Well we are right smack in the middle of planning and preparing for Seeds Conference 2012. Honestly, I can’t wait to host so many pastors and leaders from all over the world. It’s truly the highlight of our year!

I’m in the middle of prepping for some my sessions and getting content together and I’d love to hear from YOU! That’s right, you reading this blog right now. I don’t care if you’re planning on coming to Seeds Conference or not, I want to know what you want to hear from us. I can’t promise I’ll use your suggestions but they will provide me a leaping off point for what I’ll share when the time comes so respond using the comments of this blog and let’s hear it!

Many people worked long and hard on this one! We have a HUGE behind the scenes video blog scheduled to post in January so stay tuned for that. In the meantime here’s some behind the scenes info on this years Christmas services:

Planning for the service doesn’t begin at all until November 1st. We literally have nothing in mind until then and it’s a mad rush to get it all put together in roughly 7 weeks.

Many of the songs this year are completely original arrangements. This proved to be quite risky but very rewarding.

Drummer Boy was inspired by Sade’s Soldier of Love, Michael Jackson’s They Don’t Really Care About Us & Coldplay’s Princess of China.

The costume design for Drummer Boy, I hate to say, was greatly inspired by Justin Beiber’s Santa Claus is Coming To Town video that played before Arthur Christmas and Michael Jackson’s classic military jackets. Lisa Ensor did a phenomenal job decorating them for us.

Cirque du Soleil has been a big inspiration to us these past couple of years. You can see/feel their influence all over this years performance.

The clown piece was actually an idea we developed last year but abandoned because we felt it was too difficult to pull off. You have no idea how many hours were spent watching clowns perform just so we could learn how to communicate without speaking. EVERY single physical gesture they make is very intentional was developed during several intense practice sessions in front of a mirror.

We arranged a gorgeous version of Favorite Things to be sung by Dyana Bush that was cut in the last rehearsals because we felt it just didn’t fit quite right. I’m sure we’ll find a place for it next year. She sang it beautifully.

Hours were spent picking each song that plays in advance of the service. It’s all French music and most of it isn’t Christmas music at all. It was chosen specifically to get you in the right frame of mind to accept the clown bit that starts the show.

EVERY shot in the Santa Claus Is Coming to Town Movie sequence was made by us including the shot of the city.

We watched the 1943 film Double Indemnity very closely to authentically craft the dialogue for Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. The scene where Fred MacMurray meets Barbara Stanwyck for the first time was especially useful.

You may notice a line or two from the old movie in Home Alone in the Santa Claus is Coming to Town movie.

The scene from the movie Chicago called “They Both Reached For the Gun” was of great use to us in creating the dance for Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.

The set this year was heavily inspired by Radiohead’s 2008 Tour. Although our’s looks similar to their’s we used ours in a much different way, giving it, I think, a totally different feel.

Last but not least thank you so much to ALL the people who worked so hard to make this year’s performance the HUGE success that it’s been. You guys make it happen!

I am wondering what kind of a dress code you have for your musicians or people you have on stage. I have a team of all different sizes, ages, and styles. I want to come up with a dress code to bridge this. I don’t really have an issues with people dressing scandalous but mainly sloppiness, then I have those that have great style. How do you make a team have an excellent look without looking like you are pushing trying to look a certain way. I need to find some unity in this!! I don’t want the team to think all that I care about is the way they look but want them to know that we could be a distraction to the congregation if we look too sloppy or even too appealing. I want to look our best for God. Presentable but not distracting to the body. I hope I make sense. Maybe you can help?
- Jenna Sorensen / Worship Leader / Life Change Church / Muskegon

Hey Jenna,

We’ve had this question come up several times lately so I thought I’d give you my thoughts. This is a common issue for worship teams who want to get rid of the choir robes and matching outfits, yet keep a sense of order when it comes to the personal clothing choices of their players and singers. Below are a few guidelines we ask our people to follow:

1. Keep it “G-rated”.
It should be obvious that they refrain from wearing plunging necklines, short skirts, and tight-fitting clothes (this goes for men as well). There’s no good reason to flaunt what God gave ya on the church stage. Sometimes we do have to remind our people from time to time that we want the congregation to appreciate their musical abilities and not their physiques.

2. Reflect the style of the congregation.
There are very few men who wear suits and ties in our church and most of the congregation are in jeans. It’s a casual atmosphere. Someone wearing a suit on our stage is going to be extremely out of place. Also, our pastor tends to dress in a casual style as well (slacks/jeans and a button down shirt). We like our worship team to look as if they could have been pulled up from any row in the auditorium. However, this is not a license to be sloppy….

3. Take a little pride in the way you look.
We have a number of 18-22 year olds on our stage each week, and having a 19-year old son I know that, for the most part, not a lot of forethought goes into appearance. Before you come to church: take a shower, run an iron over your clothes, keep the MuteMath t-shirt in the closet.

4. Dress your age.
18-year olds should look like 18-year olds, 40-year olds should not. I can’t think of many things more sad than someone trying to look young and hip well beyond their ability to do so. Enough said.

A good way to keep these rules enacted is talk about them often. The more we discuss them, the less awkward a situation will become when it arises. I will say that I refrain from talking to the ladies on our team about their appearance if at all possible. I will designate one of my female leaders to address these issues in private one-on-one. I also encourage certain members of our creative staff who are not on stage to critique the appearance of our worship team from time to time.

Earlier this year we dealt with a situation with one of players where his appearance was extremely different from the rest of the people on stage. This was a young man who had a great heart, loved our church, and had become a “go-to” guy at his position. I sat down with him in my office, told him how proud I was of him and how much we all loved having him as part our worship experience each week. I asked, not demanded, if he would be open to changing his look just a bit. I even offered to have one of our younger worship leaders take him shopping (on our dime) and set him up with a hair stylist who goes to our church. He was not offended at all by our conversation. In fact he was thankful that we would invest in him and care about his progress. Sometimes people just need a nudge in the right direction.

Hope this helps. I’m sure there are tons of stories out there dealing with this topic. Would love to hear some of them…

Good news! We finally have our “Christmas Story” music available for purchase! For the past 5 years, our Christmas show has featured our pastor reading the Christmas story set to a beautiful orchestral piece, written and produced by one of our volunteer musicians. Creative Audio Lab has graciously made this available for our Seeds members at a nominal charge. There are 3 packages to choose from which include the Soundtrack, Script, Cueing Video, Piano Notations, and much more. Click the banner above to purchase this for using in your Christmas service!

• CCLI (we use Copyright, Rehearsal, and Streaming & Podcast licenses)
• Copyright Solver
• Planning Center
• How We Display Our Copyrights in Service (scroll to the end of any service video)
• COTM Worship MP3 Downloads

Hey everyone - If you’re like us, Christmas is now on your mind! Lately we’ve had a ton of people ask us for charts, audio files, and the like for many of our Christmas songs from Celebrate With Family 2010. Most of what you’re looking for is easy to find. We’ve already posted a ton of files here on Seeds under the Resources tab. But, just to make it a bit easier I’ve added links below to all of our Christmas files. Also, if there’s something you want but hasn’t been posted, don’t be shy. Just ask! We’ll do what we can to help you out. For those of you who are interested in using the Christmas story score, Creative Audio Lab is currently packaging it up for purchase (available in early October), so you can contact them for more info.

• Little Drummer Boy
• Deck the Halls
• The Grinch / Thriller
• Carol of the Bells
• Christmastime

• Click here to download the SeedsConf 2012 schedule PDF. (Subject to change, of course.)

You have until September 15th to get approval from your Senior Pastor to attend Seeds 2012, because you will save BIG if you register on opening day!!

This is a HUGE blog filled with great info. Hope you find it useful! Enjoy.

Here’s a tour of our “game day” process. It’s quite lengthy and hopefully extensive enough for you. If we left anything out let me know!

You asked for it so here it is!

I’m gonna keep this topic brief, but I wanted to say a quick word about running a tight ship during worship rehearsals. I learned a long time ago that musicians are the hardest group of people to wrangle. Put 8 or 12 of them on a stage and good luck getting much done. I can say this because I suffer from the same “right-brain” issues. We’ve actually found that in creative meetings that “creative wandering” is a positive thing, but during rehearsals it can be a disaster waiting to happen.

One of my favorite movies lines goes something like this: “Spontaneity has its time and place.” Yes, we take time to chase a few rabbits during rehearsals, and yes we spend a ton of time looking for a more awesome keyboard sound. And spontaneity in worship is an awesome thing! But we have to make sure as worship leaders/pastors that we know when enough is enough. I want to make sure each week that we budget our rehearsal time in such a way that we get the most out of our team members. It’s frustrating to everyone if we work for 2 hours and get nowhere.

This is why it’s important to come to rehearsals as prepared as possible. If I as a leader don’t have a plan or vision for what the set is going to be then I can’t expect my team to stay engaged as I try to figure it all out. Being prepared is crucially important to the production team as well. I waste their time by not giving them a clear idea as to what’s supposed to happen.

Try a few of these ideas this week to keep your rehearsal focus a little tighter:

Keep the information pipeline running - Send emails and texts to team members throughout the week to keep everyone in the loop. Get your soloists prepared ahead of time. Make sure your players can handle the songs and arrangements you will be attempting.

Consider shortening your music set - I’d rather be able to knock 3 songs out of the park than come close on 5 songs. It’s simply a matter of time and energy.

Limit the number of people who can talk to the sound guy - You want to shave off 45 minutes of rehearsal and keep your tech team from pulling their hair out? Don’t allow every single player and singer to have direct access to your audio engineers. It took me 2 years of retraining my guys to let me or my music director know if they needed a monitor mix change, not yelling it from the stage.

Identify the team members who slow you down - Sounds harsh, but it’s worth doing. I’m not saying you need to replace them, I’m just saying you need to know when they are on the stage. Maybe take some extra time with them BEFORE rehearsal starts and get them comfortable with their monitor mixes, tones, etc.

That’s just a few ideas on keeping a better focus during rehearsals. I’d like to hear from you on how you keep things rolling…

There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to finding that worship moment that seems to make time stand still. There’s no sweeter time than when we can just put the band in neutral and experience the presence of God, and everyone in the room is right there with you. Those are the moments you live for as a worship leader. I’ve been leading worship teams now for more than a decade and I’ve watched or been a part of thousands of worship services and events and I can tell you from experience that when you don’t have that “God is here!” moment the worship times feels a bit incomplete.

So, how do we find those moments on a consistent basis? Do we just hope they happen as we sing and worship? And do we hope that the congregation all feel the same way at the same time? As I’ve visited with worship leaders from around the country I hear their frustration in trying to make these moments “appear” on a regular basis. Let’s face it - this is what we are hired/expected to do: lead God’s people into His presence. And if we consistently fail to do that, well…..

The old school philosophy says: Let’s just sing our songs and those moments will happen. Don’t over-plan or over-rehearse because we’re not sure where that moment will show up. I believe this is a recipe for constant disappointment. Do we need to be sensitive to the moving of the Holy Spirit at all times during worship? Of course! A sincere and prepared leader can sense when God says, “Slow down. Let’s stay here for a bit.” But I’ve found that we can absolutely know ahead of time where those moments may appear. Here are a few ideas on “Producing the Moment”:

1. When you put your set list together think about where the lyrics of the songs are taking you. What the song has to say will determine our mindset as we worship. Try not to shift gears too abruptly with the lyrical content. Also, think about how hard the congregation will have to work to sing the songs later on in the set. Lots of lyrics could mean lots of reading the words on the screens which is counterproductive.

2. Limit the number of new songs per set. Again, making the crowd work for it decreases the chances of finding the moment.

3. Where are you going musically? Are you shifting gears to much? There’s a way to build a set musically that can set you up for a beautiful moment of worship. Staying in the same key and tempo for more than one song can allow you to build momentum.

