Ryan Holck says the Church could learn a few things about Disney’s dreaming:

At Disney’s California Adventure there is a room called The Blue Sky Cellar. This room showcases the newest projects, dreams and plans that Disneyland is working on. They invite you to follow a project from the no holds barred “ Blue Sky” dreams of the Disney Imagineers to the final delivery and public unveiling.

Walking through the building is an incredible lesson in dreaming big. Each Disney project begins with a Blue Sky session. During these sessions the goal is to dream of the project possibilities, not get bogged down in the what if’s and budget concerns. There will be time to be realistic later, first they want to consider the creative options. Often the process of dreaming reveals solutions they never would have considered if they had started with the what if’s.

The church could learn a few things from this process.

When it comes to technology and creative visuals we approach projects with our list of what if’s and derail the process before it has even begun.

As you read through this list of creative options for your church video projector I encourage you to dream. You might find a solution in the process that makes the idea become reality.

Multi-Screen

This is the most common projection use in churches. While it is not new, it is still incredible effective. If you are just transitioning to using projectors or looking to expand it is a good place to start.

There are 2 main set-ups to consider

• 2 Screens – Typically hung on the outside edges of the stage with matching content sent to each screen. This can help tremendously is you are in a wide building.
• 2 + 1 Screens – This takes the previous design and adds a center screen to the mix. Most set ups give you the option to send different content to the outside and center screens. This way you can add a video feed, show slides or include sermon illustrations without having all the screen remain the same.

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Scott Lencke asks the question:

There are not a few tragedies in the history of the church. The Crusades, the killing of those who do not line up with the Christian faith (or one particular branch of the faith), mixing the Christian faith with colonialism, particular church denominations aligning themselves with particular political parties, the despising of 2,000 years of church history…and we could probably go on and on.

But one of the great tragedies of the church today is simply this: Consumerism.

This tragic reality peaks its head around many a corners in many a ways. From how we tailor our services, to the teams of musicians that lead us, to the over-the-top concert-style productions, to the expectations set upon children’s ministries, to the need we feel to take pics during the gathered times of worship and post on social media, to the desire to formulate the next best hashtag campaign on Twitter, to a host of other gimmicks. We are running this thing like an entertainment center or business corporation.

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Petri Nauha gives an excellent analysis on a problem that plagues today’s churches:

Is the church platform exclusive for the select few or should it be a place to raise up people who are gifted to lead?

There are many great worship bands that tour and record albums to spread the gospel, and many small churches that lead worship with very few people in their teams. Both bring much glory to God, but I’m sometimes amazed when some big churches in urban areas with over 1,000 attendees have the same worship team with only 5-6 people on stage every Sunday. It seems like a physical impossibility to not have a bigger team, but after thinking about it I’ve realized they might have fallen prey to a mentality of a worship band instead of a worship team. Secular bands are content with 3-6 members and can work efficiently to create a commercially viable entity to become famous and make lots of money for their record label and themselves, but those things should not motivate us. How then do we end up thinking this model would work for Sunday worship?

Worship bands in Sunday services exist in a cocoon of stages and green rooms, barely having contact with regular churchgoers. They seek each other out and can become an exclusive group of artists living an isolated life in the middle of God’s people. I want to challenge all of us to break that bubble and train our band members and singers to become a part of our church family on a deeper level, engaging in Sunday services by going out and mingling with non-musicians, during the week by attending small groups, and even volunteering for non-musical service opportunities. We should be modeling the love of Christ to all people, and isolation just doesn’t work. If we only share life with other musicians, we will miss out on profound wisdom from people that are not on the worship team.

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Ed Stetzer says there must be good continual open communication between the pastor and the worship leader.

Dear worship leader,

You are one of the most important people in the life of our church.

You are entrusted with the task of standing before our people weekly and leading them into the very presence of God. Your role is to point people to Jesus, not yourself; yet, you do so through an art that is incredibly personal and that you’ve worked tirelessly to perfect. Your role requires you to be a gifted artist continually honing your craft, a theologian, and a leader. All of those things combined make yours an arduous task.

