif xs8 in on just the bass notes, cut it of on the C below middle C.
• Communion
• Love like Rain (Daniel Doss) – Kept the same cello patch for the bass & added in the “almighty” string patch in the upper register. With the piano, it made a really nice, full sound.
• Sermon
• I’ll go where you want me to God (My arr.)

For communion, we brought out some of the art work that some of the artists in our church have painted over the year to give people something visual to meditate. We also used photos from our photographic team as the backgrounds for the lyrics this weekend. It ended up being a cool, artsy kind of a weekend.

That’s about it, not a bunch more to talk about. For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists on the Worship Community.

You may have seen my post yesterday about echoes, and in that post I mentioned that those two articles were written by Evan Kepner of No Treble. Well, I had to do a separate post about this site, because it’s worth your time. It would be a great resource to pass on to the bass players in your worship bands. It would also be a great way for us to learn more about bass so we can help instruct our players a little more.

There’s a section with lessons, videos showing how to play some bass licks, and other great resources. You should definitely go check it out.

There’s a good chance, that if you’ve been involved in music much for the last few years, you’ve probably gotten some sort of catalog from Disc Makers. I know I’ve gotten a ton of them, and they’re always fun to look at. While they do want to sell you on their services, the also do a lot of helpful things for us musicians. One of those things is the writing and collecting of good articles for musicians and for recording. I came across some of those articles today.

These are a couple of links to some ear training articles they have posted on their blog, Echoes. These articles were actually written by Evan Kepner who runs No Treble, which is a cool site for bass players.

• The Zen of Ear Training – Part 1
• The Zen of Ear Training – Part 2

This was another great weekend. We had all our top notch players on, everything went well. The biggest issue we had this weekend was in our transitions. We didn’t have any song to song transitions. They were all start & stop. Which I guess is fine, and one of the things you have to give up when all your songs are started by guitar. At least, when we’re only doing what is on the recording.

Here was our Set:

• Let God Arise
• Because of Your Love
• Song of Hope
• Reading – Psalm 103
• Let the Praises Ring
• Everlasting God
• Sermon
• Wherever He Leads I’ll go (Old hymn, my music) – You can listen to a recording in the player to the right.

To see what other worship pastors and churches did, check out Sunday setlists on The Worship Community.

A while back…ok, quite a while back I started writing a bit about using a creative team to plan worship services. (If you missed that article check it out here.) Well, here we are back in the saddle again.

This topic among discussions of creativity is probably one of the most important and yet, one of the most overlooked.

1.) Stop saying no to ideas that don’t fit your paradigm. How many times have you shot down and idea instinctively or had one of your ideas shot down in the same manner? This is one of the biggest road blocks to creativity.

You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s worth repeating: If you keep doing what you’ve done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. If you want the best ideas to rise to the top, you have to allow all ideas to rise, not shut them down.

2.) Get out there and see ideas of what others are doing (especially people/churches who do things you don’t normally do. We need to be good at finding resources, ideas that other people have tried and succeeded at doing. We need to be good at sifting through lots of information, looking at a lot of manuscripts until we find the cream of the crop. It’s kind of like a thankless version of American Idol. We go through a lot of auditions to find the one star, the one that stands well above the rest, the one that will speak to the most people. Use your feed readers like google, or even subscribe to blogs like this one in your email program. Get used to sifting through lots of material until you find the one gem.

3.) Take a semi-calculated risk. Some of us think we take “calculated” risks, but in reality we don’t. We calculate them so much that any real risk has been removed from the equation. I know the arguments, there’s too much on the line, we might lose people, we might make people mad, people might stop giving their money and we won’t have a job, etc. In all likelihood the only reason any of us are in the positions that we are is because someone, somewhere along the way took a risk and it paid off.

We have to take some risks. The bigger our organizations get, the harder risks become to take and the more comfortable we get with the way things are. We stand to lose too much, so we keep things the way we are, we make the same decisions.

Take a risk, do something that hasn’t been done before. Think it through, but don’t kill it just because you’ve never done it before.

In order to be creative, we have to remove the filter through which we evaluate ideas. We can’t judge an idea based on what we think we know. We have to learn from other’s mistaks. We have to take risks.

5th weekends are awesome! Well for the way we do things anyway. We have four teams to rotate one weekend per month for most months of the year. However, now and then a month will roll around with 5 weekends in it. On those weekends I put together teams of people who don’t normally get to play together, and who are also all our best musicians.

Because of this we get to do a little bit tougher music & we get to polish it a little more. This weekend was no exception. Last night had a few rough spots, which can be largely attributed to my having to cancel our midweek rehearsal, but this morning was great!

Here was our set:

• Sing, Sing, Sing. (Tomlin)
• Welcome
• Happy Day (Fee Arr.)
• Let the Praises Ring (Brewster)
• Scripture
• One God (Jeremy Ross)
• From the Inside Out
• Message
• The Church’s One Foundation

“Sing, sing, sing” is the first song from Tomlin’s new album that we’ve done at our church. People liked it. For me, it’s okay, it sounds like all his other stuff, but people like it. This was also the first time we did “Let the Praises Ring” and I think in general people liked that one too. The best response was on “Happy Day” & “From the Inside Out”. “Happy Day” because people knew that one pretty well and “From the inside Out” because people really connect with that one.