4. During rehearsal it’s important to find the soul of the set, not just getting the songs to sound good. This takes extra time and concentration. We rehearse the set as a whole, not just song by song. We make sure the songs flow together and that there won’t be any hiccups, no awkward transitions. We want to take the worshippers on a journey, much like the pastor will do in his message. And during rehearsal we will look for that “moment” where we can slow down and let God speak to us. It’s a lot like trying out a recipe before you serve it to your guests.

5. Don’t try to manufacture the moment on the spot. I see so many worship teams that will sing a song WAY too long trying to make the moment appear. Mostly you just get an overlong set that never really goes anywhere that’s devoid of peaks and valleys.

I realize this is a highly debatable subject. I look forward to your responses…

I had a chat earlier today with my staff worship leaders. We are incredibly blessed here at COTM to have some amazingly talented, “sold out for Christ and His church” musicians who have a heart for leading people in worship and getting it done with excellence. But excellence doesn’t come without sharpening and critiquing. So, today in our meeting I talked to them about an important part of worship leading that’s often overlooked: how to talk between songs.

I spent a large chunk of my life touring, going from city to city across America performing and leading worship. One thing I learned from those days is that I’m best at communicating through song; I’m not nearly as skilled in the art of public speaking. Doesn’t mean I can’t do it, but in a contest, music will win every time. I suspect that it’s the same for the majority of musicians and worship leaders. We let our songs tell our stories. However, there are times when it’s necessary for us to talk between songs or to exhort in the middle of a song. Those moments, no matter how great our voices are, can make the difference between a good and a great worship time. Below are a few points that I spoke to my worship leaders about today (in no particular order of importance):

1. Be Yourself
Don’t be a fake. You have a unique personality so use it! Be the same person on the stage that you are off. Let them see YOU. That’s what will ultimately endear them to you, and when they trust you they will be much more willing to go where you want them to go. Speak in your own words. Try not to mimic what you’ve heard others say. Be prepared for where the song will take you and…

2. Speak from the Heart
Nothing beats life experience. If a song reminds you of something great God has done in your life, use it. Are you leading a song about heaven? Allow yourself to remember loved ones whom you desperately miss but are comforted to know that they are safe in the arms of God. Are you singing about the sacrifice of Christ? Think about where you would be had Jesus not gone to the cross. Allow these emotions to guide you as you speak. I realize this is a little more difficult for younger leaders to employ, seeing as though a 20-year old probably has yet to experience the ups and downs in life, which brings me to…

3. Less Is Best
It’s a serious pet peeve of mine to hear worship leaders ramble on between songs. Say what you have to say and move on to what you do best – leading songs. I’ve painted myself in a corner so many times, or worse yet quenched the spirit in the room, by talking too much in an effort to explain why we are there and why we are singing. If you’ve planned for a scripture reading or an announcement between songs, don’t belabor the point. Remember the old showbiz adage: “Keep them wanting more.” You never want people to feel as though you’re rambling.

4. Are You Glad to be There?
Nothing’s worse than a worship leader just going through their paces. I see this so many times. Your face and body language tell me that you can’t wait for this thing to be over, or that you’re terrified that the whole service could fall apart at any moment. Your demeanor should be one of excitement and expectancy. This is the highlight of your week! This is what you’ve been preparing and rehearsing for! Even if things do go wrong, so what? We’re all here to honor God, not to get a pat on the back, which leads me to my final point…

5. Take the Pressure Off Yourself
I think this point helped my young worship leaders more than anything else. If you mess up or say the wrong thing, it’s ok. It’s gonna happen. The big thing is to keep reminding yourself that you’ll learn and grow from every service you lead. I cannot begin to count how many times I’ve blown the lyrics of a song or stumbled over myself as I led communion. But instead of feeling embarrassed (which is different than critiquing yourself later) I allow myself to realize that the congregation doesn’t expect me to be perfect every time. I blew it, they know I blew it, and it’s ok. We’ll get it right next time. With that kind of freedom I can learn to speak from the heart and not worry about whether I did it perfectly or not.

If you prepare, rehearse, and relax, you should find that those 10-20 seconds of speaking between songs should become easier the more you do it. And more meaningful…

One of the best statements I’ve ever heard concerning worship goes like this: “Quit spiritualizing your laziness.” Pace Hartfield spoke these words when he was at our SEEDS Conference earlier this year and it confirmed what I’ve been thinking about for several years now. Why wouldn’t we always bring our best effort every single time we hit the stage for worship?

Tell me if you’ve heard these statements before:

“Let’s don’t rehearse too much - we want the Holy Spirit to have room to work.”

“We don’t want this to be a performance…”

“It’s just worship…”

One thing I learned from being on the road for more than 20 years and performing nearly 5000 concerts is that you either “wow” the crowd or you leave them shrugging their shoulders. “Wow” them and they’ll buy a ticket the next time you come through town. Leave them underwhelmed and you can cross that market off your next touring schedule. And if you string together enough poorly performed shows it’s guaranteed that your record sales will drop and your ticket sales will dry up. To stay viable in the music industry you have to learn to “Bring It!” night after night. Yet when it comes to worship there’s a prevailing attitude that “just good enough” is ok for church. It’s no wonder that the church has lagged behind in the arts.

Before I ever approve a singer or musician for our worship team I explain to them that we are going to work hard every week to bring our church an amazing worship experience. We’ll rehearse until we get it right and I’ll expect no less than a maximum effort every time we hit the stage. They’ll be evaluated and pushed toward excellence constantly. And if I ever see that they are mailing it in I’ll sit them down immediately. As you would expect, a lot of people bow out at this point. They are not willing, or more fair, able to give this kind of effort week in and week out.

Seem a little harsh for church? It’s just worship, right? Let me ask you this question: does God deserve “ok”? We’ve changed the culture of our worship department over time (this is NOT an overnight fix) and have begun to stock our teams with people who understand the concept of excellence. Once the attitude was successfully changed we began to attract players and singers who couldn’t wait to be a part of something special. It’s amazing how quality attracts quality.

I strongly encourage my team members each week to “Bring it!” when they hit the stage. Most weekends we do 20-25 minutes of music, which in the big picture of things is a really short amount of time. The challenge is to focus on every word, note and phrase; to work hard to communicate the story and passion of each song; to be exhausted emotionally after each service, knowing that you gave everything you had to lead your church in worship and to honor God with the best you had to give.

In the following weeks I will post blogs on the earlier statements that permeate so many worship teams…

A few years back when the trailer for the Christopher Nolan movie “The Prestige” was released, I was so fascinated by it that I went to the library immediately and checked out the book by Christopher Priest that the movie was based on. I read it from cover to cover in a little more than a day (I’m a slow reader).

One of the main themes of the book that’s present in the movie, though not to the same extent, was that the answer to “how’d he do that?” is almost always so obvious that our minds would never allow ourselves to consider it as a real possibility for how the illusion was performed. In other words the “magic” behind the magic isn’t really all that magical at all. In fact, almost always, the answer to the riddle is quite simple.

The best example of this in the book was a story of an old Chinese man whose big illusion was making a fish bowl appear out of thin air. The answer to “how’d he do that?” was simple. He keeps the fishbowl between his legs and underneath his gown and using a little sleight of hand he’s able to make it appear like the fishbowl materializes magically out of thin air. The real discipline of the trick is walking like he has a fishbowl between his legs ALL THE TIME, every hour of every day, so that people think that’s how he normally walks. This is the discipline of great magic. He’s selling the illusion even when he’s not performing the illusion. There’s really nothing all that magical about it, it’s purely a discipline.

The thing about it is, that’s really disappointing to us, the audience, because we WANT to believe that something greater is at play here. When we watch Criss Angel or David Blaine on TV, nobody ever suspects that some of the people in the crowd are in on the illusion or that they use actors and trick photography because that would be too easy, that would be disappointing because it’s so obvious, so we rule that out as a possible explanation and begin to attribute abilities to magicians that are superhuman.

Here’s my point. Anytime we see anything great, anything fantastic, anything, dare I say “magical”, we automatically assume that the process that created it must also be just as fantastic, just as great, just as magical, and the plain truth of the matter is, IT’S NOT!

The more opportunities I’ve had to be around people who do great work, the more I have discovered that there’s nothing magical about the magic they make. It’s purely the discipline of pouring over the details again and again looking for ways to improve their craft that makes them so good at what they do. It’s easy to assume that those who write great songs just wake up everyday and write five killer tunes before breakfast because hey, they’re Joel Houston after all, but the truth is for every amazing song they write, there are hundreds more that are utter garbage. Their magic is in their daily discipline of writing, writing, and writing some more.

So if you’ve been feeling less than adequate and wishing that some amazing artist would take you behind the scenes and show you the secrets to the artistic universe, don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there, but realize that while there’s always more to learn, the greatest lessons are learned through the discipline of doing it everyday.

I received an email from a fellow worship pastor last week and he asked a few questions about how we get things done around here. I thought I would share these questions and answers with you…

1. How do you implement new songs? How often do you put in new songs? Is there a process to put in new songs?
We don’t have a specific timeframe for new songs being added. We are always looking for new songs that we feel will connect with our crowd and when we find one, we get it in there for a test drive. As far as a process or implementation we just make sure that the new song “feels” like us. Our current set up of players and singers seems to be a little more adept at playing Hillsong and Jesus Culture styles of music. And we’ve come to that conclusion through much trial and error. Bottom line, we don’t mind trying new styles but we try and limit the awkward moments as much as possible.

2. How do you rotate your band and vocals (volunteers) and keep them motivated and happy? How are you developing new leaders? Recruiting?
We are always looking to add new singers and players so we try and rotate as much as possible. Team members will never get better unless they get up there and do it. I think it shows your church members that you are serious about growing when they continually see new faces up there. Having said that, I believe you need to have as many familiar faces up there every week as possible, too. I am always up there, every service, along with my associate worship leader, my band director/keyboard player, and my lead guitarist. This also helps with continuity musically. You are playing with fire if you don’t have your top players covering the essentials every weekend.

I’ve never really concerned myself with keeping my team members “happy”. I continually cast the vision of our department before them: we will be diverse and always growing. If you are connecting with people and growing as a musician you’ll have a place on the team; otherwise we’ll use you only in a pinch. I’m upfront and honest with all of them, constantly evaluating them. And they deserve as much. As a leader I do them a disservice by not helping them get better and letting them know when they are putting it on auto-pilot, or worse, just punching their spiritual service time card. They are the happiest and most fulfilled when they see the church thriving and reaching the lost. And if they can’t rejoice in that, I release them to find a church that will satisfy their need to sing and play more.

As far as developing new leaders, we have started an intern program here called NEXT. I’ve been able to pour into young leaders daily through this. We’ve also started Church on the Move Creative to help us connect and spend more quality time with those in our church who have specific artistic gifts. It’s a great chance for me and my team to continue to pour into our younger players and singers off the stage.

3. How big is your song database? How many new songs in a year?
I’d say our current weekend song database is probably about 20-25 songs. We wear out songs here. When one works well we do it over and over and over. On Wednesday night, however, we’ll open up the vaults and pull out all sorts of oldies.

4. How do you plan a worship set and why do you do what you do?
Our worship sets are planned in our creative meetings which consist of me, our creative director, and our service director. We never randomly pick songs to sing. We try to find the heart of our service and build around that, whether it’s an illustration, a drama, a video, or whatever. Once we’ve established the tone of the entire service then we begin to find songs we feel will move the service in the right direction.

5. How do you lead an intern? What’s your game plan to help a future worship pastor?
Our interns are chosen very carefully. We want to make sure that the ones we bring in are here for the right reasons: to serve the church and to grow into leaders. They lead worship, put together rehearsal schedules, email worship team members, change guitar strings, run errands, and anything else we can find for them to do. But the most important thing they’ll learn is our culture. At the end of the internship they’ll know why we do what we do and how they can take that knowledge and be successful wherever they end up.

