The post is a part of a larger series of posts all focused on the topic of the hour before church begins for a worship leader (check out some of the other posts too, there’s lots of good ones). Each post takes a different look and perspective into what goes on for them the hour before.

Being a worship leader carries far more responsibility than what meets the eye. It takes hours of preparation and study of both Scripture and music. It takes hours of practice with the band, vocal, and technical teams. It takes getting a large group of people all on the same page so the church gathering has some structure, flow, and purpose. It’s a lot more than singing 6 songs and going home.

Often in the last minutes leading up to starting I’m deciding whether fixing lyric issues, getting a drink of water, saying hi to people as they arrive, touching base with a band member to clarify a problem we had in practice, or talking with the various pastors involved to nail down some transitions, should be my top priority. I usually have no idea which one is most important, and there is just simply not enough time to balance it all on a normal Sunday.

With all of this going on, it’s difficult to get in the frame of mind to not only lead worship, but also just simply worship myself while balancing a number of details.

As I thought about my hour before, I thought of 4 things I absolutely have to do to be most prepared:

1. Spend time with the band and vocals- There’s a debate on whether the worship leader should spend time greeting people as they arrive or if time should be focused towards those the leader is serving with for the day. I tend to focus more of my time bonding with the people I’m serving with because I notice a difference in our ability to play together when we’ve related together.
2. Pray- After a difficult practice, I often try to convince myself that I need time to mentally go through the details rather than pray. But inevitably I take the time to pray myself and with the team and I realize afterwards why I’ve made that a priority before. As I’m walking on stage my prayer is always, “God use me as you would.” It’s a humbling prayer, putting me under Him instead of over Him.
3. Run Through Everything in My Head- This isn’t my top priority because I always like to run through the transitions between songs as well as any specific things I know I want to share. I usually don’t do this out loud, that would make me look weird, but I do take a few quiet moments to process all of the key parts I have during the church gathering.
4. Come with Expectation- Too often I approach a church gathering with no anticipation for the ways God is going to work and with no expectation for him to show up in a powerful way. Far too often I go through the motions as I prepare to take the stage. Because I’m leading worship so often I rarely find myself anticipating God to show up in a unique way. I think there’s a strong correlation to sensing a connection with God in worship and the expectation/anticipating we enter into worship with.

For those of you involved in church, what are some things you do the hour before to prepare well?

Recently I read a post put up by a fairly well-known and well-read blog titled “How to Tell If a Worship Leader is a Superstar Wanna-Be.” Oh joy, another post tearing a part worship leaders. It was everything I had hoped for. Here’s a couple of my “favorite” lines from the post about superstar worship leaders…

• You changed your Church 7 times in the last 3 years as your “God-given” ministry of becoming the hottest worship leader / songwriter did not find the best of support.
• You can’t understand why your Pastor is not willing to give a makeover for your Church to look and sound like Hillsong.
• You believe worship is not complete without young ‘worshipers’ in front of the stage with clenched fists up in the air, moshing and cheering.
• You don’t believe there’s any real difference between ‘worship’ and ‘music.’
• You spend more time sending demo recordings to recording labels than in personal prayer/Bible reading/worship team rehearsals/planning.

At first I read this and thought there must be some sort of sarcastic element to it. I thought that because I’ve never met any worship leader who is even moderately close to this sort of behavior and attitude. But no, it wasn’t sarcastic. I don’t know the author personally, but I’ve read some of what else he has written and he has a lot of great things to say.

A post like this does nothing but fuel the anti-worship leader mentality that so many in church have. This mentality is nothing more than a me-first attitude about getting what we want out of our times of worship as the body of Christ.

I’ve always thought that perception is reality. And while this post paints worship leaders in a completely unrealistic and unfair light, the more people post about worship leaders being like this, the more people will believe it actually to be true.

What we really need is more people who are willing to extend a hand and word of encouragement to their worship leader/pastor. By no means am I a perfect worship leader and often I am my harshest critic and I never take criticism lightly. There are many people who say thank you or good job after a worship set and I am grateful for those people. Instead of taking time to complain about what didn’t go right, take some time to give specific encouragement, I promise it will mean so much to the worship leader.

Here’s what I know to be true of most worship leaders I’ve met and know well:

• They would shudder at the idea of someone thinking of them as a superstar before being a leader of worshipers.
• They are constantly trying to be creative with how their church can worship together beyond just singing.
• They spend hours in thought and prayer for how to be lead their people on a weekly basis.
• They understand the importance of them being servants to their church and worship team in order to lead well.

Anyone can make fun of the worship leader.

Doesn’t mean you should.

“Churches who have senior pastors who sing out during worship, generally are churches who sing well. Churches who have senior pastors who don’t sing out during worship, generally are churches who don’t sing well.”