All that good stuff said, we did have our fair share of troubles yesterday. One of the biggest troubles we had is with our bass player following along. He’s more of a technical player than a feel player if you know what I mean. He’s got good feel, but he definitely lands on the technical side of things. When using a chord chart he seems to have problems with repeats and what not. Aside from writing out music for him, I’m not sure how to help him out more. He works the music up on his own, probably more than most of the others on the team, except our guitarist, but for some reason, little changes seem to throw him for a loop.

Any of you have ideas on things I could do to help?

For more Weekend Reviews, Check out Sunday Setlists @ The Worship Community.

I just  came across this amazing resource yesterday, and absolutely must share it with you.

As we’ve been going through the book “God songs” by Jimmy & Carol Owens & Paul Baloche on our podcast, this resource is extremely useful. There are a ton of great resources on the site, like songwriting tools links; songwriting resources; artist resources; etc.

By far, the thing I am loving the best is the forum. They have a very extensive forum for songwriters which includes a tiered critique. (Even at the highest level of critique they are extremely friendly in their feedback.) They also have many other things to discuss in the forum, it’s very extensive.

I’d strongly recommend you head over there and check it out, get a membership and start sharing your input on the forum. Tell them we sent you!

So it’s happened to me yet again. Well, it happens more often than not. Someone came up to me after our service on Sunday morning and complained about the sound being too loud. The week before I had about 15 people come up to me and express that the sound was too quiet and that they didn’t want to sing out because they didn’t want the people around them to hear them singing. Believe it or not, people are just as emotional on the quiet side as they are on the loud side of the fence.

It’s a very tight rail we walk in terms of volume. Some churches have a harder time than others. Some churches have problems caused by the building they are in, others have problems because of the large age range they serve on a weekly basis. Still others have problems because musicians like it loud, and the guitarist’s amp just doesn’t sound as warm unless it’s turned up. It’s a battle I’ve been a part of pretty much my whole life.

I’ve learned a lot over the course of my time in worship ministry about sound pressure levels, decibels and what not (to be quite honest, far more than I ever wanted to know). Today I thought I’d share a resource with you that I came across as this battle was thrust into the forefront of my mind once again. It’s called “Dangerous Decibels.” Here’s the link: http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/hearingloss.cfm

This link is particularly helpful as it has a chart on this page about hearing damage. Not that we need to be able to win our side of the argument, but this is an issue we need to have thought through clearly. As churches, we cannot be responsible for people losing their hearing. At the same time, contemporary worship music is loud. So, I’d recommend you take a minute or two and familiarize yourself with the info on Dangerous Decibels so that you can be leading your people in this way.

This was another good weekend. We had our piano driven group on this weekend, and it’s always fun to switch from doing all the usual suspects to doing songs that lend themselves to piano in some way.

So, we did some Tommy Walker songs which are great for piano, we did a song I wrote and since I’m a piano guy, it’s a piano song. We did a couple of other songs that are normal contemporary songs too.

Here was our set:

• Never Gonna Stop (Walker)
• No Greater Love (Walker)
• Scripture
• I am Crowned (Lindner)
• How Deep the Father’s Love for us.
• Message
• Amazing Love (I’ll never be the same – Hohnholtz)
• Awesome is the Lord (Tomlin)

We used a click on three of the songs this weekend. The click beat us on Saturday evening, but we played with it well this morning. We even got the transition from “Never Gonna Stop” which we were doing at 92 bpm into “No Greater Love” which we did at 107 bpm.

Do you know any good piano driven worship bands or songs? Indie groups would be great too. As much as I love the Tommy Walker stuff, I’d much rather be moving our piano sounding group more in the direction of a “Keane,” “The Fray” or “Coldplay” kind of a sound.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists over at “The Worship Community.”

On another note, Kevin (the other guy behind Worship Ministry Catalyst) would appreciate your prayers this week as his wife is scheduled to deliver their baby on Monday or Tuesday.

I came upon this awesome resource this week. RESOUNDworship.org is an exciting free resource for churches worldwide. Our aim is to provide local churches with fresh worship songs containing strong, Biblical lyrics supported by singable, contemporary music.

RESOUNDworship.org is a group of British based worship songwriters, seeking to resource the church with heartfelt, crafted, accessible worship songs.

It’s a really great resource, definitely worth your time checking out. They have a lot of songs they have written and they are all available for your use.

They also have a very thorough writing process that’s worth noting. You can see that here.

This was a great weekend, with one exception, we were doing a lot of electric guitar driven songs, with two electric guitar plays and we had a sound guy who doesn’t like electric guitar. That makes for a really weird mix, and I heard a fair amount of feedback about that after the services. I tried to fix it between services, but I still got the same feedback after the second service. We also had a couple of musicians who were really disappointed, understandably so, because they spent a lot of time getting ready and then weren’t heard. I’d be discouraged too.

