Carlos Whittaker offers ideas to sharpen your worship leading skills:

Since I’ve made a purposeful switch to speaking on Sundays more often than leading worship on Sundays, everything is suddenly louder when I lead worship. Preaching 3 Sundays a month and then leading worship 1 Sunday a month has been oh so good for my worship leading soul. Here are some things I’m discovering often go untouched…

1. Make tired songs new by pointing out new truths.
You see it happen. That glazed look not only in the congregations eyes but your bands eyes the second they hear the “do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do dooooo” of the guitar players intro of Mighty to Save.
It’s because there is nothing new about the song after the 43422th time you have done it.
You have to LEAD them.
Lyrics are your friend.
This weekend I introduced the song by pointing out the 2nd verse…
“I know you may have sung this song 1000 times, but the truth of verse two is available for redemption today. No matter the sin of Wednesday night, Monday morning, or last night, Christ wants you desperately and won’t stop pursuing you, so as we sing this today, go to that place of loneliness in your sin, and know that He is there waiting for you, desperately wanting you just the way you are.”
The simple bringing of a lyric to the current situation of the people you stand in front of will make a song brand new.

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Austin Gohn explains why he has started reading and praying the Psalms:

A few weeks ago, someone asked me, “How can I be a disciple if I must endure highs and lows, faith and doubt, trust and fear? I feel like I must doing something wrong.” If someone had asked me that question a year ago, I would have responded with a solutionand a relevant quote. But that day, I suggested we read the Psalms.

This was not my relationship with the Psalms twelve months ago. Before this past year, I only read the Psalms to complete my Bible reading plan. I decided that I was too left-brained to enjoy the Psalms and that maybe they were only helpful for the more creative-types.

Then, as I was reading and studying, I started to notice a recurring theme—almost everyone I admired was into the Psalms from George Muller to J. Hudson Taylor to Eugene Peterson to Tim Keller. As I was reading the gospels, I noticed Jesus was into the Psalms as well—quoting or alluding to them in hillside teachings, temple courts, and from the cross.

The same thought kept nagging at me—if I am learning to live like Jesus, how can I ignore the Psalms? I began to realize that true gospel-centered discipleship requires us to become friends with David, Asaph, Solomon, the Sons of Korah, Moses, Ethan the Ezrahite, and the dozens of other unknown Psalmists.

In response, I started reading and praying the Psalms as an integral part of my own discipleship. Before long, the Psalms influenced the way I discipled others—especially in the way the Psalms validate our emotions, shape our imaginations, and teach us to pray.

1. THE PSALMS VALIDATE OUR EMOTIONS

From the cross Jesus cried out Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Not only did Jesus have the Psalms so rooted in him that they were his words in the most agonizing moment of his life, he experienced abandonment—a feeling shared with the author of Psalm 22.

When I started ministry, people (including my wife) would approach me with emotions they were experiencing. I made the rookie mistake of subtly (and not so subtly) downplaying the truth of their emotions. “Sadness and abandonment didn’t line up with the truth of the gospel,” I would tell them. The more time I spent in the Psalms, though, the more I realized that the gospel is roomy enough for all human emotions.

As a pastor to young adult, I’ve seen how liberating it is for their emotions to find a home in the Psalms. In a letter titled “On the Interpretation of the Psalms” Athanasius writes, “You find depicted in [the Psalms] all the movements of your soul, all its changes, its ups and downs, its failures and recoveries.” You cannot read the Psalms without seeing delight (Ps. 1:2) and depression (Ps. 42:5), gratitude (Ps. 100:4) and grief (Ps. 42:3), and nearly every other emotion (John Piper has a good list). The Psalms teach us that it’s okay to ask God why (Ps. 10:1) or how long (Ps. 13:1-2) and to be honest with how you feel.

The Psalms don’t leave our emotions as they are though. They shape our emotions and give them proper context. I had professor in college who said, “The Psalms provide direction for our emotions without repressing them or giving full vent to them. The Psalms help you learn how to feel.” Each of the Psalms has its own rhythm. We enter these through our emotions and are carried into deeper emotions. Although this rhythm may be compressed into a few verses in a Psalm, our experience may last days or even years.