The context for the quote comes from his extensive traveling to churches all over the world and this is one way he’s distinguished between churches who sing or don’t sing well.

There’s two sides to the argument that comes following a quote like that. One side would say people should keep their worship focused on God not on their pastor. The other side would say a pastor who can’t worship in public probably has a private worship problem. Steven Furtick touched on this in a post he wrote on similar topic.

A couple quick thoughts of my own:

• The men and women who have been called to lead local church bodies have a duty to provide a helpful example.
• I lead worship for student ministry programs multiple times a week and I’m always trying to balance what it means for me to truly worship while also being an example to the students of what a posture of worship in a corporate setting can and should look like. To say the students shouldn’t be watching me is somewhat naive, because they are, it’s a reality.

What’s your response to this?

I’ve been to a few Lutheran churches before that used some liturgy during their gatherings (my grandparents belong to a Lutheran church) and all I remember is being fairly bored the entire time (I’m sure some of this had to do with me being young and always being expected to go to church).

This weekend I’m leading our Palm Sunday gatherings and made a decision to use some liturgical type readings within the worship time. It isn’t something I would describe as normal or abnormal for my church, though it is abnormal for me.

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on liturgy as you’ve experienced it at your churches.

Have you experienced liturgy to be a good and worshipful thing? Or lifeless and boring?

How have you seen it done it most effectively?

So I thought I’d throw together a list of resources. Some I use everyday, others I use once a month, but they all get used consistently by me.

• The Open Source Book- A great resource of readings, liturgical writings, and other Scriptures that fit well within a worship set. It is basically just a blog, but it hasn’t been updated in a while either. However there is a lot of great stuff already posted.
• Planning Center- My lifesaver. I couldn’t imagine doing my job without this anymore. Whether it be putting a worship set together, planning the band/vocals/tech, or getting music out to those who need it, I use Planning Center for hours almost everyday. And when I’m on stage I use their Music Stand app to view pdf files, which saves me around $200 a year in paper printing costs.
• IWillWorship.com- I’ve used this site a lot more often in the past, and even though it doesn’t have the best interface I find it to be a great way to find guitar charts for most any worship song.
• Transposr.com- Like most worship leaders I can sing with Tomlin but it doesn’t mean I always want to. Most songs written today need to be adjusted so the congregation and main worship leader can sing them well. This website lets you adjust the key of an mp3 with ease. I use it once a week.
• WorshipTogether.com- Looking for new music, or free sheet music, or videos explaining why a song was written? This is your spot.
• CCLI and Song Select- CCLI has done a great job of being more than just a licensing company. I use their Song Select site through the licensing we pay for as a church to find quality charts. Many songs have lyric sheets, guitar charts, piano charts, and even hymn styled charts.
• PraiseCharts- From what I’ve seen and used, it is the best site for finding any kind of chart for almost any well-known song.
• Church Online- I primarily watch LifeChurch.tv to see what songs they’re doing, but there are hundreds of churches that allow you to join them live. Here’s a great list of churches who stream their services online.

Honorable Mention- LifeWay has put together a great resource website that I don’t use but have heard many great things about. Here’s a great worship blog with a great community to bounce off thoughts and ideas with in the forums. I would also recommend Twitter as a great way to converse with other worship leaders about what songs are working at their church. Many of the songs I sing with the youth and on Sunday mornings have come through the help of social networks.

I hope this is helpful for you.

What did I miss?

As I spent some time thinking through what to share, I thought of things I wish an older worship leader would have taught me when I was a younger worship leader. Certainly I haven’t figured it all out, but I think I’ve learned a few things over the last 10 years of consistently leading worship for youth and adults. Here’s 3 things I’ve learned that I wish an older worship leader would have taught me long ago:

1. Create a culture of worship through authentic sharing, exhortation, and example. I hear all the time how this church and that church has an amazing “culture of worship.” It’s definitely an overused phrase. And even though I don’t like this idea of a culture of worship, I do think a worship leader has great effect on how their congregation worships when they gather. Authentic sharing helps make that person on stage become a real person. Leading by example means showing what worshiping during a church gathering looks like and what being a worshiper of Christ looks like outside of church.
2. Plan ahead. I’ve found that I lead most effectively usually when I have planned ahead more than normal. Any worship leader can put together a great music set and get music to the band/vocals, but very few worship leaders think through how they want to transition between songs and how they want to intro the gathering. It’s those things that allow you to lead well in the moment instead of stumbling over your thoughts.
3. Be intentional. My biggest pet peeve is pointless dead space in between songs at church. The worship leader stares at the band as they fumble over their music trying to start the next song and the congregation usually stands wondering what is going on. I do my very best to avoid those moments because they lack intentionality. As a younger worship leader I rarely thought through the flow of a music set and rarely was intentional with the moments outside of a song that I had control over.