As far as creating a future worship pastor, I make sure I spend quality time with these young men and women and show them how to balance becoming unique in their gifting and serving the people of this church. This is the balance that eludes so many young musicians. The year they spend with us hopefully teaches them that although God has something great for them, He has something even greater for the church through them.

There are several things I look for in a worship team member, with pitch and personality being the two main things to get them through the door. But as I continue to lead my worship team I’ve come to realize that there is one attribute above all else that separates a singer from a worship leader. Sure they can sing it, but can they proclaim it?

Every day I spend time in my office watching worship services from other churches and scanning YouTube for different ways to perform old songs, or just to help spark an idea that may lead to something creative we might attempt musically. I’m continually amazed at the number of great singers and worship teams there are in our country. But mostly I’m seeing beautiful people with pretty voices singing nice words. Those few that stand out to me are those that proclaim the goodness of God through their music. There is a marked difference between the two.

One who proclaims is one who demands the attention of those within earshot. I think of John the Baptist – a voice crying out in the wilderness, preparing the way for Jesus! A mere singer is one who pleases the ear but doesn’t move anyone to action. As I work with my singers I continually remind them that they have a message that needs to be heard, that the people in the room need to pay attention to what God wants to say to them through us. A worship leader should feel a sense of urgency to convey the message that his/her song embodies.

Take time this week to read through the lyrics of the song you are leading and proclaim that message to your congregation. Spend some time listening to Kim Walker-Smith and Chris Quilala of Jesus Culture and pick up on their passion. Watch a video of Kari Jobe and notice how sincere she is when she sings. Pick any one of the Hillsong leaders – they all get it! And dig deep within yourself and find out why God has put you in the position of “worship leader”, then get out there and proclaim the great news of salvation and redemption through Christ!

During my walk through our church lobby several weeks ago I wandered into the Oasis room. This is where the senior citizens of our church meet before every service for food and fellowship. I was immediately greeted with surprised eyes and handshakes and without exception I was warmly embraced and made to feel at home. It’s difficult to admit but I’m closer in age to them than are anyone else on my worship team. But the gulf between them and me was apparent in several of my conversations in Oasis that day.

We are a next generation church, especially where worship is concerned. We believe in getting as many young people involved in planning and pulling off our services as possible. They bring an energy and excitement that’s hard to match. I thank God that we have a steady stream of talented teens that can’t wait to be involved in COTM worship. And the best news is that the older contingent of our church loves it! They understand that we must continue to raise up the next generation of leaders to take our church forward.

But as I sat down with one 65 year old gentlemen, he echoed what I heard over and over in Oasis that day: “Don’t forget about us. We love what you’re doing and thank God for it. But we still love the old songs.” He said he’d been a member of our church since 1988, supported the church financially and prayed daily for our pastor and his team. I thought to myself, “We wouldn’t be here doing what we’re doing without the faithfulness of this man and so many of the people in this room.”

Since that day I’ve visited Oasis at least once a week and have encouraged my team to pay these beautiful people a visit as well. It reminds us that we have a wide range of ages represented here at COTM and that we must honor (not to be confused with “catering to”) those whose faithfulness has paved the way for where we are now. And I have promised them that we will remember that they are in our services; that we will sing a hymn for them every now and then; that we appreciate who they are and what they’ve done.

What are doing to reach every age group in your church in worship? Would love to hear your thoughts…

We had a great time last night at our first ever “Monday Night Music Club”. More than 50 musicians from Church on the Move came together to fellowship and to learn how to become a better singer, player, and musical communicator. I had the privilege of leading the vocal workshop and I wanted to share with you what we discussed.

As a professional vocalist for nearly 25 years I’ve picked up on 3 key elements that I believe can turn a good singer into a great one: breath, pitch, and emotion. Each one of these builds upon the other. Emotion cannot be attained without breath control and pitch, and pitch cannot be attained without breath support. When I hear a singer for the first time, whether it’s on American Idol or in a worship audition, I immediately listen for proper breathing technique. Does he/she fill their lungs to capacity before each phrase? Is the singer pushing the notes out with a steady stream of air, finishing each phrase solidly with plenty of breath to spare? Is it obvious at the end of their song that they have worked hard, making sure they’ve pushed every note toward good pitch and proper emotion?

A mentor of mine many years ago taught me the art of “singing on the breath”. The idea is that we push the notes along a steady column of air, and although the sound of the note may stop, the air dies not. Listen to your favorite singer and hear how they end each phrase with a burst of air.

Learning to breathe properly while singing will help your pitch and ultimately your presentation.

Here’s the opener for our Easter services at Church on the Move this year as recorded at tonight’s rehearsal. Hope you enjoy and if you attend COTM do yourself a favor and DON’T WATCH THIS!

We’ve talked ceaselessly here about attention to detail – how we plan our services, how we rehearse, how we choose the right worship team members. But we also pay close attention to the gear that we have onstage. The right guitars, keys, and sounds can take a good worship set and make it a great one.

So many of you have inquired about our gear lately that we thought we’d post pictures and lists for you to let you know how we roll. We’ve found that owning all our own stuff helps with quality control. That assures us that all our stuff is in working order before we hit rehearsals and it’s a real time saver. Hit us back with any questions – we love gear talk!

• Guitar gear
• Keyboard gear
• Reason patches

There’s been a mindset in the church for as long as I can remember that goes something like this: “If you can sing, play, and show up on time for rehearsal, you’ve got a spot on the worship team.” Great hearts and poor musicianship do not an effective worship team make. The inverse can be just as bad: pro musicians who have no buy-in, no interest in the church past their charts or their monitor mix (or their check if you are paying them). Is it too much to ask for talent and heart???

We audition people every week who desire to be a part of our worship teams, many of them with pretty decent chops. Once we’ve established that they have the ability to play or sing I begin looking for a few intangibles:

JOY
Does he/she exude the quality of a worshipper? Do I enjoy being around them? If they are lifeless off the stage, they’ll practically be a corpse on it. Everyone on the worship team should be a model of joy and enthusiasm, ready to shine their light and encourage those in the congregation to join in! Contagious is a word that comes to mind…

COMMITMENT
Will they go the extra mile to show up to rehearsals prepared and with an attitude of working toward excellence? Do they understand that leading people in worship is serious business? I’ve worked with plenty of singers and players who do the least amount of work possible, look at their watches and ask, “When will we be done?” They’re not on our team anymore. Granted, it’s on me as the worship leader to make sure rehearsals run as efficiently as possible, but at some point we need to dig deep and spend the time to make the set amazing. Our church deserves it, and so does God. I need people on my team I can count on to put forth a great effort each and every week.

PASSION
I’m not looking for a bunch of Billy Grahams, but those who grace the stage need to have an obvious passion for God. They need to have a grasp on just how important this all is. Singers and players who love what they do and love the God who gave them the ability to do it are worth searching out. These are the ones who worship during rehearsal when no one is looking. These are the people you can build around because they get it. And best of all, they will attract like-minded musicians – passion breeds passion.

I can’t count how many times I’ve been moved emotionally by one person onstage with a guitar, genuinely pouring their heart out for God and for their church. I also can’t count how many times I’ve been disappointed to see 10 musicians onstage going through the motions, just hoping to end the song at the same time. Is this a quality vs. quantity thought? In a sense. The point I’m trying to make is this – be careful who you put up there. What you model onstage will cause you to attract more of the same. Great players and singers who have a great time doing what they do will send the signal out to others who are wired up the in same way. The inverse is also true. It’s worth the effort to find those who have the gift of music and a passion for serving. These are the people who will truly lead your church in worship.

Imagine you and your spouse are going out to dinner at a new restaurant. You walk in and find that the place is nice. Really nice. In fact, it’s downright fancy. The service is impeccable, the table setting is expensive and the atmosphere is to die for, but then, comes the food…

…A Digiorno Pizza.

Feels out of place doesn’t it? Here’s the deal, there’s nothing wrong with a Digiorno Pizza but in the wrong setting it doesn’t make sense. Imagine the same food in a different setting, like say, your home. What was, in one setting, a disappointment is now a tasty meal in another.

This happens in our churches all the time. We serve Digiorno Pizza like it’s steak and lobster and people respond with comments like “it feels like a performance.” What they’re really saying is, this just doesn’t feel right. Something is amiss.

Here’s my two cents.

Some people on our stages are Digiorno people and some people are steak and lobster people. That’s reality. The trick then, is presenting them in the appropriate way. If you don’t have a GREAT band than by all means, don’t try to light them like U2. If you don’t have great lights, then stop flashing them through every color possible.

The point is, when we overdo our presentation we come off as, at best, overambitious, and at worst, arrogant.

I realize that for so many of us, all we’ve got to work with is Digiorno people. I get that. But here’s my advice: Embrace it and be real about it because when we play and create within our strengths AND weaknesses we relate to people in a more genuine way.

I’d like to take a few moments and talk about the importance of lyrics in worship. Nothing is more frustrating than wrong lyrics on a screen, either grammatically or theologically. I’ll reiterate what I’ve mentioned before – worship is at its best and most effective when it does not stand alone, but rather sets the table for the preaching of the Word of God. It’s great to sound awesome and have energy and joy on the stage, but a lack of attention to details can make us look unprepared and cause a distraction to the audience. Remember, music is a powerful tool and the words and melodies we present to people will stay with them throughout the week.

First, make sure the lyrics you are asking your congregation to sing are actually Biblical! So many times we hear a song and it moves us emotionally and we can’t wait to rehearse it and introduce it to our church, but a deeper look may reveal that what the song is actually saying does not line up with God’s Word. I’ve heard tons of songs through the years that are simply foolish in their lyrical content. We have a serious responsibility to think through what lyrics we sing. Before you add that new worship song to your repertoire make sure you can stand behind what it has say. Better yet, take a look at your existing songs and double check the lyrics. Chances are pretty good you’ll find something you have missed all this time.

Secondly, does the spirit of the song match the spirit of your pastor and your church? Many worship songs dwell on the idea that “life is hard, but one day it’ll all be over and we’ll be in heaven!” These songs were popular in the early 1900’s and fill the hymnbooks. Conversely there is a genre that proclaims an idea of “everything is awesome all the time!” This was the theme of a large number of early worship songs written in the ‘80s & ‘90s. At COTM we tend to be drawn to lyrics that focus on redemption and the greatness of our God. And these are the types of songs that resonate best with our congregation. Take time this week to find songs with lyrics that best fit your church’s personality.

Finally, make sure the lyrics are right! Nothing is more frustrating than singing one thing and seeing another on the screen. Nothing throws me off balance more than seeing wrong lyrics in front of me. I can imagine it’s the same for the people in the room trying to worship. Take time each week to make sure that you import the correct lyrics to the system that projects them onto your main screens and onto your worship team’s lyric monitor. I know this sounds extremely basic, but it’s often the most overlooked detail of a worship service. It’s something we’ve been diligent about lately, and it’s made a huge difference in the comfort level of our leaders.

We have found over and over again that attention to lyrical details affords us a better opportunity to create a more worshipful environment. I encourage you to spend a little extra time this week to make sure your lyrics are spot on.

ATTENTION: Although some level of nerd-speak is to follow, there are applicable thoughts to those outside the world of tech. I promise to be gentle.

So, in part one of this topic, I gave some info on where the live mixes at COTM seem to live volume-wise–allow me to go ahead and blow your mind just a bit. Track with me… If you have been privy to a mix in our main auditorium, you may swear that there is NO WAY it’s only 97-ish dB–it’s a big mix that is very much in your face but at the same time, it’s quite smooth and easy on the palette (sounds like a nice beverage actually). There’s nothing screeching out at you trying to drill a hole in your forehead like a lightning bolt–but herein lies the secret…

Many moons ago, I started to spec touring rigs that were considerably larger than what I could’ve gotten away with. This was done mainly to make sure we were covered from an audio perspective for any venue that may show up on an itinerary–many shows had to have gear prepped and out the door before the end of the tour had even been booked. But here’s what I began to notice–the times that I used way more audio gear than was really necessary for the venue du jour, the better it sounded. I had considerably more presence and tone in the mix while able to significantly decrease the mid and high range information… The result was a much bigger-sounding mix with smoother high end that wasn’t nearly as invasive–it made it much easier to listen to and much more friendly on the dB side. Since I was using more low-end presence, it was injecting more energy and coupling into the actual building which when translated to a human body, creates the illusion or sensation of increased volume.

