Author: Ryan Savage
When I first sat to write this article, I couldn’t help but return to the statement, “whichever one you like the best.” I hesitate to use such a cliché, and even now it feels like a copout. But the truth is this is the best possible advice I can imagine. Trying to force yourself into…
Easter is my favorite time of year. I would bet it is for a lot of Christians. There are so many reasons to love this particular weekend, and at the top of the list is, of course, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. It is also a time when we get to reflect on the sacrifice…
In-ear monitors. Most of us have them by now, and they have become an indispensable part of many worship teams around the world. The ability to organize a team around a click track, cues, and even supplemental backing tracks is extraordinarily useful. I began using them a few years ago, and it has made me…
Last year I went to a worship conference. It was the first I had been to in a few years. The worship leaders there were extraordinarily different. I have been to some conferences that felt as if the same worship team got up and swapped out some similar leaders and kept playing. This is not…
Getting team buy-in is one of the trickier parts of leading a worship team. Musicians are, by nature, creative people who desire to express themselves in every-increasing ways. Usually in a band situation this is not a problem, as creating new guitar riffs or drum rhythms are a natural part of the band making process.…
It’s funny how life works. I was gearing up to write this article last week, and I put it aside and forgot about it...until this week. Over the weekend my SGI box (Studio Guitar Interface) stopped working. Which rendered my electric guitar virtually unusable for our setup at church. Man what a coincidence. So in…
The basics. These are the foundations of music that many people never get a chance to learn. When I was growing up, I remember our school never had music theory classes. This confused me, because my church always had music programs to teach kids musical instruments and musical theory. Since I was 6 I had…
Introducing new songs to the congregation is important. Congregations, as well as the individuals within them change. It is the very nature of being human, and our ascribing worth to God will invariably change as well. Hopefully, we will continue to mature and grow spiritually, and our ability to express our devotion will become ever-more…
One of the hardest things for me to do as a worship leader is to find replacements. Part of the reason is because I was never trained by anyone. I cut my teeth leading worship from the moment I decided to learn the venerable G-C-D chord progression. From the very beginning I was the guy.…
Like almost anything else in life, there is not a simple answer to how to start a second campus in a church. There are so many factors that go into launching church campuses that the approaches must be tailored to fit your context. For example, a church of 2,000 people, that is financially stable, and…
When I was a teenager, just starting to play the guitar and leading worship, I was often met with resistance from “traditionalists.” Their arguments against “contemporary” worship was that it was too repetitive, was not substantial, lacked theology, was not sacred enough, and a whole bunch of other claims arguing for modern music’s inferiority to…
I usually lead worship, and though I get a chance to step back from the mic on occasion, it is not often that I get a chance to make changes to any of my pedals between songs. I set the tones I need for the set, and just let it go. Before I got my…