The Bible references the predecessors of the modern worship leader in several places, such as the list of people in 1 Chronicles 25 whose job it was to “to prophesy accompanied by lyres, harps, and cymbals” in the temple (25:1). The Scriptures are also filled with admonitions to worship, very often including song. “Praise the Lord in his sanctuary” (Psalm 150:1). “Let us offer up the sacrifice of praise” (Heb 13:15). “Sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs” (Col 3:16). So yours is, in my view, a clearly articulated biblical role.

Even so, your responsibility brings with it some pretty big challenges. Music can easily become one of the more controversial things within the life of the church. Everyone in our church has an opinion, often in direct opposition to another, and each will expect you to satisfy both somehow.

You will need to be more contemporary and less so, louder and softer, and create a “better mix” in the house sound, whatever that means, and you will need raise the ratio of one style to another and vice versa—all simultaneously.

As your pastor, I want to encourage you to feel free to to listen to people’s suggestions, but focus on pleasing the Lord in the manner that we, as a church and elders, have chosen to affirm, stylistically and culturally. Refer any concerns to me or the elders. We trust you, and we have your back.

That said, we as leadership in the church do have a few things we’d like for you to know that we believe to be best for the manner of worship leadership for our church.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best or only way to lead, period. It is simply what makes the most sense for our people, that bears our particular emphases, and relates to both our theology and history.

Here they are:

1. As a church family, we’d like to collectively “own” only a certain number of songs from which we regularly draw.

We’d like for these to be “our” songs—songs that we love, that resonate with who we are, and that we enthusiastically engage as a church body. Worship leaders almost always know far more songs than the churches they serve and are tempted to constantly introduce new ones. We need to throttle that down. We currently have an active list of 100 songs that we’d like to keep in rotation. You are welcome to add new songs at the pace of about one a month and rotate songs off the list, if needed.

It is important that the church has that list, not just each worship leader. So, when you come in, you come into our songs and, as you add another, you take one out—but the list does not start over with you when you come to our church. 😉

Maybe that feels like we always sing the same songs. However, remember, you constantly think about music. You listen to and write new music regularly, both of which are great things. The rest of the church, however, is not like you in that way.

By the time you get to worship on Sunday, you’ve practiced at home, sung the songs as you prepared charts for the band, practiced with the band, and made changes in your head throughout the week. You know these songs well. The congregation, on the other hand, may sing them two or three times a year. Thus, it is important that we focus on our list of songs and shape it slowly and thoughtfully from there.

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Slingshot Group’s Monty Kelso offers practical and spiritual ideas:

• Know yourself: Be in touch with your complete story. Your family upbringing, life experiences, significant relationships and education all shape who you are. The redemptive work of God in you is never finished. Being vulnerable about your strengths and weaknesses only brings out more authenticity (high on the list of “key qualities”). If you’ve never dealt with your baggage, then get on with it so as not to drag those issues in to your next ministry.  Intensive discipleship and mentoring helps you “become”!
• Abide in The Spirit: Finding peace in God’s perfect provision will help you get a job. Churches want to hire worship leaders who model the fruit of The Spirit. Fear is your greatest enemy in this process. Let your love relationship with God rid you of fear and free you to be the attractive aroma of Christ….the “it factor” in a church context. Who you are trumps what you can do.
• Determine your biggest “YES”! Knowing what your gifts and skills are (and aren’t) helps you define yourself and represent well. As you determine your bigger “yes” you are able to confidently say “no” to other things that may undermine your focused best. Be humble yet confident (in Christ) about what you can bring to a church that will make them a better community.
• Make Biblical conclusions: Worship leaders who know their Bible and live it authentically have an edge in getting hired. When it comes to theology and doctrine these days the tendency is to embrace the gray and live in the land of “whatever”.  Making well founded conclusions based on your interpretation of scripture shows that you’ve taken the time to study and show yourself approved.  As a leader, don’t be afraid of putting a stake in the ground in what you believe. As you evolve, you can always move it later.
• Seek a unified calling: If you are married, dig in hard with your spouse to determine the things that matter most to you as a family. Avoid over spiritualizing the journey.  Be pragmatic! Realize there are some factors about a move to a new church and community that must be discussed and agreed upon. Avoiding the hard discussions can lead to a bad decision resulting in a short term stint that is not good for you or the church.

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