So over the years I’ve worked a bit of this into conventional audio rigs and mixes wherever applicable. This is what we’ve done at COTM–the low-end isn’t just killing you from a volume perspective, but the presence that it builds is something you can feel–thick enough to cut with a knife. Vocals sit better in the mix, music feels better and our dB meter stays quite happy since we’re making better use of the 95-100 db that comprises our mix product. Yes, this is the same 95-100 dB that others may use that at times can feel completely loud and overwhelming. This is accurately demonstrated by the following SMAART screen grab of a previous worship service:

If you’re not completely familiar with seeing a frequency analysis–it’s pretty easy at first glance. The graph represents the frequencies that comprise normally “hear-able” (yes, my own word) audio. From 18Hz on the far left to 18,000Hz on the far right–or extreme low-end on the far left sliding all the way up to extreme high end on the right. Using this explanation you can see that the low end of the spectrum is greatly exaggerated in the mix while the high end is diminished. This is exactly what the feel is like in the room and is indicative to the type of mix I’ve been describing–seeing it visually sometimes helps make sense of it…

Although this type of thick mix resonates nicely in our space and really seems to define our musical sound–it’s really obvious when you listen to the DPA headset we use on Pastor George. He has a massive voice anyway but I really wanted our audio system to accurately reflect his unique vocal characteristics after being amplified. This style of mixing completely lends itself to an increased presence in a vocal which translates to a very commanding and authoritative sound. Quite fitting for an old west gospel gun-fighter–I mean, for our Pastor.

As I noted in the previous blog–I am still on an endless quest to find new and better ways to pursue a great mix but approaching my mixes from this vantage point seems to provide a good foundation to our current musical and audio presentation.

So many times when it comes to launching new projects we get stuck in the planning phase. We dream, we scheme, we plan but so often we never actually do anything!

I think the reason we get stuck in the development phase is because we’re waiting for everything to be just perfect, for all the pieces to fall into place before we’re willing to launch.

Here’s the bad news. It’s easy to hide from making any real changes and launching any new initiatives in the planning stage. It’s easy to “act” like things are changing and growing when they’re really not because we’re always in a perpetual state of planning.

I love what Leon Fontaine of Springs Church says: Ready. Shoot. Aim.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t plan, but there comes a point as a leader where you just have to venture out into the unknown and figure it out as you go.

For years at COTM we knew we needed to get younger on our stage. It was no disrespect to the people who had served on our worship team over the years, but we knew if we were ever going to connect with a younger crowd we were going to have to make changes and give younger people opportunities to serve and grow.

The trouble was that because the people we needed to make the change weren’t just waiting in the wings, we hesitated in making it. Finally, after years of realizing that it was never going to be convenient or easy to change, we decided we just had to go for it and two years later, we have loads of young people serving on our stages.

I’m convinced that many times the right people and the right answers that so many of us are looking for are hidden from us until we are willing to take a step of faith and begin something.

You’ll never be able to plan for everything so you might as well just get ready, shoot, and aim.

I am five chords and a capo. I picked up the guitar for the first time about 3 years ago and since then I’ve learned how to lead worship, run rehearsals, and write songs with an acoustic guitar in my hands. Please don’t ask me to finger pick or play bar chords yet. I’m still working on that. Also, please don’t hand me a chord chart with a bunch of letters and #’s and ♭’s. However, with a capo and a working knowledge of basic music theory I can play any worship, pop, or country song you can name.

Years ago I ran across these bizarre-looking chord charts that most studio musicians in Nashville were using. They called it the Nashville Number System. What looked so foreign to me then has become my favorite way of reading music now. Most worship music consists of five basic chords: 1, 4, 5, 6 minor, and occasionally 2 minor (especially in Hillsong music). So, for instance, if you’re playing a song in the key of C, your numbers would look like this:

C = 1
D = 2
D minor = 2m
E = 3
F = 4
G = 5
A = 6
A minor = 6m
B = 7

If I want to move the song to C# then all I have to do is capo up one fret and play the exact same chord positions. Easy as that. Purists scoff at playing this way (believe me – I’ve had my share of down-lookers), but for churches this is an easy way to help everyone speak the same language when it comes to chart reading.

For example, the chorus to “How Great is Our God” in the key of A goes from this (the 4 little lines below the chord mean “4 beats per bar”):

To this:

It makes calling out changes in the middle of a worship set easier as well. Instead of shouting out chord names, I can just hold up the appropriate number of fingers to let everyone know on what chord we will end or where we are heading. Regardless of the key the numbers remain the same, and this is just one more little thing that makes our worship sets fly just a bit smoother.

1. My Girls - Animal Collective
2. Icarus - White Hinterland
3. Cosmic Love - Florence + The Machine
4. Compulsion - Doves
5. Helena Beat - Foster The People
6. Gutter - Paper Route
7. Blue Water - Doves
8. Need You Now - Cut Copy
9. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - Florence + The Machine
10. Closet Astrologer - The Ruby Suns
11. Hailin’ From The Edge - Apparat
12. You Don’t Know Me - Apparat
13. Walking On A Dream - Empire of the Sun
14. Standing On The Shore - Empire of the Sun
15. We Are The People - Empire of the Sun
16. Sleepwalkers - The Hundred in the Hands
17. Folds In Your Hands - Passion Pit
18. Good Evening - The Concretes
19. Pigeons - The Hundred In the Hands
20. The Cedar Room - Doves
21. Fader - The Temper Trap
22. Three Trees - Tanlines
23. Reinfo - Tanlines
24. Chinatown - Wild Nothing
25. Intro - The xx
26. Without You - Rainbow Arabia
27. Dogs Days Are Over - Florence + The Machine
28. Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix) - Small Black
29. Houdini - Foster The People
30. Strange Overtones - David Byrne & Brian Eno
31. Home - David Byrne & Brian Eno
32. 1517 - The Whitest Boy Alive
33. Summer Song - YACHT

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in creative planning is assuming your first good idea, is good enough.

Think about it. Every bad church video you’ve ever seen started as a good idea to someone. Somebody, somewhere thought that singing that song or making that video was a good idea. The problem is that what often sounds like a good idea in a brainstorming meeting turns out to be a bad idea in execution, at which point it’s too late to make changes.

I’ve learned over the years to let even my best ideas sit for a while, because often when I allow myself time to review my ideas over and over again, I find glaring problems with my initial concept that must be adjusted to avoid a mediocre result.

Here’s how it works for us. When we arrive at what we think is a solid concept, unless it’s something really basic or something we’ve done before, we wait, we let it sit overnight at a bare minimum. On a really big project, like Easter or Christmas, we’ll have several (and by several I mean tons) of meetings over a period of days reviewing and evaluating the concept in microscopic detail, like it was the first time any of us have ever heard it.

Here’s why: the amount of time you spend on the details will have a great impact on the success or failure of your project. Mies Van Der Rohe, a German architect, famously said “God is in the details” and he was right. Your mind just isn’t equipped to see all the nuances of a creative project all at once, so you have to force yourself to focus on them to find success consistently.

So, in summation, if you’re regularly going with your first “good” idea, you’re either God or you’re not doing very good work. It just isn’t that easy for anyone.

“Walk with the wise and become wise…” - Proverbs 13:20

You heard recently from one of our interns, DyAna Bush, about what she’s learned since she joined our team. I recently had a conversation with our other music intern, 19-year old Jordan Moore, about the things he’s learned since becoming a NEXT intern. Although he didn’t have as many specific points of reflection as DyAna, he did share something I felt was particularly interesting. He said that just by being here he’s become much more aware of what it means to be excellent in the area of ministry. Jordan leads worship now and then, but most of his time is relegated to changing guitar strings, hauling gear from one room to another, cleaning the dishes in the kitchen, driving to the music store, and anything else we can think for him to do. But even in the menial tasks he’s acquired a spirit of excellence. Just by being around our creative team day in and day out he’s picked up on the way we do things.

The Bible is clear that when we hang out with fools, we become like them. However, when we spend time with the wise we become wise. It’s a bit like osmosis – a gradual transference of substance from one place to another. The question is: Who is transferring wisdom, creativity, excellence, ideas, etc. into your life? As worship/creative leaders we must continue to surround ourselves with people who challenge our ideas, sharpen our instincts and dare us to move into new and different arenas.

In 20+ years in the music industry and in the ministry I’ve known too many musicians and worship pastors who believe that they can do all this on their own. Their ideas are the best ones, their way of doing things is paramount to the way anybody else does it. Shall we say that walking alone produces isolationism? I think we can. Isolationism then produces an unchecked ego. Ego produces failure. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” says James 4:6.

A few suggestions for worship leaders:

• Build a diverse team. Allow them to challenge you (respectfully, of course). Welcome their input and allow their ideas to trump yours at times.

• Find “next generation” musicians to pour your wisdom into. You’ll be surprised how much they’ll end up pouring into you creatively.

• Step outside your comfort zone. Listen to different types of music and judge it for its creative spark, not on your personal taste. Do the same with movies, performance art, etc. Expand your horizons!

• Give it time. Osmosis is a gradual process – it does not happen overnight. Remember, we “walk with the wise”, we don’t sprint.

It’s difficult to become excellent or expand your creativity just by reading a blog post. You have to surround yourself with excellence and creativity day in and day out. I’m proud of Jordan and what he’s accomplished since he’s been an intern. I’ve benefited as well. He’s reminded me of what it is to be wide-eyed and excited, ready to do something big for God. I’m thankful every day to work with people who make me better, who allow me to do what I’m created to do on a high level. Do the same for yourself. Osmosis-ize your life!

If you think about it, a song is nothing more than a collection of sounds that, ideally, come together to create ONE sound. It’s a combination of voices, keyboards, guitars, drums, and other odds and ends that make a song sound like it does.

I learned a long time ago that creating a great sound begins at the instrument, not at the mixing desk. So, if I wanted to improve the sound of my song I must begin with improving the individual sounds at the instrument.

In my experience most people approach it from the opposite end. They assume that they sound great and that the mix engineer is responsible for the vast majority of their sonic problems. To be clear, a great mix engineer is worth his/her weight in gold, but I firmly believe we could improve the sound of our worship experiences greatly just by diving into the sounds at the source.

To quote Butthead: “You can’t polish a turd, Beavis.”

I’m not trying to be crass, but I think that quote perfectly sums it up. Does your guitar player really know what a good guitar tone should sound like? Do you? How about the drums? How often are the heads changed? How often are the drums tuned? What sort of keyboard sounds are you using? Whatever random piano sound happens to be on the Korg the church owns? This stuff doesn’t have to be expensive, but I can promise you good sounds don’t happen by accident and if the sound is the song then those things matter.

Just this morning I was fortunate enough to do an interview with Sean over at THiNK International. If you’re not familiar with THiNK they do a whole host of things but one of the coolest is a series of interviews with different church leaders. If you haven’t checked them out, I highly recommend browsing around their website, it’s loaded with cool resources.

If you’d like to see my interview with Sean you can check it out here.

Over the past five months I’ve been one of the first NEXT interns for COTM’s Performing Arts Department. Recently I was asked, “what have you learned so far?” Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about in response to that question.

It’s All In The Details
Creating an engaging worship experience for our church family is more than picking a few pretty songs, it’s about collaborating as a team to choose the right songs, the right worship leaders, the right transitions, and so forth. Each set is scrutinized to the N-th degree in an effort to allow our congregation to connect with our Heavenly Father. I’m constantly amazed at how the smallest detail can greatly make or break a worship set.

