Date Archives June 2008

• Confusion is the enemy of Worship
• Improve Your Process
  • Before taking stage you have already made hundreds of decisions
  • Understand your role
    • Am I a performer or Facilitator?
      • Chris Tomlin on albums is in the key of F# because his voice sounds best there. But when leading worship, lowers keys so people can join in

    Craft a great worship order – like having blueprints for your house – bad blue prints awesome carpenters = bad house

    • Details/?/tools/order
      • Details – child dedication, Bill Hybels says you can’t do a certain song
      • ? – prayer time, what does God want to say? Celebration? God’s promises are true?
      • Tools – what songs work for that
      • Order – Then go through songs and pick an order.

      Where does my heart long to go from here? – after a song what song does your heart want to sing?

      • Go to the band/vocals and say, “here is what we want to accomplish. We want to remind people that God’s promises are true

      Lead a solid team

      • Great people, carefully prepared
      • Tempos, Trans and Scans!
        • Tempos – Tama makes a great programmable metronome
        • Transitions –
        • Scans – know where the song is going

        Prepare for Spontaneity

      • Communicate to Tech Teams
• Refine Your Reflection
  • Ask the Question: What will turn this song time into a worship time?
  • Identify Sticking Points!
    • Through private worship
    • Plan for moments ahead of time
• Craft your Comments
  •  Use scripture as often as possible – anytime you can replace your words with God’s words is a good thing
  • Ask a compelling question -“lord I’m amazed” ask what there amazed about, then tell God right here, now let’s sing it again.
  • Tell a compelling story – “my Jesus I love you” – his wife put post it notes everywhere saying different ways she loves him.
  • Be authentic, honest and real – confess
  • Write it out – write out ahead of time what you want to say
• Sharpen Your Leadership
  • Sharpen your preparation – you should know the song better than anyone in the room
  • Memorize –
  • Know it best – lead
  • Worship through it in private
  • Communicate – with your band, your team, your congregation
  • Prayer – individual and team
• Action Plan
  • Which elements would make the greatest difference in your personal worship leading?
    • Improve your process
    • Refine your reflection
    • Craft your comments
    • Sharpen your leadership

Awesome Breakout! Want to buy this for worship leaders back home!

“Finding your unique voice as a worship leader”

4 things every worship leader has in common:

1. Need to be theologians – we need to know who we’re worshiping
   1. met his wife and asked her, “who has the sexiest adam’s apple” it worked. they started dating.
   2. point of story. He had no idea ahead of time of what he was going to say to her. We need to know what we are communicating
2. Need to be disciples
   1. do you love the Lord passionately?
   2. do you have a love for the word of God?
   3. Do you exemplify the fruit of the Spirit in your life?
3. Need to be artists
   1. We do ourselves an injustice by just learning the chords to the top 20 worship songs
   2. God calls us to do more than just get by.
4. Need to be Leaders
   1. It’s in our title, “worship leader”

• God is not calling us to be the Chris Tomlin, God is calling us to be ourselves
• Book from Parker Palmer quote about burnout that was way too long to type out. 🙂
• “Is the life your living worth …” sheesh I keep dazing out. I’m tired.
• Three questions asked
  • Who am I?
  • What about God am I most uniquely suited to reveal to others
  • How is that meaning best lived out?
  • Think about what is the world going to miss out on if you die today?

• Man he’s going fast and there isn’t a handout. 🙁
• 3 things (don’t know what)
  • knowledge
  • talent – identify your unique talents and find other ways to make up for your lack of other talents
  • ?
•  Hedgehog example from “From Good to Great”
• 3 circles – find something in all 3 circles where they overlap
  • what are you deeply passionate about
  • what can you be the best in the world at
  • What is the church/people “hungry for”

Q&A

• How do you create boundaries
• What techniques do you use to prepare on sunday morning for worship? They sing a song backstage prior to service to worship together
• How to be a worship pastor vs song leader? Be sensitive to the spirit of the room. Last night he felt like “Here I am to worship” was a great moment so instead of going straight into next song, he just acknowledged the moment
• How do you feed your artistic talent?  Stretch yourself musically. Try different styles
  • They hope people leave saying three things
    • I connected with God
    • I laughed a little
    • I can’t believe they did that
      • creativity because our God is creative – not for creativity sake
• How do you encourage participation from stage
  • Pastor is encouraging the people – saying, “we are a singing congregation right?”
  • Worship Leader is reminding them
• How do you discover your style?
  • Start watching people and ask yourself is there some things they are doing that you feel comfortable with. Also take note of things you don’t feel comfortable doing.

Books:

• Good to Great
• Now discover your strengths