However, what they two guys were doing sounded really good in my monitors, so aside from that one thing, it was a great weekend.

Here was our set:

• Call to Worship: Read William Temple’s Definition of Worship. “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”
• How Can I Keep From Singing?
• Glorious (Baloche CD arr.)
• Beautiful One (By the Tree arr.)
• Just to be with You (Baloche CD arr.)
• Holy is the Lord.
• Sermon
• Tell the World (Hillsong)

Aside from our sound issues, it was a great weekend. What was your weekend like? Check out what other worship leaders did this weekend over on The Worship Community.

This weekend was kind of the weekend where we start settling back down into a routine that will carry us for the rest of the spring into the summer. Phil & Danielle – on of our volunteer couples who used to lead worship at another church – led this weekend. Which means I got to play keys this week only and nothing else. It’s always fun when I get to focus on playing an instrument and not having to think about everything.

Here was our set:

• Love the Lord (Brewster)
• You are Holy (Prince of Peace)
• Scripture Reading (Eph. 2:11-22)
• Here Am I (Mike Honholtz)
• Still (Hillsongs)
• Sermon
• Rest In Your Peace (Mine)

It was fun to do a couple of these songs from a few years ago. Isn’t it amazing how quickly songs seem old now? It used to be that songs would last for decades, now they last a year. The really good ones still last.

For more weekend Reviews – Check out Sunday Setlists over on The Worship Community.

What a great way to start the new year. At least I think so! Our band did awesome this weekend, especially this morning. We had our A game on this weekend. And considering we didn’t have practice because of Holiday vacations, it was fantastic.

We focused our worship time around what might be my goal for our congregation this year, to take advantage of every opportunity we are given to worship. That we will rejoice daily in our savior, that we will boast in him, that we wouldn’t be lazy or selfish

I had the privilege of doing communion this morning, which I’ve only done one other time since I’ve been here. I botched it up last night, but I think I did a much better job this morning. I talked about Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, and contrasted that with the cup of the new covenant between Jesus our Groom and the church His bride.

Here was our set:

• Today is the Day
• I Will Boast
• Cannons (Phil Wickham)
• Communion
• Pardoning Blood (Mine)
• Sermon
• I am In You (Mine)

This last song is one that I wrote a few years ago for a sermon our pastor did at our last church from the book of Colossians. It turned out to be a perfect fit for this sermon in the book of Ephesians. This is the first time in my life I’ve done more than one of my own songs in a worship service. Felt kind of weird, almost like I was trying to get attention. It just worked out that the two songs we did worked really well. Oh well.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists over at Fred’s Place.

I feel like it’s been years since I last did a weekend review. Ah the joys of the Christmas season.

This weekend is one of the first times I feel like we didn’t drop the ball the weekend after Christmas. It seems like every year after Christmas and Easter, we’re always scrambling to get a band together and to get the music worked out, etc., but I didn’t feel like that was the case this year. We had a full band, with not missing components, we had solid vocals and we were able to get the arrangements worked out. Last night had a few wrinkles, but today was pretty good.

Here was our set:

• Angels from the realms of Glory (SCC Arr.)
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (SCC Arr.)
• Prayer for our worship in the new year
• Light of the World (Nockels)
• Glory In The Highest (Tomlin)
• Sermon on Contentment
• Living for Jesus (Hymn with new music)

Our transitions weren’t exactly smooth, though they were better for this morning’s service. Other than that, things went pretty well. For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists @ Fred’s Place.

Ahh, the weekend after Thanksgiving. When people are out of town and the people who are there still have a Thanksgiving – too much turkey – hangover.

This weekend, our pastor was talking about the Holy Spirit, which is something we almost never talk about. And since we never talk about it, we also haven’t really introduced any songs in the past that are related to the Holy Spirit. So, unfortunately for some of the members of our band, we did 3 hymns that all talk about the spirit somewhere in the song.

Here was our Set:

• Hallelujah (Your love is amazing)
• A Mighty Fortress (My Arr.)
• Glorious (Baloche)
• Welcome
• Eph. 1:11-14
• Be Thou My Vision (My Arr. – with a bridge I wrote – Recording in the side bar to the right.)
• Hungry
• Sermon
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC arr.)

We’re still in our BE series, but we kind of finished up a mini-series within the series on the trinity, so I thought it would be fitting to close the service by singing about the entire trinity, for which Holy, Holy, Holy was the perfict fit.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Set-lists @ Fred’s place.

Well, here we are again. I don’t know if very many of you do a Thanksgiving Eve or Thanksgiving day service, but to me these services seem to just creep up on me every year. In the back of my head, I know they’re coming, but between our regular weekend services and gearing up for Christmas weekend, it seems that they just sort of appear out of no where. I find myself on the Monday before the service wondering exactly how we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do.

So, here it is, the Monday before our Thanksgiving Eve service, and yes, I’m in that same place. Well, not quite to the extent that it has been in the past, I kind of know what we’re doing, speaking in generalities. I just don’t have all the details nailed down, all the personnel lined up and all the media put together.