Last weekend’s Kid’s on the Move worship service is a great example. Kenneth Weston and I led the worship set in KOTM: Mighty to Save & We Exalt Thee. We played both songs in A - which worked great for the first tune. The kids were singing loudly and at the top of their range. It was a beautiful moment as 400 kids sang “OUR GOD CONQUERED THE GRAVE.” We Exalt Thee was a little different. The song is a favorite in our elementary kids’ services, so we were surprised when the kids just didn’t sing as confidently as usual. After a quick meeting with our team we realized that A was the wrong key. To sing along, the kids had to sing low for this song because the octave up - where they usually sing - was too high. In effect, they were singing, we just couldn’t hear them very well. It was an overlooked detail that affected the service.

Preparation Is Key
Our department stays busy. In a week, our bands can play up to 15 sets. This doesn’t include big events (Seeds Conference, Easter, CWF). When we plan a service on a Tuesday, the real work often begins right after the meetings break. Each musician and singer begins preparing on their own. Andy says, “Practice happens at home. Rehearsal is what we do when we come together.” If we aren’t individually prepared, it effects everyone!

In addition, confidence and excellence follows a significant amount of preparation. As I’ve taken on the habit of preparation, I’ve found God faithful to take my offering of preparation and use it for His success. I’ve heard many of our leaders here say that it’s preparation and structure that allows the Holy Spirit to move in our worship services, not the other way around. This truth is apparent, and I’m excited to see what more God will do with COTM as we continue to humble ourselves in preparation and see to the details.

Creativity Is A Group Effort
This is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned - there are no creative geniuses. There’s not one guy coming up with all the ideas. There’s not one person who can take credit for every great idea. It’s a team effort. Instead of chasing ideas, we chase people. We gather the right people together to talk out every idea. That’s where the real genius takes place.

I hope this helps anyone considering the NEXT internship. I’ve got more than 7 months left, so I’m sure I’ll have even more to write in the future.

“The people living in darkness have seen a great Light; On those living in the land of the shadow of death a Light has dawned!” – Matthew 4:16

We have a motto here in our creative department: “It’s not about getting it done, it’s about getting it right.” We repeat this to ourselves and to our teams before every rehearsal and before every worship set. But why is it important to be done at all? Silly question, I know. From time to time even the most skilled and well-prepared teams fail to see beyond the X’s and O’s. We must remember why we do what we do. Every time we open the doors of our church the seats are filled with hurting, stressed, and rejected people, men and women who desperately need to experience something real and positive.

I know I covered this briefly in my post “Sing, Play, Love” but I feel it’s worth expounding upon. Consider adding these elements to your pre-worship set routine:

Create some space.
If you hit the stage at 9:00am, start eliminating the distractions around 8:30. Avoid heavy or trivial conversations that will most likely invade your head space at the most critical times of worship. Ask God to calm your thoughts as you begin to focus on the task at hand. Encourage your band and singers to do the same.

Humble yourself.
Remember: “God is opposed to the proud, but shows favor to the humble.” We do not worship so that we can be glorified. If you want to be applauded, go be an artist. If you want to see lives changed and hearts turned to the Father, go out in humility. Prepare yourself to be a servant to the preacher of the Word and to the hearers of that Word.

We are all in this together.
I encourage all members of my team to lead out in prayer before we go on stage, letting them know that they have something to say. I also encourage them to share their needs so that we can pray for them. This is a powerful reminder of the wounded humanity that is in the auditorium. Whatever they are going through is a microcosm of what is happening in lives beyond the stage.

Shine the Light!
You’ve taken the time to get focused, humbled, and plugged in to the needs of your crowd, now remind your team why you are here: A great light has dawned! Sin and death have been defeated by the Hope of the world. Jesus! Go and proclaim it!

I finally was able to sit back and watch Celebrate With Family 2010 yesterday from start to finish. I realized I hadn’t seen the entire show yet, only bits and pieces, and I was pleased at how the entire thing felt so cohesive. Nothing felt left-footed or out of place, there didn’t seem to be any weak moments. That was a great feeling.

I get to work with such talented people, but what’s awesome is that each of us helps make the others better. As we began to prepare for CWF, it was obvious that we would not succeed if we all worked separately – musicians creating the music, video producers creating videos, etc. There had to be a collusion of ideas, but even more a critique of each other’s work. In talking to so many worship leaders across the country I’m surprised to find that most of them work in a vacuum – void of any helpful criticism or direction as to how other service elements are being created. The reason our Christmas service felt so cohesive was that we all worked together.

To best illustrate this idea of collaboration and critique, I’ll share with you how pre-production laid the groundwork for our opening 3 songs for CWF 2010 – Little Drummer Boy, Deck The Halls, and The Grinch/Thriller. Six weeks or so before our first concert we nailed down the specific ideas for these songs referencing several songs by other artists, commercials, YouTube videos, and anything else that helped define the vision of where we wanted them to go.

LITTLE DRUMMER BOY influences
“Little Drummer Boy” by Jars of Clay from their project “Christmas Songs”
“Clap Hands” by Beck from his performance on the Sarah Kuttner Show via YouTube

DECK THE HALLS influences
“Deck the Rooftops” by GLEE cast from the project GLEE: The Music – The Christmas Album
“Play 60 Bus Commercial” by NFLRush.com via YouTube
“How Cute are These Boots” 2009 GAP Christmas commercial via YouTube
“Mickey” by Toni Basil (yes, seriously)

THE GRINCH/THRILLER
This one’s pretty obvious, although we did listen to a lot of Will Smith as we were writing the Grinch chorus. You gotta do what you gotta do…

Once we had that direction I took my staff musicians into the studio and we began to create. We spent several days tracking these songs as if we were making a record. We wanted to get as specific as possible with drum patterns, keyboard sounds, vocal parts, and even lead vocals. It was important to make sure our ideas worked now, not when we hit the stage for our first rehearsal. During this process we would send files back to our creative team to get their opinion. If what we had created didn’t match the initial vision of what we had discussed we would begin to make tweaks. Honestly, there were several times where we felt pretty good about what we had created, but when it was reviewed by our entire team we understood where we had fallen short. This process went on for at least 2 weeks, and slowly but surely our collective vision became reality.

The time spent in pre-production paid dividends immediately. On Tuesday, Dec. 14 we had our first on-stage rehearsal, just 4 days before our first performance, and it was apparent that we would not be holding up production while we made the music work. That saved time, wear, and tear on our crew and our volunteers. We made maybe 100 adjustments during rehearsals but the decisions we made during the pre-production phase were solid. And it translated into the most amazing production we’ve done here at COTM.

Right now we’re in big time Christmas mode, so I’m going to blog quickly about a Christmas project we just finished in KOTM. Kids on the Move revolves around series (I Love My Bible, I Belong to God, etc) - those series revolve around weekly big answers (“My eyes belong to God, Jesus Rescues Right Now) - and those big answers revolve around one central truth or verse. For the last 5 weeks we’ve been in a series leading up to Christmas called “To the Rescue.” Our mission is to teach kids that WHEN YOU NEED HELP, JESUS COMES TO THE RESCUE.

One of the greatest ways we can help kids remember these themes is through our songs. Earlier this year we decided to do our best to write and record a song for each series we teach. If you haven’t heard any of these songs yet, you can check out I Love My Bible, Jesus Is Alive Right Now, or By Faith. Our series ”To the Rescue” is no different. For this we challenged ourselves to write a killer worship song - that song is You Are My Rescue and you can download it here on Seeds. We’ve been working pretty hard to refine our songwriting process and I get asked about it a lot, so here is that process in a nutshell.

STEP 1 - GET THE WORD OUT
COTM is blessed to have several musicians and singers (staff members and volunteers) who love songwriting. Once our theme was nailed down, I sent an email to this list of people, sort of an open call for demos. I included the series info, what sort of feel we were looking for, and the demo deadline. Demos submitted could be super polished or as raw as iPhone recordings.

STEP 2 - LISTEN AND GET OPINIONS
Stephen Posey, Andrew Dale and I listened to the demos. For this project, three were submitted. Honestly, we could have recorded any one of them and had a solid song, but we’re not in this just for fun. We want to get it right. We listened to each tune many times. We got opinions from other folks around. We asked questions of each song like: “Is it catchy? “Is it enjoyable to listen to? Does it communicate the theme? Is it the right song for the series?” After much deliberation, we chose to take the best of two songs and mesh them together.

STEP 3 - LAY OUT THE MAP
This is something we learned early on: DON’T WASTE THE CHURCH’S MONEY. God blesses our diligence to protect the tithe. As much as we can, we go in the recording studio with not only a game plan, but even a demo of our own. Andrew Dale will often record our final version in Logic before we step into the studio. Sometimes we’ll even use guitar, drum, or keyboard tracks that he’s recorded on his laptop. This saves us TONS of time! (Check out I Love My Bible and listen to the drums. They’re straight from Andrew’s laptop.)

STEP 4 - APPOINT A PRODUCER
For us, songwriting is a group effort. We want the opinions, but in the studio, you need someone to make the final call. The producer needs to be someone who specifically knows the heart of the series, after all why are we recording the song? Often in the studio it will be myself, Andrew Dale, Kenneth Weston and our audio engineer. Andrew’s working on instrumentation and Kenneth’s chiming in on vocal parts. 9 times out of 10 everyone will be on the same page with where the song should go. For that rare 1 out of 10 times, the producer can step in, listen to the opinions, and make the call. Assign a producer at the beginning. 

Let’s keep in mind, this four step process is not the Bible. You might hate working like this, but it worked for us on our last project. I’d love to hear about our songs being used in your kidmin services. If you’re using them, drop me a line on Twitter, by emailing me or just comment below. 

I hope this helps.

Can’t believe this worked out–but the universe has aligned itself in just the right way and we were able to carve out some time to make the tracks available for our rendition of Relient K’s “12 Days of Christmas” from our 2009 Celebrate With Family Christmas service.

In the download, there are 6 audio (.wav) files and the chord chart PDF. The audio breakdown is as follows:

• Click track with an audible count-off
• Bass line
• Choir
• Lead Background Vocals
• Background Vocals & Gang Vocals
• Sound FX (the “pop” heard near the end)

CLICK HERE to download.

All of these were bounced individually and at the same length so you can easily import them into either a Pro Tools or Logic session file and be good to go. You can even use in GarageBand also–you just won’t have many options on outputs to multiple channels, etc; Just make sure the beginning of all the tracks are time-aligned to each other. I usually pre-mix these tracks a bit inside Pro Tools so you may find a bit of volume automation written in here and there–this can can easily be removed if it’s not your cup of tea–I promise not to be offended.

Hope these files help make all your Christmas dreams come true. Or at least maybe your Christmas dreams will rock a little more than normal!

I’ll be honest, every year we resolve to get an early jump on planning our Christmas service, and every year we wind up planning it right up until the last minute. This year is no exception. We had a meeting or two about Christmas in July but we didn’t really get anywhere. Maybe it’s just me but I struggle to “feel” Christmas in the middle of July.

Quantity, Not Quality
Usually, we start planning Christmas in earnest around the middle of November and that’s usually because someone reminds us that Christmas is only 7 weeks away at which point we all freak out. The first step in the process is what we call a brain dump. Basically, we gather all the creative teams from around the church (Kids on the Move, Oneighty) and we start throwing out anything and everything that might work. The idea isn’t to “solve” the service, it’s more about stirring the creative pot.

So many times the best ideas come when you’re not actively engaged in brainstorming, but to get your mind working on a subconscious level you have to first exercise it on a conscious level. Most of my best ideas come in the shower because in the shower I let my mind drift and wander and that’s when I find solutions. So, don’t feel like you have to solve every problem and develop every idea each time you and your team sit down to brainstorm.

