Browsing: For Worship Leaders

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…

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.…

Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other. -1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 In this article I want to share some very practical ways…

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…

As someone who is more interested in leadership and community than artistic excellence, team building is something that I get super jacked about. After almost 15 years of being on worship teams, I have noticed that too often team building is overlooked. If it isn't overlooked it is something that is done out of obligation…

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…

Stage design has become a staple in many churches today. It is a way to keep things fresh, and there has been an increasing amount of time, energy, and resources devoted to these designs over the past few years. The pursuit of cool stage designs can be both addicting and expensive, both in money and…

I lead worship at a medium sized church. We do things as well as we can, and oftentimes do so with an excellence that far exceeds the “classification” we are in. To put it bluntly, we execute some things better than a church our size often does. Do we have light years of improvement ahead?…