So, I thought I’d throw it out there to you and see if you have any ideas that you are using this year for your Thanksgiving services that might be different from the usual that you’re willing to share with the rest of the world.

Comment below!

(By the way, the graphic we are using came from Luis Garcia on creativemyk.com)

What a weekend! It was great! I know that not everyone involved felt like they were “up to snuff” for the weekend, but it was a great weekend – the people of God worshiped! Sure there were things we could have done better, things that could have gone better, things that could have been tighter, notes that could have been “righter,” but when it comes down to it, the bottom line is that people worship and that they did my friends, that they did.

One of the challenges of having a Saturday evening service and a Sunday morning service, is that there is always the possibility that something will happen to someone between Saturday night & Sunday morning – like getting sick. That’s what happened this weekend, our drummer called on Sunday morning to let me know he wouldn’t be able to make it because he was sick. Fortunately, our children’s director plays drums excellently, and he was able to step in. So, we ended up being covered.

We did Paul Baloche’s new song “Glorious” today. We didn’t use a loop (Someday, I would like to), but I was able to set up a patch on my Yamaha Motif XS8 to sound pretty much like a lot of the stuff they were doing on the recording. It’s a “glorious” song, If you haven’t added it to your repertoire yet, I’d highly recommend you do.

Here was our Set:

• All Because of Jesus (Fee)
• Ephesians 1:7-8
• I Am Free
• Glorious
• Mighty to Save
• Revelation Song
• Sermon
• Your Grace is enough.

I love a lot of these songs: All Because of Jesus, Glorious & Revelation song are among my favorites right now. Our female vocalists were sick this weekend, and were unable to find anyone to fill in for them, so I had to try & do the echo’s on “I am free” by myself. It was interesting, different.

For more weekend reviews/worship confessionals/Sunday Setlists – check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Church on Sunday was pretty cool.  I put together a Veteran’s Day celebration at the beginning of the service and it was a hit!  I tried to get the Junior ROTC from our local high school to come and do an Honor Guard to present the colors, but it didn’t work out.  Maybe next year.  But I did get all our Veteran’s to come in their uniform and one of our currently serving members gave a brief message on freedom.  At the end, all the Veteran’s came on stage and we prayed for them.  It was pretty powerful!

The rest of the service was good; but that image of over 40 Veterans standing on stage is still so clear.  We had a smaller band this Sunday, which worked out really well because we’ve been having some monitor issues.  I was happy with how things turned out and got some good feedback after church:

• Prelude: National Anthem (no Honor Guard; hopefully next year)
• Brief message on Freedom (Chris McDaniel)
• Welcome Time
• Mission Focus: Angel Tree Ministry
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• He Reigns (Newsboys)
• Lord Most High (Can’t remember who wrote this)
• All Creatures of Our God and King(David Crowder arrangement)
• Always (United)
• God of Wonders (Marc Byrd / Third Day)
• Message: How Did it All Begin? – Genesis 1-2 (Pastor Mike)
• Postlude: God of Wonders

To see what other Worship Teams are doing on Sunday, check out Fred McKinnon’s site.

This was a great weekend! I didn’t do a review last weekend, but should have. We did a worship night, and it was great! We did a lot of music and people really worshiped. I’m really looking forward to the next one we do and the times of worship we will have. This weekend, we used the same band from that night and we did songs that we did at the worship night, so we had already worked on them quite a bit by the time we got to this weekend. Wouldn’t it be great if we could prepare that much for every weekend. I’m working on coming up with a way to do that, I’ll let you know about that in the future.

Here was our set for the weekend:

• You are Holy (Prince of Peace)
• Song of Hope (Heaven come down)
• Run for the hungry presentation
• Cannons (Phil Wickham)
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Sermon (New series “BE”)
• I am crowned – (Mine – you can actually listen to a recording in the music player just to the right of this post)

It was great to do some of these songs with this band. Our lead guitarist for this weekend really worked the stuff up, had great tone and just nailed everything. Everyone in the group, really nailed everything this weekend!

It was a great weekend! Not a lot to critique. Of course there is stuff, we weren’t cd quality or anything, but it was a great weekend! For more reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place!

I also wanted to let you know that Kevin & I have been doing a series of Podcasts on Paul Baloche’s book “God Songs.” If you have interest in writing songs for worship, check it out! We’d love to have some of you on the podcast via interview and to talk about some of the chapters. Just get in touch with us. You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Hi everyone!  It’s been a few weeks since I last posted a blog on our weekend service.  I’ve been in the process of selling our house and moving to a new house right by the church.  I’m happy to report that as of last night, we are officially in the house and unpacked and it’s starting to feel like a home now.  Praise the Lord!

