articles

Jamie Harvill offers ideas for improving your musicians: Worship bands generally rely on developing their song arrangements organically. Even with a proper chord chart, it’s left to each player to determine their specific parts. Listening skills and musical discipline is a learned-trait for most players, and unless we as leaders…

David Gutekunst on tighter praise bands: I fought it for a long time but finally caved. I am now a proud user of the click-track when I lead. The first few weeks were tough and brought back some painful memories of sheet music, scales and a metronome when I was…

Rich Birch on managing your announcements: Ministry leaders think if they just get their event or program “promoted from the stage” people will flood into it. Church communications people are peppered with requests all the time for people wanting to get “their deal” in the announcements. The urgency from those…

J. Lee Grady compiled a list: 1. Talking during a service. 2. Texting or surfing the web during a service. (One person mentioned seeing people playing video games on their phones.) 3. Sleeping—or snoring!—during a sermon. 4. Clipping fingernails during church. (I was amazed at how many people listed this…

Mixing tips from Chris Huff: Saturday, I was conducting an audio training session and I was given the opportunity to work on their mix with the worship band. The mix was pretty good so instead of re-building their full mix, I focused on cleaning up the mix. There are seven areas…

Jon Nielson provides insightful and practical tips: “What do we do about our kids?” The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I’m a high school pastor, but for once, they weren’t talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a…

Jaime Brown on drummer drama: This is a post I can write at the moment, since (praise the Lord) I have the joy of working with several gifted drummers on my church’s worship team who do a great job and are joys to work with. But sometimes drummers can be…

The famed preacher spoke on a contemporary topic over 100 year ago: “How much public singing, even in the house of God, is of no account! How little of it is singing unto the Lord! Does not the conscience of full many among you bear witness that you sing a…

Joseph Mattera on the decline of doctrine: The following are signs of a hypergrace church: 1. The preachers never speak against sin. If you are in a church like this, you will notice that the word sin is usually only mentioned in the context of forgiveness of sins in Christ…

Ray Deck on using a dB meter: At some point, every pastor will face criticism about music volume. A few preemptive steps will go a long way to prepare you for the inevitable noise complaint. Noise complaints are usually subjective, made on feeling or impression. It’s important to measure the…

Tim Price on promoting from within: Worship leaders, more than most other church staff roles, seem to come from within. With a higher rate than pastors, youth pastors, etc., many worship leaders seem to have attended their church before serving on staff. There are probably many factors for this: culture…

Jon Acuff on church misspelling: Recently I did a post about noticing typos in the worship music. The comments on that post were funnier than the post. Here are the best, completely real, typos people have noticed at church: 1. “Lord, You are more precious than silver… Lord, You are…

If you’ve ever driven by a church with a clever saying on its marquee, you know how important a sign can be. “Call 911: This Church is On Fire!” “Exercise Daily: Walk with the Lord.” “Exposure to the Son May Prevent Burning.” All of these signs say different things about…