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Bob Kauflin explains why he begins every service with a call to worship:

Every Beginning Says Something

There are different ways of letting people know the meeting is starting. Some churches run a countdown video. Others have the band kick in to the first song (our practice for decades). Some churches find it effective to have some kind of warm up song before the meeting actually starts. They may or may not invite the congregation to sing along. Some churches begin with a friendly welcome by a leader, and other churches open with announcements. But every beginning communicates meaning, sets an atmosphere and leads people to expect something.

The church is the ekklesia, the “called out ones.” When we gather as God’s people we are being called away from other pursuits to worship God together in a specific place and time. We can worship God indirectly as we play soccer through good sportsmanship and serving others. But we worship him more directly on Sunday mornings as we gather to sing, pray, hear God’s Word preached, and share the Lord’s supper.

A call to worship tells us the meeting has begun, but it communicates much more than that. It emphasizes the primacy of God’s Word, who has called us together, and what we’ve come to do.

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Tinashe Nyamukapa offers a basic checklist for set planning:

As worship leaders our desire should be always to deliver to the people of God that which he has on his heart. Jesus says I always do what I see my Father doing. We have to have insight and be constantly in fellowship with God so that in any church service we deliver what is relevant and effective. Here are some things to consider

• KNOW YOUR CONGREGATION

We minister to different congregations that have different preferences and likes. It does not work to have a list of jazzy songs when your congregation is used to rock or to have a list of Hillsong songs when your congregation does not even know them. You have to be relevant.

• LISTEN TO A LOT OF SONGS

A worship list is just like a meal. The more ingredients you have at your disposal the better the meal you can prepare. I find that the greatest worship leaders are those who listen wide and can create an assortment of songs that will create a worship experience in a service. Listening to a lot of songs will teach you how others lead worship ( give you the recipe so to speak ) and enables you to do medleys as well. Those worship leaders who do not listen to a lot of songs will always have the same boring list every time that does not minister to the congregation and does not lead into the presence.

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Emily Kantner says ministry names don’t need to be clever or catchy; they need to make sense.

Have you ever visited a church for the first time and wondered what on earth the Ignite Ministry could possibly be? Is it a group of pyromaniacs who light things on fire? And should you be worried about sending your kids to Aftershock? Will this be registering on the Richter scale?

Many churches get caught up in trying to find unique names for their ministries. A cool name and trendy logo will set them apart and get people interested, right?

But typically these distinct brands end up having a negative impact for a few reasons:

1) They confuse and alienate people

Using obscure ministry names and acronyms is a great way to keep visitors from returning to your church. Sure, the insiders might understand your reference to a lesser known verse or Bible story, but everyone else is left wondering. Your guests shouldn’t have to decode acronyms or analyze names to find out where they fit in.

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Bobby Gilles explains the differences:

In Sing With Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Hymnody, Harry Eskew and Hugh T. McElrath describe a hymn as a kind of poem set to music. They further write, “It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it.”

Most song lyrics are not really meant to be taken as poetry. If you read them aloud without the music, the lyrics might not seem as powerful. They were meant to be taken with music, and were likely written after or at the same time the music was composed.

Hymns are likewise meant for singing, of course, but hymn lyrics are typically crafted as poetry, independent of music (at least, this is true of the hymns of our past by hymnists like Wesley, Watts, Cowper and Newton). When you read a well-crafted hymn such as “When I Survey The Wond’rous Cross,” you will feel the cadence, even if unaware of the melody composed for it. This is why composers can keep writing new tunes for old hymn texts. It’s also why many people (particularly in ages past) would read hymnals as they would any devotional book, and even delight in the hymns they’d never heard.

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Carlos Whittaker muses on the demise of the megachurch:

For as long as I have been a part of the evangelical “megachurch” the looming question has always been…

“What happens when Alpha Mega Personality Pastor X dies or retires?”

That one question has caused people to question the validity of having a megachurch altogether.

Which I feel is honestly a bit silly.

I’ve seen the megachurch lead millions to Jesus and change lives on a weekly basis.

The question does not need to be whether or not the megachurch is effective…

I believe the question needs to be…

Can we let our church die?

Maybe it splinters off and becomes something new?

Maybe it just shrinks from mega to mini?

Or maybe another big personality takes over?

I don’t think any of these things are bad.

Why must they be bad?

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