This Sunday, we had one of our missionaries preach.  It wasn’t exactly a “Mission Week” like David had last Sunday, but it was cool and different having this missionary to India preaching on suffering. It gave everyone in the church a really different perspective; plus everyone was listening really well because George was kind of hard to understand

Here’s what our service looked like:

• Scripture Reading: Psalm 89:5-8 / Psalm 47:10-11
• Awesome is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• Scripture Reading:  Romans 8:17-18 / Romans 5:2-5
• Still(Reuben Morgan / Hillsong)
• Good to Me (Old Calvary Chapel Song… can’t remember who wrote it; Craig something)
• Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman)
• Prayer for Offering
• It is Well  (Special arrangement for lead and tenor vocals; very cool!)
• Message: “An Eternal Perspective on Suffering” (George Varghese; missionary in India)
• Closing Thoughts / Transition into Business Meeting

We had a bit of a struggle transitioning into our Business Meeting.  We were trying to create a very smooth flow, but it didn’t work out so well.  There was some miscommunication, and a bunch of people ended up leaving and causing some distractions.  It’s hard to go from a worship service and then to talk business stuff.  If anyone has any good ideas, let me know!

To check out other weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnon’s site!

This weekend was missions weekend for us. Some of you know exactly what that means. There may be others of you who have a more positive view of missions services at your church, but my experience thus far in ministry has not been extraordinarily positive. The speakers usually tend to speak longer than they are given, some much longer.  A lot of times, their speaking skills lag behind those who communicate regularly and the point of their messages is usually an update on what they’re doing in their ministry and nothing that really empowers the people to act.

That said, this weekend was quite a bit better than usual, at least in terms of the event itself. I really think our missions committee did a good job of putting on an event that drew people into the ministries we support as a church. As far as the communication from the stage goes, well, it still fit into my expectations. But, our people did stay and do quite a bit of sharing with the ministries who were represented, which was exactly the goal.

All that said, our worship team wasn’t quite up to snuff this weekend. We had our staff retreat this last week, which left me no time to confirm musicians and plan for this weekend until it was too late to do much about. Those musicians who did participate, did their best. But, we just didn’t have the time or the personnel to do something of excellence.

Here’s what we did this week:

• All the Earth will Sing Your Praises
• Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble
• Missionary talk #1
• Great in all the Earth
• You Said
• Missionary Talk #2
• Hear Our Praises

Since I’ve only been here for a couple of years, I wasn’t sure about some of theses songs and if they had been done in the past here. I was pleased to hear from a couple of people that they had, so at least they weren’t brand new to everyone.

Our band was piano, bass & drums, and we had two altos on the team. When you look at it that way, it kind of feels like a team of whomever was willing to play – played. It was a challenge to pull some of the songs off like all the earth will sing your praises and did you feel. Well, actually all of them had their challenges without full instrumentation.

However, I feel like God used us to lead our congregation in worship, which is obviously the most important thing.

That was our weekend around here, you should also head over to Fred’s Place and check out what other’s did this weekend.

Hi everyone!  My life has been a little crazy and stressful the last few weeks; our family is moving to a house right by the church.  We’re super excited, but it’s a lot of work packing up a house.  You wouldn’t believe the things I found… I kept asking myself, “Why do we have this?” or “Do we really need xyz?”

But in the midst of all this busyness, God has been doing some neat things in my life.  The last several weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about our worship service a little differently.  I’ve been challenged to really examine everything we do in our service and see if it’s all pointing to God.  Even transitions can play a huge part in the worship experience.  As a result, I feel like the last couple weeks have been very focused on the Lord and having a unified message.  It’s been cool!

Here is what we did on Sunday:

• Opening Scripture Reading: Philippians 2 & John 3:16
• Hosanna (Paul Baloche)
• Here I Am to Worship  (Tim Hughes)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names (my friend wrote a new chorus to this classic song)
• Once Again (Matt Redman)
• King of Kings (Clay Heacocks; this is a great anthemic song from back in my days with Calvary Chapel Fellowships)
• Mission Focus: Missionaries Dwight and Becky Johnson
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Jesus, What a Beautiful Name (Old Hillsong from 1996 I think)
• Message: “Descending Into Glory” – Luke 2 (Pastor Mike)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names  (reprise)

To check out what other worship leaders are doing, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.

This was a great weekend, however if you had asked me at 5:45 yesterday evening how last night’s service was going to go, I would have told you…”This could be bad.” For some reason our practice was just really rough, and we had a hard time getting through several of the songs. But then, when we did the service last night, almost all the songs went pretty well. And this morning, all the songs went really well. Who knows, sometimes we work hard at something and it goes bad, other times we think we’re going to fail and God steps in and fixes it all.

Here was our Set:

• Meet Us Here (Mike Honholtz)
• The Stand
• Communion Prep talk
• Beautiful the Blood
• Take the elements
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC Arr.)
• Revelation Song (Riddle)

For some reason, I just wasn’t real enamored with “The stand” this week. That could be because we didn’t have an electric to really help drive the song, but whatever it was, it just didn’t seem to be flowing and growing.

