People often deride church websites for their lack of utility and beauty. And while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, web content strategists have many ways to judge the utility of a site. The ROT analysis is among the simplest.
To conduct a ROT analysis, just audit each page in your website’s architecture. Like food, web pages can go rotten. To find rotten pages, ask yourself if each page you inspect is Redundant, Outdated or Trivial.
1 This Is Amazing Grace
Jeremy Riddle, Josh Farro, Phil Wickham
2 10000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)
Jonas Myrin, Matt Redman
3 Lord I Need You
Christy Nockels, Daniel Carson, Jesse Reeves, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Maher
4 Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)
Joel Houston, Matt Crocke, Salomon Ligthelm
5 Forever (We Sing Hallelujah)
Brian Johnson, Christa Black Gifford, Gabriel Wilson, Jenn Johnson, Joel Taylor, Kari Jobe
6 How Great Is Our God
Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Ed Cash
7 Cornerstone
Edward Mote, Eric Liljero, Jonas Myrin, Reuben Morgan, William Batchelder Bradbury
8 One Thing Remains
Brian Johnson, Christa Black Gifford, Jeremy Riddle
9 Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)
Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio, John Newton
10 Our God
Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Jonas Myrin, Matt Redman
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1 10000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)
Jonas Myrin, Matt Redman
2 This Is Amazing Grace
Jeremy Riddle, Josh Farro, Phil Wickham
3 Lord I Need You
Christy Nockels, Daniel Carson, Jesse Reeves, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Maher
4 Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)
Joel Houston, Matt Crocker, Salomon Ligthelm
5 How Great Is Our God
Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Ed Cash
6 Cornerstone
Edward Mote, Eric Liljero, Jonas Myrin, Reuben Morgan, William Batchelder Bradbury
7 One Thing Remains
Brian Johnson, Christa Black Gifford, Jeremy Riddle
8 Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)
Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio, John Newton
9 Our God
Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Jonas Myrin, Matt Redman
10 Forever (We Sing Hallelujah)
Brian Johnson, Christa Black Gifford, Gabriel Wilson, Jenn Johnson, Joel Taylor, Kari Jobe
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Laura Blankenship explains how she’s building up leaders:
You’ve heard it a million times, right? “Great leaders raise up new leaders.” My annual evaluation is coming up and I can already hear the words coming out of my pastor’s mouth, “On the worship team, who has the potential to be a worship leader? What are you doing about it? When will they be ready?”
When I started leading worship at my church two years ago, I had four volunteers. FOUR. I didn’t even have a complete band. So thoughts of ‘replacing myself’ and ‘building up leaders’ went straight out the window. It felt impossible.
Two years later, we now have 24 volunteers on the worship team. One of those is now leading worship at our other campus and I am training two aspiring worship leaders. How did we get here? That’s a big, huge, long answer. So how about we start with the first part of the process.
Here are some things I have learned about how to spot future worship leaders:
A potential WL is sold out to Jesus and the church vision.
This is by far, #1. When you think about the volunteers on your worship team, who stands out as someone who is there to serve Jesus first? Here’s another way to look at it. Who do you see that is growing in their faith? I’m not talking about the person who knows the most about the Bible. As a leader, you should be able to spot those under you who are seeking Jesus and taking steps in their relationship with God.
Don’t forget about your church’s mission and vision. The people you are looking for are the one’s who “get it”. That’s how you would describe them to others. They are probably not the ones who are sure to tell you every time they disagree with a song choice or the ones who ask you, “When’s my next solo?” every Sunday. Just sayin’.
A potential WL loves people.
A worship leader HAS to show love to people. There are some Sundays I find myself chanting, “Choose love. Choose love. Choose love” in my head because I don’t “feel” it. As humans, we don’t always feel like being loving. But as a potential worship leader, do you see them choosing it?
A potential WL is excited to serve on your team.
It’s all in the attitude, folks. A potential WL is pumped to learn a new song. They ask questions like, “When am I on the schedule next?” and “Can I play/sing more often?” I recently had a volunteer (vocalist) as me, “How can I become more necessary to the team?” What a GREAT question. Now, that is someone who is invested in this ministry!
A potential WL is striving to improve their craft.
A potential WL does not think that they are good enough. They have the “never settle” spirit. One of the volunteers I am currently training plays the guitar and sings. She text me yesterday that she just learned how to play “How Can It Be” on the piano. She is actively trying to learn and have a better understanding of other instruments. Look for the people on your team who practice a lot, put in the extra time, and come to you asking how they can get better. That vocalist who asked about becoming necessary? She’s taking guitar lessons.