Find the Feeling
Once we have a few ideas on the board we start to think about the feelings that each song/sketch will evoke. This is HUGE! We want our Christmas service to be an emotional journey, but that doesn’t just happen by chance, you have to carefully craft that experience. Here are the feelings that we aim to evoke each Christmas in no particular order:

• Beauty – Christmas is a beautiful time of year so we definitely want our service to reflect that beauty.
• Humor – Laughter is such an essential part of any gathering because there’s no better way to gain your audience than to make them laugh.
• Family – For most of us, Christmastime is family time. We always try to include songs that make the audience feel warm towards those they care about most.
• Wow / Awe – You gotta make people say “Wow!” at least one time! This could be accomplished in a million different ways, but I think it’s important for people to experience something bigger than themselves.
• Worship – This is obviously the most important part. Our whole goal is to lead people toward worship - that’s why the reading of the Christmas story is always the pinnacle of our Christmas weekend.

What Is Necessary?
After we write these feelings on our board we try and assign them to each song/sketch in the service. The reason that we do that is to make sure we’re not repeating ourselves. An example would be “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. Both are gorgeous songs but they evoke the same feelings – beauty & family – so it would be redundant to include them both. The goal is not to try and cram everything we can into the service, but rather to include only what is necessary.

Refine, Refine, Refine
From here we refine, refine, refine. We’ll talk through our service hundreds of times before it ever comes time to rehearse. Every song, every costume, every joke, it all gets talked through over and over and over again. It’s repititive and it’s exhausting, but it’s necessary because it’s through this process that you remove the parts of the service that aren’t working.

Remember this, the people who do the best work make it look easy, but it NEVER is! You and I see the finished product and it looks effortless but we don’t see the countless hours spent practicing in the gym/studio/office. Sometimes I think that because the work we do is primarily mental, we think we don’t have to practice in the same way we would if our jobs were physical. We all expect athletes to practice, and your mind works the same way as the rest of your body. It needs practice and refinement. These are the building blocks of a great creative work and without them, you’re toast. It would be arrogant to think that your first plan will be a home run. Don’t trust it, refine.

Sometimes when you’re watching a live cut of a service you lose a little bit of perspective because most of the shots are pretty tight, so during our bigger services we’ll place a locked off camera at the back of the room so that we can go back watch the whole thing like we were standing in the sound booth. It’s come in pretty handy over the years and so I thought it might be helpful to post the video here so you can see our service like a fly on the wall in the back of the room. Enjoy.

About five years ago we decided to start trying to put a little extra “oomph” into our Christmas services. We’d been doing a Christmas concert for years but it wasn’t part of our weekend service experience and it wasn’t really a big focus for us as a church. It was a concert filled with typical Christmas music on a Wednesday night. One of the first ideas we came up with shortly after forming our creative team in 2005 was to really expand our Christmas experience. Since then, our Christmas services have really become a huge deal around here and a lot of effort and planning go into crafting them.

Obviously, we’re not the only church who does this. We know that, like us, so many of you are working really hard right now to put together some incredible Christmas experiences for your communities and, like us, you’re sweating every song, every word, every video, and every detail. So here’s the deal. I thought it’d be fun to post our last five Christmas services in an effort to show the journey that we’ve been through the last five years and to hopefully spark some creative thinking for you and your team.

2005
You’ll notice straight away that we’ve come a long way since 2005! You’ll also notice that some things worked really well and some… not so well, but I wouldn’t trade these experiences for anything because they’ve been a great teacher. Really, this was our first attempt at anything like this and I’ll be honest, we were so proud of this service. We started planning this thing so late, we had no production budget, and the stage was made up of a giant REAL Christmas tree and fiber optic curtain.

2006
This year we hired Daniel Connell as our lighting designer. We were so impressed with the job he did that we hired him! The opening sketch was heavily influenced by a Willow Creek sketch and watching it back it seems REALLY LONG! We went for a big band feel and it’s a little on the cheesy side, but the trade off is that the big band is always pretty warm.

2007
This year was the first time we’d really jumped into the world of giant video screens and I’ll tell you, it was a lot harder to work with than what we ever anticipated. The challenge we ran into was making the stage feel warm. The giant video wall just felt a little soulless and we worked really hard to warm things up. We experimented with some cool ideas like putting the choir on video that worked pretty well. This set really had a pretty big wow factor and we got a lot of great feedback but putting it together was a nightmare (it weighed something like 30,000 pounds) for us and our production team.

2008
For this year we really scaled back our Christmas production. We were just relaunching an outreach that we do at our camp (Dry Gulch U.S.A.) called The Christmas Train which reaches about 50,000 people a year. We hadn’t done the Christmas Train for the previous 3 years and so we went with a much more scaled back version knowing that much of our time would be spent getting the Christmas Train up and running.

2009 Celebrate With Family
We had just finished remodeling our auditorium in October and we knew we really wanted to do something special. For the first time ever we really tried to combine our Christmas Train outreach and our Christmas services and we saw a huge impact. We were packed out in every service until a GIANT blizzard blew through on Christmas eve. All in all we were really happy with the way our first ever Celebrate With Family event turned out.

Like so many other churches, our Christmas services are a really big deal and like you, we put a TON of work into these services because the payoff is so worth it. We’ve seen so many people come to Christ through these services. So many people, who would normally never darken the door of a church, are willing to come to a Christmas event.

We know that putting together one of these services is a major chore and we’re always looking for new and fresh ideas to help us in our creative process so a few weeks back I had the idea to sit down with our team and do a commentary of our Christmas service from last year in the hopes that hearing some of our thought process would be helpful to those out there who are slaving over their Christmas services!

Enjoy!

P.S. I mentioned in the video that we’ll cut in some wide shots to give a wider perspective but after a few technical hangups we decided to just post the wide angle of the entire service. We’ll post it here very soon along with some other goodies. Stay tuned.

For us here at Church on the Move, one of the HUGE benefits of the Seeds site has been getting to connect with people serving in their local churches all over the country. Just hearing how God is at work in other places really inspires and motivates us to keep on keeping on.

When we launched Seeds, one of the first people to sign up was Marty Taylor, one of the creative geniuses at Northland in Orlando. We hit it off right away and I’m now honored to call him a friend as well as a fellow presenter at Seeds Conference. Marty and the team at Northland are doing some of the best and most creative work I’ve seen in the church and If you’re not familiar with Northland you can check out their website here and if you’d like to follow Marty on Twitter (which I highly recommend) you can do that here.

Anyway, without further ado here’s a recent interview I did with Marty.

So, let’s just jump right in! Your official title at Northland is “Executive Director over Media Design.” What exactly does that mean?
The easy answer is, I lead the teams in charge of everything that is visible. Anything to do with video, print, web, user-level technology, branding, public relations, etc. If it’s visible, we typically have our hands in it.

I am a regular part of the creative process for worship services and I am part of the Executive Leadership Team for the church.

The unusual thing about my job from a typical media director at a church is that I do not lead the audio teams. The sonic audio experience is so closely connected to the music that the audio teams are part of the worship department.

The official name of your church is Northland, A Church Distributed. What does it mean to be “A Church Distributed?”
About 12 years ago, Northland’s name was changed from Northland Community Church to Northland, A Church Distributed simply meaning that church is not about gathering in a single building or a single community. The Distributed Church is all about people “being the church,” everywhere, every day. That, as the church, we gather to worship God and then respond to Him by distributing ourselves to serve others where they are so that God may be glorified.

It also means that, in recognition of how God distributes different gifts among different people (1 Corinthians 12:11), we connect with individuals and organizations outside our four walls for long-term support and effectiveness—without losing sight of our unique distinctions, we partner with others for the sake of others and the Kingdom.

Changing our name to something so unique has caused many people to ask what we are all about and opened doors for hundreds of local and global partnerships. The vision for being a church distributed drives everything we do from satellite venues to church online and beyond.

What’s your approach to planning a service at Northland?
Our approach is that everything we are and everything we are created to be begins in worship. When we look at who God is and what He has done, we can’t help but respond in worship to Him. So our planning process begins with looking at the message that Dr. Hunter is going to preach and extracting from that an attribute of God that becomes the focus of our worship for that weekend. The attribute may be God’s grace or His holiness or that He is the Creator.

Everything from beginning to end in our worship service is planned around that attribute of God. All the extensive amounts of production and technology that we use are there to help create an environment for worship centered around that attribute. We believe we are following God’s example from Genesis, when He created a beautiful environment in which for us to worship Him.

I’m a big proponent of churches merging their worship, production, and media teams because it really serves to unify the different groups of people who work on our weekend services. You guys don’t do that and yet you’re still really successful, how do you make that work?
Actually, I think you would be surprised how much we actually do the very thing you’re talking about. We do have the Media Design team separate from Worship as part of our corporate structure, but we are constantly working in tandem together. Our delineations only exist because of the sheer size of the teams and needing to delegate leadership based upon strengths. But the value of unified effort is a vital part of our DNA.

In fact, our worship planning meetings are attended not only by the worship and media staff, but we have people from all areas of the church (Local and Global Service, Equipping, Congregational Services, etc) there to bring their voice to the big picture planning as well.

I LOVE the way you guys incorporate scripture into your worship at Northland. Can you talk a bit about the concept and execution behind that?
We strive to blend the modern movement and style of worship with the foundations of the ancient church, so we incorporate a lot of scripture and creed into our modern worship service. The ancient and the future are part of our liturgy.

For many, the scripture and ancient creeds that we integrate are a means of connecting the dots between the song that they are singing and the truth of the Word. I think is also helps the worship service not just be an emotional experience (which I love) but also a deeply intellectual experience as well.

You guys are doing some pretty unique stuff with streaming your services, can you talk about that?
Northland has been a multi-site church for many years (our first site distributed site began in 2001). The unique thing about our other sites is that they are a fully real-time connection for the entire service. Everyone, at all locations, is participating in a unified worship service. We have local musicians and singers at each site. The music from our original location in Longwood is sub-mixed into to various parts (drums, guitars, keys, etc.) and mixed live at each site with the local musicians. We also change the origination point of the sermon from time to time to come from one of our other locations, not just our main campus.

We have been also been doing live online streaming of all our services (currently 5 each weekend) for several years as well. We have expanded that to a fully interactive community site with a live online minister each service and last year added the first ever live worship environment in Facebook. For us, this was a natural extension of being a distributed church by taking worship to a place where people were already gathering for community.

Many of our online worshipers have begun to form small communities together in homes around the country. We began looking for ways to make their connection better and easier. Just a couple of months ago, we launched a live channel on Roku, a small set-top box designed for on-demand streaming of Netflix, Hulu, and other content. This channel allows our home churches an easy, inexpensive means to connect to a high quality feed of the worship service, as well as several on-demand options like classes and Bible studies for their community.

Since the Roku channel is available to anyone, many people have added the Northland channel to their Roku channel line-up. So far, over 2000 people have made that connection. Our hope is that many people will discover Christ through discovering this channel.

There is definitely a world of global possibility for connection and evangelism through streaming technology and we continue to pursue how we can maximize that potential. We also hope to freely share all these technologies with any church who wishes to use them.

Describe for me a creative meeting at Northland. How long is it? Who’s involved? Who comes up with all the good ideas?
We are in a unique position at Northland that our pastor plans his messages several weeks in advance. This allows us to have several opportunities to review the goals of the service and shape what we hope will be the best means to connect our congregation to the attribute of God that we are focusing on in that weekend.

We begin by meeting with Dr. Hunter to get a summary of the message content about 3 weeks in advance. We initially walk away from that first meeting with a title, the core scripture, and a 2-3 paragraph summary. We determine from that our attribute focus for the weekend and begin meeting as a planning team. This team meets at least a couple times a week and focuses on 2-4 weeks at a time, with greater detail as the weekend gets closer. We continue to meet with our Pastor each week to get additional detail on the message and application as he refines where he is going.