I did absolutely love doing Beautiful the Blood and Revelation Song. Those are definitely two of my favorites right now. We had to cancel our mid-week practice this week, because no one coule be there, but we really needed it. Someone needs to come up with an online way to rehearse people, where people can go to reheasal when they have time to, and not at the one time when we have practice scheduled. Does anyone have a good way of getting all the arrangment notes onto a chart or do you make up inidividual charts for each part. The charts I make up are pretty clear and they work fine when we have rehearsal, but when we don’t have enough time for rehearsal, I’d like to have a chart that people could rely on.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s place.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these. Partially because I haven’t been leading. In fact, this weekend I played the drums. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, but it was fun, and an experience I think I’ll try to repeat. It gives me a great perspective on the band and how rehearsal is going, it changes my point of view enough that I can really observe how well a lot of things are going in a way that I can’t normally do. Plus, it fills in one of the needs we have, which is for drummers.

Last weekend we had an outside band in, “The Neverclaim.” You’ve probably heard me talkd about them before, and this week we had a husband & wife team leading. They are going to be leading worship for a couple of women’s conferences for the next couple of weekends, so they did some of the music they’ll be doing for those conferences this weekend.

Here was our set:

• I’m Singing (Kari Jobe)
• Joyful, Joyful (Passion arr.)
• Announcement
• You are Good (Houghton – Brewster arr.)
• All Who Are Thirsty
• You are Good (Kari Jobe)
• Surreneder
• Sermon
• Tell the World (Hillsong United)

To be honest, I was definitely the weak link this weekend. I was leaning on the band leader and vocal leader to keep time instead of them being able to lean on me. Next time I play drums, I’ll definitely be using a metronome to help me keep time so they can rest a little more in the groove. I also had forgotten how hard it is to remember where you are in a song when you’re playing drums, and if you don’t have the order of the song written down, it can be really easy to get lost. There’s nothing that you’re playing that helps lead you into the next section, your totally dependent on your memory and the worship leader. So, this is good reason to have good cues as a worship leader. You want your drummers to feel like they know where they’re going and when they’re supposed to go there.

The version of Tell the world that we (actually they) did at the close of the service was really cool. It was acoustic and had a very cool, acoustic/coffee shop  feel to it.

The two Kari Jobe songs are off of her new album. I’d recommend you check them out. They’re simple and easy to use for your congregational worship times. I don’t know of many of you have used his resources, but she’s also one of the vocalists on Paul Boloche’s Vocal workshop DVD in his Lead Worship Series.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone!  This week we did kind of a “throw-back” service and busted out a few of the Oldie Goldies from the archives.  It was fun; and our people love doing older songs.  I think if it was their way, they would stay in the late 80′s and early 90′s forever!

Luckily, I’m a firm believer that cultures change, music changes, and even the way we worship can change.  Have you ever wondered why Jesus never taught his disciples how to worship?  He taught them how to pray in Luke 11 (Lord’s Prayer), but there’s never any teachings about how to worship.  I think it’s because Jesus understood that things change.  As long as the message doesn’t change it’s okay if things are done in a new or different way.

Speaking of new: I’ve been doing a lot of new songs lately.  On a whim, I decided to try out “Revelation Song” as a special during the offering to see if I could get a read or vibe on if the song would work.  Man, oh man!  While the offering plate was going around, people were standing and worshipping and totally engaging in that song.  If you haven’t heard it yet, get on YouTube or buy it on iTunes: POWERFUL song!

Here’s what our Sunday service looked like:

• He Is Exalted (Twila Paris)
• Lord I Lift Your Name on High (Rick Founds)
• Baptisms
• Nothing But the Blood(hymn with a cool groove from a band I used to play with: forgivenmuch)
• You Alone(David Crowder)
• You Are My All in All (Dennis Jernigan)
• Mission Focus: MOPS and Club 66
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Revelation Song(Jamie Riddle; Kari Jobe arrangement from New Life Church)
• Message: “Take This Bible and Love it” – 2 Timothy 3
• You Are My All in All (reprise: just the chorus)

To check out what other worship leader’s are doing from around the country, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog; you might just get some cool ideas!

Hi everyone!  It was a good Sunday, but also stressful.  We had some sound issues as I’ve been training a new guy on the board.  Things weren’t going well or sounding well in practice and I was trying to run back there and help him on the board.  We ended up running super late in practice; which is a bad thing since I am teaching a Sunday School class.

On the plus side: the service ended up going well.  It wasn’t perfect and we still had some sound problems; but those are the times when you just need to not worry about it and say “we’ve done all we can”.  People were blessed and God was glorified.  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Congregational Response: “Who is God?”
• Friend of God (Israel Houghton; PC&D cover)
• O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing(my arrangement based on David Crowder)
• In Christ Alone (Stuart Townsend)
• Holy God(Brian Doerksen – This is the new song I taught last week and people are LOVING it!  I can’t say enough about this song; great tune!)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin – another favorite at our church)
• Welcome / Prayer Night info
• Mission Focus: Varghese in India… announce short-term trip to India
• Body Life / Offering
• Thy Word (instrumental version of the song with just me on piano)
• Message: “Can I Trust the Bible?” – 2 Peter 1
• Holy God – reprise of song

That’s it for me!  To see what other people are doing check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

I just found this great resource I wanted to share with you all. Bob Kauflin over at “Worship Matters” has posted some free recordings from the Worship God 09 conference.