There’s a lot of worship leaders who read this blog. I’d love to hear what advice you would give a younger worship leader.

A few weeks ago I led the morning worship gatherings at Sunset and shared some of what I’ll say in this post. Over the summer I had the stark realization that I had become a full-time worship leader and a part-time follower of Christ. I lead worship a lot. Most weeks I am on stage over 20 hours a week, for 4 different weekly gatherings. It kind of feels like being on tour, except it isn’t a month long.

I had become more focused on what I did than who I was.

I think this is easy to do: to become lost in how we work out our salvation before focusing on who our salvation comes from. Coming to this realization was extremely hard, because it showed me how far away from Christ-centered I had gotten.

I know I’m not alone in this. Many of us have at some point gotten good at faking things by becoming “excellent” at what we do without even thinking about why we do it. Or we’re good at looking like we have our spiritual life all in order, when the reality is quite the opposite.

As this became clear over a vacation I took in August I made a very focused effort to do this school year different.

It meant watching less sports, reading fewer blogs, using Twitter/Facebook less, it meant sacrificing some time with friends and my wife (yes, my wife too), but it also meant that the main thing would be the main thing in my life. I’m taking extra time to do reading outside of my required reading for school. I’m waking up earlier to read the Bible and spend time in prayer before I start my day. To do more of that has meant sacrificing other things. I simply cannot be a truly successful worship leader if I’m not leading from a heart of worship.

I heard Craig Groeschel say, “The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be is the pain you are unwilling to endure.”

Those words pierced me when I heard them. For me it meant sacrificing the time outside of work that I hoard to myself instead of giving it to God. My job has such a high level of responsibility week in and week out that I tend to come home and spend a few hours wasting away. I had gotten really good about being intentional with my time at work but not at home.

In the end, our lives are not our own, they were bought for a high price.

And we should be living lives that are first focused on Him, after that we then figure out how life continues in a way that honors Him.

I’d welcome your reaction to this.

However, I am a big fan of re-arranged hymns. In fact, when done right I believe it is a powerful way to bring the ancient to today.

There are a fair share of people at my church who cringe every time we do a new arrangement of a hymn but I believe it helps keep the song fresh. Too often we sing songs that are familiar and never meditate on what they mean.

My favorite rearranged him is “Jesus Paid it All” by Kristian Stanfill. I love it because it holds to the well known melody line as it was originally written and also has a powerful added bridge.

What is your favorite rearranged hymn?

Name a good one and we might do it at my church.

We’ve done it with other songs as well. Now and then a song loses the life it once had in a church because it has become too familiar or comfortable.

Usually when we make a decision to “retire” a song for a period of time it is because the song once brought people to life and had energy and has since seemed to lack all of that.

Just as there is a danger of doing too many new songs, there is also the danger of only doing what is familiar and comfortable. Both can suck the life out of the worship times for a community.

For you worship leaders: what songs have you recently had to retire for a while?

For you church attenders: what song does your church need to retire?

3 funny (or odd) things about that:

1. Most hymns aren’t really “hymns.” Hymns in a musical sense have no chorus, but a lot of “hymns” do.
2. The Bible speaks about singing a new song, and I don’t think we should take that too literally but it is a helpful reminder that even the best things in life become meaningless when done over and over without purpose.
3. Everyone’s “hymns of the faith” list is different.

In my years of doing youth worship in high school all the way to today I’ve ran into many people who think songs written long ago have better theology than those written today.

Considering I’m a relatively young guy, I find that opinion to be a shot against my generation which, as a whole, isn’t hymn crazy. But I also don’t think it is true.

I’ve talked before about horrible lyrics in today’s praise and worship music, but I there is plenty around that is rooted in Scripture and has a richness to it. I ran across a song by a newer artist named John Mark McMillan this past week that I think is a great example of this this richness. It was a song he set out to write in the style of a hymn (though it does have a chorus, so like “How Great Thou Art” it isn’t really a hymn).

I’ve often found hymns to be written with a confusing language to those lacking in some theological or Biblical training. And this song (“Death In His Grave”) has enough of that to need explanation after a listen through. Some people call that a Biblical/theological richness, others just call it confusing. Here’s the chorus (check out the whole song lyrics here):

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke holding keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

(watch the video here)

I guess my whole point is this:

It is Jesus we are after in our churches. At least I hope so. Plenty of the songs being written today draw us closer to Jesus through lyrics, just as much as hymns do. Hymns are not Canon. Neither are contemporary worship songs.

It is not the songs we should care about, it is the God we sing about in the songs that matters.