A potential WL brings ideas to the table.
They are out there listening to new music and tossing out song ideas. They text you mid-week with an idea for a killer opener.
Towards the beginning of my WL life, I had a volunteer ask if we could pray for each other at every practice. (And then I was embarrassed that this wasn’t my idea) That idea has turned into a team habit and has seriously brought us closer together. A potential WL has creative thoughts to offer.
A Potential WL has a desire to lead.
They honestly have to want to. As their leader, it’s our job to keep the lines of communication open so we know where their desires are. Maybe they have all of these qualities and are an amazing team member but becoming a worship leader is not right for their life right now. Talk to your team. But more importantly, listen.
Do you have some names popping into your head already? I hope so! Notice, I didn’t talk much about actual music talent. Hopefully, they have some of that since they are already on the worship team. BUT honestly, it’s not as crucial. Their heart is crucial.
What do you look for?
I recently embarked on a major research project for a new resource I will soon be offering. Part of my research included a long review of thousands of comments made on this site over the past few years. Though my research had another purpose, I became intrigued by the comments related to church traditions.
Of course, by “traditions,” I am referring to those extra-biblical customs that become a way of life for many congregations. A tradition is neither inherently good nor bad. Its value or its distraction in a given church really depends on how members treat the traditions.
With that in mind, I began noting the most frequently defended traditions in churches. As a corollary, these traditions can also be a potential source of divisiveness. They are ranked here according to the frequency of the comments.
1. For the first time ever, America is not a majority Protestant nation. Only 47 percent of America identified as Protestant in 2014. At 81 percent, Mississippi is the most Protestant state in the union and Massachusetts is the least at 26 percent.
2. White Christians are the minority in 19 states. Hawaii and California have the smallest white Christian populations of any state—20 percent and 25 percent, respectively. White Christians also make up a modest proportion of the residents in other western states, including Oregon (43 percent), Washington (42 percent), Nevada (36 percent), and Arizona (38 percent).
3. More than 1-in-5 Americans are religiously unaffiliated. At 22 percent, the religiously unaffiliated rival other major religious groups in size, such as American Catholics, who make up 22 percent of the population. Young people are also three times more likely than seniors to be religiously unaffiliated—34 percent vs. 11 percent.
4. In fact, the religiously unaffiliated is the largest religious groups in 13 states, including Oregon (37 percent), New Hampshire (35 percent), Washington State (33 percent), and Vermont (32 percent).
5. The Northeast is still Catholic country. Over one-third (34 percent) of Northeast residents identify as Catholic—and 77 percent of the Catholics are white. Rhode Island is the most Catholic state in the union—more than 4-in-10 (44 percent) Rhode Islanders are Catholic.
At most churches, it’s embarrassing to show up late. But if you arrive early at Greg Stultz’s church, you might interrupt the hosts’ last-minute preparations as they put away homework or toss shoes up the stairs.
Stultz and his family are part of a house church. They typically meet on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, though the week that I visited they were meeting in Dover, Del. Each week, their small group crowds into a private living room for dinner and fellowship — and their church is no rarity.
With new church construction at its lowest point since 1967, and with more religiously unaffiliated Americans than ever before, many congregations say they’ve become more committed communities by losing the pews and stained-glass windows of a central building.
Matt McChlery encourages worship leaders to maintain a connection with Christianity’s rich history:
A couple of years ago during a joint Christmas service with a group of other church denominations in my town, the minister who was leading the service did something radical, and completely unacceptable – he read a prayer!
Well, let me explain. It was unacceptable according to a young, enthusiastic teenager who was with me and who had known no other expression of church other than that of the evangelical where prayers are almost always made up on the spot and are ‘from the heart’. I could understand his reaction to this different approach, however I did not agree with it.
Don’t you find that as we try to do things in church a little more ‘freely’ we have put a strong emphasis on the spontaneous? There is definitely a place for this. Following form and structure rigidly and absolutely can lead to just simply going through the motions and can rip the heart and meaning out of anything – even church. We should and must leave space for the Holy Spirit to be able to move in our midst and to change the agenda or the structure of a service if He wants to.
This page is an example of trendy Personal Blog. It has the different header and specific Grid layout of posts. You can import it for your site based on Impreza.