Here’s the link:

http://www.worshipmatters.com/2009/09/08/twenty-four-free-mp3s-from-worshipgod09-now-available/

This weekend was a great weekend! We were “back” in the sense that we had a full band which we hadn’t had in quite a while, and I have to say, it was quite nice! Over the summer we’ve had a lot of people gone, so it was nice to be back in full swing.

We also did things a little differently this week. Instead of just going through our normal routine, I added some readings from a couple of books to get us started and to add a little illustrative and educational component to the worship portion of the service. So, I read a little from “The Worshipping Artist” by Rory Noland & a little from “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis which Noland quotes in his book.

Here is what we did:

• Read from “The Heart of the Artist”
• Center
• Your Grace Is Enough
• I Am Free
• Read from “Mere Christianity”
• From the Inside Out
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone).
• Sermon
• I Am Crowned

It’s interesting because I had been thinking and working on a song that dealt with our topic for this weekend for a while now. Pastor Bob was talking about the basic idea of not being able to do anything to earn God’s Favor. The song I wrote started from Psalm 8 and developed into this song about how we need to live like we’re already crowned children of the king. People seemed to really enjoy the song, it worked really well to tie the sermon into a song.

We started a new series this weekend called “Breaking Free.” We’re using a graphic for our series that’s based off of a graphic we found over on creativemyk.com.  If you haven’t checked them out and you need graphic content, you should go there, it’s a great resource.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Church went well on Sunday.  We did a little less music than normal because it was a very full service.  And I taught a new song to our church that they just LOVED!  It’s written by Brian Doerksen, titled: “Holy God”.  Wow!  What an amazing song!  It’s super easy, very simple and very singable.  But it’s so powerful; the words have awakened my heart in a very real way.  Our church was standing on their feet by the second chorus; arms raised… it was very moving.

Check out this youtube link of Brian performing the song live with just his guitar.  Or if you want to hear the album version of the song; you can listen to this video.  It’s such a great song, but not many people know about it.  Spread the word: this song is an anointed worship song!

Here’s what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin – Great opening song!)
• Unchanging (Chris Tomlin – Good followup song; they have the same first lines!)
• Holy God (Brian Doerksen – Man… I can’t say enough about this song!)
• Holy, Holy, Holy (Hymn – we came right out of the new song into this hymn; awesome!)
• Welcome / Greeting
• Mission Focus: Testimony from short-term team to Australia
• Presentation of Sunday School award
• Commission new Sunday School leaders
• Prayer for offering
• Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle – We did this as a special song; great text!)
• Message: “It’s Who You Know” – Daniel 3
• Closing Song: Holy God Reprise

To check out what other worship leaders are doing, please visit Fred McKinnon’s blog

This weekend was youth weekend for us, so we added some youth to the team for the weekend. I wanted to make sure that they would have a successful weekend leading our congregation, so I tried to pick songs that I thought they would be very familiar with. From all the feedback I’ve received from a lot of members of our congregation and others, they did a great job. The instrumentalists that played did a great job, and the vocalists that sang did a good job as well.

Here was our set:

• Come, Now is the time to Worship
• Welcome
• Worker Appreciation
• God of Wonders
• Better is One Day
• We Fall Down
• Message
• Surrender

This was the first time I’ve worked with the youth for a youth weekend at our church (even though I’ve been here for almost two years now) and it was great. One thing that was nice was that they listened to every thing I said and all the recommendations I made to them. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t always happen with the adults that I work with. And to think that teens get a bad rap for not listening, I think they did a great job.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s.

Happy Labor Day week to everyone!  Like many of you, I had Monday off for Labor Day… so now I’m trying to catch up on all the work I missed on Monday!  Sunday feels like so long ago, but it was really only a couple of days.

This past Sunday was communion; and we had a guest speaker; and I introduced a new congregational song… it was a busy morning!  Our practice ran late; partly because we weren’t able to practice on Thursday.  Only one person was able to make it Thursday, so we tried to meet really early on Sunday… and we still ran late.  But I think the extra practice paid off because we nailed the new Paul Baloche tune.

This is a song that I learned at the worship conference I went to a few weeks ago.  The song hasn’t even been recorded yet, but the song impacted me so much at the conference that I just had to bring it to my church.  So I taught it to my team and we taught it to the church.  I think it’s going to take a few weeks for them to get comfortable with it, but I know this song has big potential.  Be watching for it early next year; I really think when it hits the radio that it’s going to be the next “Open the Eyes of my Heart” song.  Yeah… it’s that good!