The core planning team is about 7 people from the worship and media teams, but the discussion expands to the full team as we get closer to the weekend itself. The lighting, video, and audio teams take the order of service and create a visual and audio design for the environment of that service.

It all comes together in a full rehearsal each Wednesday where we continue to refine the plan before our first service on Saturday. Even following that service, we debrief and make changes as needed for the rest of the weekend.

One of the things that surprised me, when we visited on the phone, was that your day off is Sunday of all days! How do you make that work?
My being off on Sundays is the greatest testament to the quality of our team that I can imagine! So much work is put into the services in advance that by the time we debrief the service on Saturday, my job as the leader of the visual team is done. The rest of the weekend is then in the very capable hands of our technicians and volunteers to execute and they do a great job. I feel blessed to be able to attend service on Sunday night with my family without any worry about what is happening in the control rooms.

Besides that, the success of failure of all our planning is ultimately up to the work of the Holy Spirit anyway, so I just try to get out of the way.

Who’s inspiring the team at Northland these days?
Creatively, we draw inspiration from all around us. The world is full of story, both in what you can hear from others, or simply in what you experience or see in God’s creation. When you seek to see who God is and what He has done in the world around you, you can more easily find ways to lead people into worship around the story of God.

I can also say that our team is inspired by seeing much more collaboration between churches for the sake of the Kingdom of God as a whole. We are so much more affective when we stop guarding our ideas and plans and freely share and learn from one another. That’s one of the things I love so much about what Church on the Move is doing with Seeds. By giving away and sharing what you have freely with others, you are creating Kingdom impact beyond a venue in Tulsa. That is truly inspiring.

Northland is a BIG church, what would you say to leaders in smaller churches?
Simply…don’t get hung up on what you don’t have. The story of God and what He has done is all the inspiration you need to lead someone into meaningful worship and connection with Him. Everything else is simply a tool to help create an environment to do it…just like air conditioning or a comfortable chair. The philosophy of worship at Northland is the same as it was years ago when we met in a 50-year old roller skating rink and didn’t have a single video projector or moving light. Content and story are now and will always be the most important tool you have. Without it, your loud music, lights, and video are just disco.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not LOVE, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1

Charts learned – check.
Guitars tuned – check.
Standing in the right spot on the stage – check.

And so it goes every weekend, Wednesday night, and every other time we lead our church in worship – we look good and we sound good. But do those 2 things alone equal effectiveness? Way too often we overlook the most basic concept of worship: LOVE. We don’t do it on purpose. We are here to serve, right? Nothing wrong with that. But service alone isn’t enough (remember the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10?). I like to challenge my team before we hit the stage to consider their motives – why are they here, why have they rehearsed, why have they sacrificed their time? Pulling off a great worship set is more than just making great music, it’s about LOVE – LOVE for our God and LOVE for His people.

Have you ever stood right beside a crash cymbal as the drummer beats the life out of it? If you are a musician you probably respect that crash cymbal and understand why it was created, but more than a few seconds of that crash cymbal next to your head and you’ll move to another location far away. That’s the mental picture I get from 1 Corinthians 13:1. If what we do as a worship team is not motivated by LOVE, then we will eventually become nothing more than that crash cymbal, no matter how good we sound and look.

Here are a few ways we can help our teams focus on more than just the nuts and bolts of the worship set:

KNOW THE PEOPLE YOU’RE LEADING
It’s important to take a few minutes before we hit the stage and think about whom we’re leading in worship. The men and women who enter the auditorium for each service have jobs and families, needs and burdens, questions and doubts. Church is a refuge for them – a place where they can make a joyful noise and connect with the God that loves them. They don’t need a group of musicians in front of them going through the motions – they need honest worshippers reminding them of the hope they have in Christ. With that in mind it’s important for us to tear down the wall between the chairs and the stage. They need to feel as though they can reach out and connect with us as we sing and play; that we truly desire to lead them before the throne of God. That alone will make the difference between a “worship set” and a “time of corporate worship.” And how do you tear down the walls? Here are a few things to try:

• Smile – You’d be surprised how many people don’t smile when they lead worship. It should be the most natural facial expression given the subject of our songs: “GOD LOVES US!!!” And a smiling face goes a long way towards putting the audience at ease, ready to hear what you have to say.
• Make eye contact – Show them that you know they are there and that we are on this journey together! Closing our eyes or looking up to the ceiling all the time gives the impression that we are closing ourselves off, we’re unapproachable. Pick a few people out every service and invite them to sing with you.
• Memorize the lyrics – I’ll be the first to confess that I blow the lyrics at least once a weekend, but I refuse to keep my head down, looking at the lyrics monitor. This gives the crowd a sense that you haven’t cared enough to prepare for the worship service. They want to know the words are coming from your heart, not from a screen or a sheet of paper.
• Let them take the lead – My favorite part of a worship set is when I can back away from the mic and let the congregation take it. Those are awesome moments! And those are moments that are about them, not about you.

PRAY FOR THE PEOPLE YOU’RE LEADING
Take a few moments before you hit the stage and pray for those whom you will be leading in worship. Better yet, ask God to lay specific people and/or situations on your heart. That way you’ll be more in tune with how the words and messages of your songs will impact those in the room.

RESPECT THE PEOPLE YOU’RE LEADING
Ok, answer honestly – how tired are you of the same old songs week after week after week? If we do “Mighty to Save” one more time I’m gonna scream! It seems like we’ve done that song 4,000 times. Funny thing, though, is that when we do it the 4,001st time our congregation still brings down the house with their voices! To them it’s a song they can relate to; they can close their eyes and sing without looking at the lyrics on the screen; it’s a no-brainer. As musicians we want to continually introduce new songs, to change it up, and keep what we do feeling fresh. And we should. At COTM we introduce 1 or 2 new songs a month. But at some point you have to give those who came to worship a break and allow them to sing songs that are near and dear to them. Don’t disrespect your audience by taking away precious worship time and forcing them to learn new songs every week. And if a song isn’t connecting with them after the 2nd or 3rd time you’ve tried it, chunk it and move on, no matter how much you may love the song.

DON’T CONFUSE THE PEOPLE YOU’RE LEADING
It is important that the worship leaders are on the same page with the senior pastor. You know and I know that not every worship song out there is Biblically accurate nor do they line up with the convictions of your pastor (which should be your convictions, by the way). Do not sing these songs! Songs are powerful memorization tools that will stick in the worshipper’s heart long after they leave the building. On that thought, carefully measure what you say between songs and exhort during songs. LOVE the people you serve enough to line up everything you do on stage with the heart of your pastor.

Those are just a few thoughts on leading worship not only with excellence, but with LOVE. I look forward to hearing your thoughts…

8am, Sunday morning. It’s a great time to have a cup of coffee, read the paper, get ready for church, and spend an hour or so worshipping God and hearing the Word taught by your favorite pastor.

8am, Sunday morning. It’s the worst possible time for singers to belt out strong, high notes in an effort to encourage the congregation to sing and get their hearts ready to hear the Word taught by their favorite pastor.

This has been an issue for decades for worship teams who try to bring their best vocal effort 4 or 5 hours before their voices will be naturally warm. The result in most churches is that non-professional singers will strain their vocal chords as they struggle to stay on pitch. I have more than 5000 concerts under my belt, plus 100’s of hours in the studio and it’s still a process to get my voice warm to sing that first service on Sunday morning. Through the years I’ve made a list of “do’s” and “dont’s” that have been a big help not only for me but also for the singers in my worship teams.

Sleep.
It’s important to get plenty of rest the night before you sing. I tell my singers all the time, “Sleep plus water = the only cure for tired voices.” Saturday nights bring the temptation to stay up late. Fight that temptation and go to bed early. Not only will a good night’s rest keep your voice in good shape, but it will also keep you mentally sharp.

Wake up at least 2 hours before you sing a note.
Especially on cold mornings it takes quite a bit of time for our muscles to acclimate to the weather. Waking up early gives the muscles in your throat time to naturally warm up and get adjusted to the new day. Your musicians who are constantly running late because they are getting up at the last minute are usually the ones who are not going to be their best vocally.

Prepare mentally.
It’s not enough to think about what you are going to be doing in the service moments before you walk on stage. I encourage our singers from the moment our first rehearsal ends on Thursday to continue to think about the songs they will be singing, where the notes sit in their voices, and what the song means to them. If they care about the song they are singing they are more apt to make sure they sacrifice to get it right.

Save your energy.
I encourage my singers not to talk loudly or run around too much doing other things before that first service starts at 9am. We have 20-30 minutes in each service in which to use up our mental, emotional, and physical energy. After a worship set, I expect our singers to be spent due to their concentration and use of air (I’ll cover that at the end of this blog), so it’s important that they save their energy for the stage.

Know your limits.
If you are singing for 20-30 minutes during the service, understand that your vocal chords have a limit. Blowing it out in the first couple of songs will more than likely leave you with zilch by the end of the service, at a time when you should be reaching a crescendo of energy and passion. Learn to pace yourself.

Don’t drink caffeine before a performance.
Coffee and caffeinated teas will dry out your vocal chords. We keep herbal caffeine-free teas on hand in our musicians’ hospitality area all weekend long. A mixture of tea, honey, and lemon is perfect for clearing out the junk in the throat. Gross, I know, but it works. Keep these ingredients on hand and encourage your singers to drink it every Sunday morning.

Don’t walk on stage without warming up.
Check out this book for a great way to help your singers warm up and strengthen their voices. Everyone on our team keeps this book with them at all time.

Don’t drink cold water.
You’ve just warmed up your voice and now you’re pouring cold water into it? That doesn’t make any sense at all! Room-temperature water is best for your throat and vocal chords to keep them relaxed and hydrated.

Don’t assume your singers understand what’s about to happen.
With all the planning, rehearsing, sound checking, and warming up, we can, as leaders, sometimes assume that those who follow us onto the stage have a grasp on what the entire service is all about. We’ve only gone over the music with them and told them what we expect them to do when they pick up the mic. As leaders we see the entire picture of the service and if we can let our musicians in on the spirit of the service beyond what they are responsible for, then they will tend to be more enthusiastic.

Give your singers the “ok” to let their emotions out.
I’ve seen it so many times: a singer is concentrating so hard on pitch and phrasing that they forget what they are singing about. Just before we hit the stage I remind them that it’s “ok” to get lost in the moment sometimes. We are approaching God’s throne through worship, and we’re asking the congregation to follow us there. If we are not moved by the presence of God through our worship then there’s no way the audience will be either. Perfection is an unattainable goal, but passion is always achievable. We just have to let it out…

I mentioned breathing earlier and I just want to touch on that for a moment. Air is the key to every singer’s success. A lack of air will cause pitch problems and will result in poor phrasing. I regularly teach my singers to “sing on the breath”, which basically consists of pushing air out of your lungs as much as possible through each phrase. Listen to great singers and you’ll hear not only the notes they sing but the air they ride on as well. Using more air as you sing will also give your song a sense of urgency, just as a an actor would deliver their lines in a passionate way. Check out this blog for more on this subject.

Hope this stuff helps. Let me know how you prepare your team to be its best on Sunday mornings…

On Thursday, July 29, we had the amazing opportunity to host Hillsong Live here at COTM. Since we do a lot of their music it was awesome to be able to let our team peek behind the curtain of the most recognized worship team in the world. I am glad to say that we found Reuben Morgan, Ben Fielding and the rest of the band just as we had hoped they would be – real, engaging, and in love with Jesus!

Having time to reflect on the 12 hours or so that they were here, I have a few observations that I believe can help all of us as worship leaders who desire to do something meaningful with our music and teams. So here are 4 quick thoughts:

MAKE OLDER SONGS FRESH AGAIN
They were here promoting their new project, “Beautiful Exchange”, but they did several of their older songs as well. Instead of rehashing old arrangements they took songs they have been doing for years and made them sound fresh. I’ll be honest, their version of “Mighty to Save” was my favorite moment of the night. They made it interesting and moving, even though I’ve heard and sung that song 1,000 times. It’s motivated us to rethink older songs that we know our congregation loves to sing, but that we have grown tired of as a worship team.

