articles

Thom Rainer on Megachurch trends: The fascination with megachurches is, at least to some extent, related to the sociological impact on the community in which it resides. Outreach magazine, in partnership with LifeWay Research, just released its annual “Largest and Fastest Growing Churches in America” issue. In addition, the magazine…

Ron Edmondson on church burnout: This is a hard word for some pastors, but after a recent post I was asked about how I protect my Sabbath. That’s a great question, because many pastors struggle in this area. In fact, many pastors I know who would teach their church to…

Building and maintaining good, useable websites are a struggle for churches of all sizes. Large and small alike have websites that don’t accurately represent who they are and don’t help people better connect with their church. There are many reasons why websites don’t reach their potential, but here are three…

Scott McClellan on worship planning: Churches everywhere should be thinking carefully and critically about how their local bodies worship week in and week out because, according to the triple-lex, our worship practices and patterns have lasting affects on individuals, families, and communities. But maybe, instead of thinking first about what…

There isn’t a worship leader in the world who doesn’t struggle with regular, persistent, frustratingly silly (but still dangerous) moments of doubt/fear/anxiety/self-consciousness/jealousy. We start to believe myths that tell us we should be different, or we aren’t talented enough, or we shouldn’t uphold certain principles. These myths weaken our ministry…

Recently I was visiting a church with a non-musical friend and he commented the music wasn’t that great. It wasn’t – and I explained to him why. The band was good – above average, actually, but the problem wasn’t musicianship – it was worship flow. The praise team led three…

The number of megachurches may have exploded in the U.S. over the last few decades but the landscape is changing and people are seemingly less attracted to the big box churches or the “come and see” experience, two pastors observed. “The megachurch is kind of like the great shopping malls…

NYC’s Redeemer Church Pastor Tim Keller: One of the basic features of church life in the United States today is the proliferation of worship and music forms. This in turn has caused many severe conflicts within both individual congregations and whole denominations. Most books and articles about recent worship trends…

from Tom Lawson: Contemporary getting old? Well, certainly for some people this may be true. But there is another sense it which it is true for everyone. Contemporary music is increasingly tapping into the ancient history of worship to recover lyrics and thoughts the move beyond the “dating Jesus” lyrics…

Apart from a substandard worship team on stage, the 2 biggest distracters during the worship session are: Badly mixed overall sound Onscreen lyrics that are not easy to read Here are some tips to take care of potential distractions: 1. Font. There are fonts which are glitzy and look hip and…

Len Wilson on worship backgrounds: My favorite way to do song backgrounds in worship is not shifting blobs of color. Most large, contemporary-style worship services have settled into a routine for worship projection that displays individual lines of songs over random colors, shaped and lines. Continue reading.

Artist Michael Gungor on songwriting: While crafting is important for most songwriting expressions across genres, it is particularly important for congregational music. The songs we sing in our churches don’t just express our theology; they help form it. When we write songs for people to sing as a spiritual act…