Here’s what our Sunday looked like:

• Sing Your Praise (original song written by me)
• All Hail the Power (cool arrangement of the hymn I came up with)
• Lord Most High (older Vineyard song; I’m not sure who wrote it)
• Communion (with songs between the elements)
• Mystery (just the chorus of this wonderfully simple Charlie Hall tune.  We did it on Easter and it’s stuck with our people for some reason)
• Glorious(this is that new Paul Baloche tune I was mentioning.  Man I love this song!  Once it comes out, you’ll understand what I’m talking about )
• I’ll Fly Away (Jars of Clay arrangement; but a little faster)
• Sunday School launch
• Body Life / Prayer for offering
• Video Slideshow- I put together some scenery and nature pictures of my recent vacation to Hawaii and while the slideshow was going I played “This is My Father’s World”… it was cool!
• Message: “The Pursuit of Happiness” – Ecclesiastes 1 & 2 (Steve Tompert)
• Closing prayer and challenge

To see what other Worship Leaders did during the week, head over to Fred McKinnon’s blog and join in on the conversation.  Have a great week!

Hi everyone!  I was on vacation last week (in beautiful Hawaii), so this is my first week back into the blog world.  I must say that coming home to the North West after being in Hawaii for a week is a bit of a challenge.  I suppose anytime you come back to reality it’s kind of hard.

This Sunday I had an older gentleman in our church lead worship.  I’ve been working on training a lot of younger worship leaders, but this guy actually used to be a worship leader about 20 years ago.  It was kind of fun seeing him in action and seeing his style; which is much different from mine!  But that’s a good thing: anytime we can bring variety and keep things different in our worship service, it gives our people something to look forward to and be excited about.

So Warren led worship by incorporating numerous songs and scriptures into the theme of “greatness”.  Basically, he started by asking the question: “What is so great about God?”  And then took various elements of God such as Him being our “great King”, or His “great Name”, or the “great power” of God, etc.  It was different, but kind of cool.

Warren ended up combining 13 songs and 15 different scripture passages throughout his worship set, so it’s a little hard to put down every song he did, but the service kind of looked like this:

• Welcome / Introduce Warren
• Worship Set on “Great” (included songs like “How Great is our God”, “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, “Immortal Invisible”, “There’s Just Something About That Name”, and many others!)
• Sunday School Implementation
• Mission Focus: The Haven’s (Missionaries to Reed College)
• Body Life / Offering
• Special Music: Sweet Hour of Prayer
• Message, “Enjoying Marital Intimacy”
• Closing Song: How Great Thou Art

It was nice to see a different style of worship leadership; and many of our older people appreciated the variance in music.  Not everyone is going to like the music 100% of the time, but I think we should always strive to make 100% of our people like the music at least some of the time.  That’s what ministering to the body of Christ is all about.

To check out other setlists throughout the country, hop on over to Fred McKinnon’s worship blog and see what other people are playing at their churches.

Early on last week I had a choice, I could spend the week trying to fill up the band, or do something different. Considering the amount of time I’ve spent over the course of this summer simply trying to have a band on any given weekend, I decided to do something different. So, I cleared the stage, moved the piano to Center stage & set up one additional mic. It was just myself and one of our female vocalists for the weekend.

It was fantastic. We had a great time leading and the congregation really seemed to enjoy participating. This gave me the opportunity to do some of the songs we don’t normally get to do and it gave the congregation the opportunity to enjoy a simpler worship time before their personal schedules got really crazy. It was really cool.

Here was our Set:

• Rest In Your Peace (mine)
• Welcome
• Come Thou Fount
• Great & Marvelous (Love this tommy walker song)
• Speak to Me (Also, another great Tommy Walker song)
• Draw Me Nearer (Diane Sheets Arr.)
• Sermon
• All of my Days

Our vocalist really knocked great and marvelous out of the park this weekend. It was just a great time to simplify things and really get to enjoy the time of worship!

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

This weekend was my first weekend back after vacation, it was kind of like going back to school. I wasn’t gone for long, but it was still a little weird coming back. Maybe you’ve experienced that same feeling?

This was a great weekend. Our focus was on communion and enjoying our salvation. So, we did a short sermon and spent a little more time on communion as well as split the service up in a different way. The service was quite a bit shorter than normal, which might be considered a summer treat!

We also got to play one of my new songs at the end of the service as a special. It’s a song called “Rivers of Love.” I’ll put a recording up on our social network (worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com) soon.

Here was our service:

• Welcome
• Because of Your Love
• Alive Forever, Amen!
• Happy Day
• Sermonette
• Love Like Rain
• Jesus Paid It All
• Communion
• Rivers of Love

On Saturday night, we had a little problem with Jesus Paid It All, I started it a little too fast, which threw her off throughout the song. We fixed that for Sunday morning, so that was much better. We didn’t quite get enough work on Rivers of Love to be able to play it like I wanted it, but considering we only rehearsed for a short time before the service on Saturday, it worked out pretty well.

How did your services go? To hear from other worship leaders, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

The first part of the week, I attended a worship conference in Hillsboro, Oregon.  It was the Integrity Conference (“Deeper”) with Paul Baloche, Brian Doerkson, Kathryn Scott, etc… and it was AMAZING!  By the end of the conference I felt so excited for ministry; I was genuinely pumped for Sunday and wanted to share with my whole church all the thi