TAKE TIME TO BUILD A MOMENT
Hillsong definitely knows how to “idle” in a worship moment, allowing time for the Spirit in the room to go to another level. Obviously, for most church services, we don’t have 2 hours set aside for worship – 20 or 30 minutes is more likely. But we can always find time to build personal worship moments where our congregation can close their eyes and worship in their own way, without someone telling them what to do.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THEM, OR US
It was refreshing to see artists not being artists. They were here to lead us in worship, not necessarily to sell the “Hillsong” brand. Yeah, they sold cd’s, dvd’s and t-shirts, but I never got the sense, on stage and off, that we were just another stop on the tour. They were kind to our staff and crew, always taking time to compliment our facilities and show genuine interest in our church. They never seemed to put themselves above us. Sometimes as worship leaders we can get caught up in the performance and execution of our sets (and don’t get me wrong – performance and execution are extremely important!), causing us to lose perspective. Why do we do what we do? Ultimately, our worship service is exactly that – service to our church and our pastor. Hillsong modeled this beautifully.

WE ARE NOT HILLSONG
Although we do a lot of their music, we are not them! It’s a good thing to emulate what moves you – vocals, guitar sounds, drum patterns, etc. We spend a lot of time breaking down songs to find out why they work musically and emotionally, and it definitely makes us better at what we do. But at some point we have to realize that we are unique. So many people have emailed us to let us know that although the loved the Hillsong concert, they love what we do here at COTM more. Why? Because we take the best of what we see around us and make it our own, which, honestly, makes it better. It is a constant struggle to stay current by introducing the most exciting new music every week, and yet be sensitive to what music will encourage our people to drop their guard and worship with all they have. To become Hillsong Tulsa is a mistake; to let Hillsong and their music influence us to be better at what we do is more appropriate. And we are better for having met them and having worshipped with them.

Food for thought.

There are times at our church when it gets pretty crazy in our department. Easter, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Romance (women’s event), etc. are just a few examples where our rehearsals can stretch over a span of several days and some of those rehearsals could last 6 hours or more. And in the midst of all that, the weekends keep coming! So it’s important to find ways to keep from burning out our volunteers. These are amazing people who have 9-5 jobs and families and still are able to give of their time to help us put together our events. And they do it with devotion and excitement. But at some point, if we don’t keep them refreshed and focused, we will wear them out.

Here are a few things that we do to help prevent burn-out:

WE MAKE SURE WE ARE PREPARED FOR EACH REHEARSAL
It’s important that our team is not burdened with our lack of preparation. When they walk in the door they should be greeted with enthusiasm and direction. We know what we’re doing, what we expect of them and how long we will be rehearsing that day. We load all of our songs onto Planning Center well ahead of time to make sure everyone is familiar with the feels, keys, and arrangements. As the worship pastor I need to be extremely confident in our vision for the service/event. That alone will relieve stress for our team members.

WE ACCOMMODATE OUR TEAM’S SCHEDULE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
We come up against scheduling obstacles all the time, especially when we need to add rehearsals for a special event. If my drummer’s work schedule changes, I will consider changing rehearsal times so that he doesn’t feel the pressure of making a decision between job and church. If we need an extra vocal rehearsal we may do it on a Sunday after church or Wednesday night before service when I know our singers will be there anyway. In other words, make it as easy as possible for your team to make rehearsal and not feel like they are putting the rest of their life on hold.

WE GET DEEPER
I understand that for small churches it is difficult to have multiple drummers and bass players, or more than 3 or 4 quality vocalists. But that’s no excuse for not seeking more talented people who can help you (read my earlier blog post on ideas on how to develop new talent). We deal with this issue every summer when we send music teams out to Dry Gulch to lead summer camp worship. We dealt with it last year when we had to split up our services between buildings when we remodeled our sanctuary. Motto: you can never have a deep enough roster. Being deeper also allows you to not have to lean on the same people every week. Giving one of your key players or singers a couple weeks off will keep them fresh!

WE LET THEM SEE BEHIND THE CURTAIN
I think it’s important to let our team in on why we do what we do, to help them understand the creative process that got us to this point. When they can buy in to the big picture they are more apt to shrug off tired voices and heavy work schedules. We share our victories with them, letting them know about the lives that have been changed because of the service/event that they were a part of. Nothing will motivate someone more than knowing they are making a difference.

WE HELP EACH ONE GET BETTER AT WHAT THEY DO
By letting our players and singers know that we will do whatever we can to help them get better, we motivate them to stay connected. I will offer vocal and performance instruction to any of my singers who desire to get better. In the past we have set up our players with private teachers. We want everyone to feel as though they are on a journey and we are going to help them any way we can.

WE FELLOWSHIP
We have a nice, comfortable and spacious area each week where our team can relax and have fun between services. We provide food, drinks, WiFi, etc. in an effort to help them relax. We build in fun events for our team several times a year to say “thank you” for all of their hard work. We’ll cater in a nice meal, play games, and give away prizes, letting them know how much we appreciate their hard work throughout the year.

As leaders we need to continually be aware of the “condition of our flock”. Make sure that as you motivate and push your team to do bigger and better things that you don’t lose sight of the gift that your volunteers are giving you: their time.

Comments or questions? Would love to hear them…

“We need more singers and musicians!” This is the cry heard from my department daily. Granted, we are a large church but we also have 6 different worship teams to put together every week. I need quality players and singers in volume. For example, our weekly needs look like this:

FIVEVILLE (4 weekly services for our 4 & 5 year olds)
3 singers 3 dancers

KIDS ON THE MOVE (4 weekly services for 6 yr olds – 5th grade)
5 singers 15 dancers 5 band (1 drummer, 1 keys, 2 elec gtr, 1 bass)

180 JV SERVICE (1 Wed. night service for 6th-10th graders)
2 singers 5 band (1 drummer, 1 keys, 2 elec gtr, 1 bass)

VARSITY SERVICE (1 Wed. night service for HS juniors – 22 yrs old)
1 singer 4 band (1 drummer, 1 keys, 1 elec gtr, 1 bass)

WEDNESDAY MAIN (1 main stage adult service)
4 singers 6 band (1 drummer, 2 keys, 2 elec gtr, 1 bass)

WEEKEND MAIN (3 main stage adult services)
6 singers 6 band (1 drummer, 2 keys, 2 elec gtr, 1 bass)

So as you can see we have a lot of positions to fill. Now let’s go ahead and admit it – as worship pastors we can get comfortable with the teams we have in place. We know their strengths, their work schedules and we develop a rapport with the people we rehearse with and lead services with week in and week out. And thank God for that! It takes a lot of diligence and patience to come up with effective lineups that we can count on to pull off service after service. But the trap is that we can lean too heavily on volunteers whose lives are transitioning, whose jobs are changing, who are getting married and moving across the country, who, honestly, may not be a part of our church six months from now. In that light we are constantly on the lookout for more talent. Here’s how we continually develop musicians and singers at Church On The Move:

WE START THEM YOUNG
We get kids and teens involved as early as we can. We’ll start them singing and dancing in Fiveville and Kids On The Move. The first thing they’ll learn is how to be energetic and engaging. We’ll also tutor our younger singers and players so that in a few years many of them will easily make the jump to the next level.

WE KEEP THEM ENGAGED
We make sure the music they are singing and leading is age appropriate for them, music that they are genuinely interested in. It’s difficult to get a 16 year old excited about singing a worship song that was popular 10 years ago. Conversely, a 40 year old won’t relate to music that seems too young for them. Musicians need music they can relate to – therefore it’s a necessity to match singers and players with music that motivates them and keeps them wanting to come back and serve each week.

WE SET THEM UP TO SUCCEED
Nothing’s more frustrating than being asked to do something you have no gifting for. We carefully match up singers and players with music they can easily wrap their heads around. If someone’s not ready to lead a song vocally, they sing back-up vocals. The same goes for musicians (ever ask a young drummer to play a shuffle?). We find what their strengths and weaknesses are and make sure they are given songs that they can easily nail. Once they have confidence that they can successfully do what we ask them to do, then we let them branch out from there.

WE CREATE A COMMUNITY
The only distinct difference in our 6 different worship teams is the ages of the worshippers we lead each week. Otherwise, all of our teams operate with the same principles of character, preparation and devotion to the church. Our team members understand that it’s just as important to give your all whether your leading 5 year olds in worship or leading songs on the main adult stage. My most accomplished musicians and singers who regularly sing on the main adult stage realize that I could send them to Kids on the Move or any other service at any time so that they don’t lose sight of what our church is all about. And in that we create community – all of us giving our time and talents for a common purpose: to make great music, to become better musicians and to serve the people of Church on the Move.

We believe that purpose breeds enthusiasm, and enthusiasm attracts more people to want to be a part of what we’re doing.

The great thing about talking to and hanging out with other worship leaders is that we get to compare notes, swap ideas, and see how each other manages their worship teams. And without fail, someone always asks: “What’s the schedule for your weekly rehearsals?”

At COTM, we are always tweaking our rehearsal times. We’ve found that it’s prudent to take a hard look at those times now and then and make adjustments as our personnel changes. What worked well for one group of players and singers six months ago may not be the best setup for the current roster. Right now we have several of our musicians on staff in our Performing Arts department, and most everyone else has a fairly flexible work schedule. So, our weekly rehearsal schedule for our main weekend worship services looks like this:

THURSDAY

1:30 PM//Weekend walkthrough with production team

This is a very important first step. Communication of all our ideas with our production team allows us to all start on the same page. They need to know how many singers and players we want on stage, if there will be any dramas or videos, and what the overall tone of the service will be. Our production director, Andrew Stone, spends 20–30 minutes with us as we walk out the service piece by piece.

2:30 PM//Band walkthrough of charts and arrangements (in rehearsal room)

We have a separate rehearsal space that includes a basic drum kit, keys and smaller guitar amps. In this “pre-rehearsal” we make sure everyone understands the charts and direction of each song.

3:15 PM//Electric guitars work on sounds (on stage)

Trying to find the right guitar tones can bring a rehearsal to a grinding halt, yet those sounds can make or break a song. We use this time to get our tones just right so we don’t use up valuable rehearsal time.

4:00 PM//Band rehearsal (on stage)

We’ve now moved everyone to the stage in the main auditorium. Our production team has the stage set to our specifications (as per our earlier meeting at 1:30). There are stage plots, lyrics, run sheets and extra charts at each position so that no one is left in the dark.

5:00 PM//Vocal rehearsal

I’ll take the vocalists to a separate room while the band continues to rehearse. We encourage our singers to get there as early as possible so that they can get a feel for how each song sounds live before they grab their mics.

5:30 PM//Full rehearsal with band and singers

We record this rehearsal and load it onto Planning Center so our team can review before the weekend services.

SATURDAY

3:30 PM//Full rehearsal with band and singers

We expect each worship team member to to have reviewed the rehearsal online and come prepared to play through the set at least 2 full times before the 4:45 full service run-through. We also use this time to pay close attention to the transitions between songs, to make sure we have a good flow for worship.

4:45 PM//Full service run-through

This rehearsal is all hands on deck. We rehearse every detail – songs, welcomes, offering, communion, announcements, dramas, videos, transitions – to make sure everything works well together before our first service on Saturday night.

SUNDAY

8:00 AM//Worship service run-through

This rehearsal’s not really for the worship team (by this time we’ve run the set at least a half dozen times), but for the new set of volunteers who are running cameras or working backstage who were not there the night before.

We’ve had success with this schedule as it allows us time to review our music and it gives our production team time to develop their lighting, sound, and staging cues. It gives us confidence to know we have put together a service that is effective, fun, and meaningful.