In just a few days, thousands of churches all over the world will celebrate Easter. Some churches will have Easter egg hunts for the kids. Other churches will have elaborate cantatas, drama productions, or extended times of music. Some churches will celebrate the Lord’s Supper. In some assemblies, the pastor will deliver a message on the resurrection, and the church will have a fellowship meal together. Regardless of how a church commemorates this day, nearly all churches have one thing in common–they want to have a powerful Easter worship service. How can it be done?

Having a powerful Easter worship service isn’t about following five steps or adhering to a certain pattern. Powerful worship services aren’t the result of following rules. Powerful worship services are about following Jesus, and depending upon God’s grace. Nonetheless, these simple considerations may help you as you consider how to have a powerful Easter worship service.

Focus on Jesus in your Easter Sunday service. Easter isn’t about a date on a calendar. It’s not even primarily about an event. It is primarily about a person–the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus ought to be the focus of your Easter service. Preach Jesus. Talk about Jesus. Praise Jesus. Worship Jesus. Jesus is worthy of all our devotion and our love. Every Sunday–even every day–ought to be an experience of adoration and praise of Jesus, but on Easter Sunday you should take this to the next level. At the end of Easter Sunday, you should be able to look back and think: “Jesus was glorified by what we did today.”

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Todd Rhoades comments on Thom Rainer’s list.

Recently, LifeWay President Thom Rainer compiled a list of 20 of what he thinks are the most influential evangelicals in America. The list, he says, is subjective (he just asked about 30 friends for input).

Here were the criteria:

–They had to be American

–They had to be living

–They had to be ‘evangelical’ (whatever that means)

–The nominees had to be influential (not necessarily those whom the person agreed with).

Here are the results… see what you think. (These are in alphabetical order):

Matt Chandler
Wilfredo De Jesus (Pastor Choco)
Ross Douthat
Tony Evans
Louie Giglio
Franklin Graham
Craig Groeschel
Bill Hybels
T. D. Jakes
Tim Keller

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Tony Morgan: how do most churches measure the health of their ministry? Very few leaders have an accurate method. Most rely on an unhealthy test to determine whether or not they are leading well. Have you ever used any of these three tests?

1. The Full Room Test

Ever looked around on Sunday morning to see how many people showed up? Many pastors are asking, “How full was the room?” While I join you in hoping that people attend, your church’s attendance barely provides a glimpse of its true health.

2. The Gut Check Test

Many pastors base their perception of the church on the way they feel at any moment. Unfortunately, our feelings are affected by whatever we most recently encountered. An accurate measure of church health requires something more consistent.

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Ed Stetzer says every church should have an online presence, but a physical presence is necessary as well.

Come on—it’s 2014.

Every church should have an online presence.

Your church people and your community are there, so you should be as well. But that is different than referring to something that happens via your website as a “church.”

Can an online gathering of Christians be classified as a church? Let’s think through this by asking five questions.

Should Churches be Online?

If a church is not online, then it is not actually engaging the culture. A church needs to be where the people gather and they are online and on social media sites.

Pew Research found that 72 percent of online adults use social media. Every age group continues to experience growth, particularly those over 65 who have tripled their usage in the last four years—from 13 percent in 2009 to 43 percent this year.

Despite the overwhelming trends in social media usage, LifeWay Research discovered that less than half of all churches are engaged on Facebook. A full 40 percent are not using any social networking tools. I think that’s just bad stewardship.

I’ve said before, only half jokingly, that pastors who are not on Twitter are in sin. Social media is a valid ministry of the church. Online community can enhance the physical community.

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Thom Rainer cites interesting research.

My son, Jess Rainer, and I recently spoke in Texas on the topic of the Millennials, America’s largest generation of nearly 79 million persons. Because we co-authored a book entitled The Millennials, we have had the opportunity to speak on the subject on many occasions.

We reminded this audience in Dallas of the birth dates of this generation, 1980 to 2000, and then proceeded to share our research. We had commissioned LifeWay Research to survey 1,200 of the older Millennials; the researchers did an outstanding job. We have thus been able to share incredible amounts of data and insights from these young adults.

The Question about Worship Style

As in most of our speaking settings, we allow a portion of our presentation to be a time of questions and answers. And inevitably someone will ask us about the worship style preferences of the Millennials.

Typically the context of the question emanates from a background of nearly three decades of “worship wars.” In other words, on what “side” are the Millennials? Traditional? Contemporary? Or somewhere on the nebulous spectrum of blended styles?

And though Jess and I did not originally ask those questions in our research, we have sufficient anecdotal evidence to respond. And our response is usually received with some surprise. The direct answer is “none of the above.”

The Three Things That Matter Most

You see, most Millennials don’t think in the old worship war paradigm. In that regard, “style” of worship is not their primary focus. Instead they seek worship services and music that have three major elements.

1. They desire the music to have rich content. They desire to sing those songs that reflect deep biblical and theological truths. It is no accident that the hymnody of Keith and Kristyn Getty has taken the Millennials by storm. Their music reflects those deep and rich theological truths.

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Rob Rash helps us to be prayerful and intentional when crafting and planning our worship services:

If only leading worship we’re as simple as singing a handful of songs each week, I wouldn’t be writing this post. If leading worship was simply a way to warm up the hearts of the church to receive the sermon, I wouldn’t be writing this post. If worship didn’t matter… I would not be writing this post.

But worship does matter… greatly!

There have been times that I seriously wrestled with whether or not I should be leading worship at all. Not because I didn’t love doing it, but because I questioned it’s validity as a full time pastoral position.

However, as I have prayed over and poured over the scriptures, it became abundantly clear that worship matters greatly to God and to his people (the church). From Genesis to Chronicles to the Psalms to the Gospels to Paul’s letter’s and to John’s Revelation, worship has prominent role in the life of a believer.

It should come as no surprise then, that we should be prayerful and intentional when crafting and planning our worship services. I call this process ‘Worship Architecture.’ And you are the architect.

The last thing we want to do is haphazardly throw a set or service together, doesn’t God and his church deserve better?

Maybe you’re not use to planning and organizing your services, songs, transitions, and creative elements. Perhaps you consider it a win if you make it through a service and still have your voice? If you struggle at all, with crafting, planning, and organizing your worship services, I’d like to suggest 6 very practical ways to help.

1. Communicate With Your Pastor – I cannot stress this enough. Nothing says unity and teamwork like an aligned vision. Can you imagine the possibilities if you we’re able to know what verses your pastor was preaching from? Or what the overall main point he was trying to drive home? Work hard at communicating with your pastor about the direction for each weekend service. Also, allow your pastor to give you suggestions or ideas with the understanding that you may or may not use them. Don’t neglect your relationship with your pastor, a little goes a long way.

2. Communicate With Your Team – Keep your worship team in the loop with vision and direction for each series and weekend worship services. Take time to explain the song choices, the lyrics, the weekend theme that you are trying to teach your church. Share with your team the importance of leading worship and how it communicates the truths of scripture. Keep them in the loop as much as possible.

3. Worship Planning Software – I cannot begin to tell you how helpful worship planning software is to the ministry I lead. It’s basically my brain. There are a few options to choose from but my personal favorite is Planning Center Online. PCO combines many great features that really allow worship architects to plan, organize and craft meaningful services. You can schedule musicians, vocalists, sound and lighting techs as well as email your entire team. You can also organize your catalog of songs, know when the last time was you used a song, and easily add songs via SongSelect (CCLi) with chord charts. This is by far one of the best tools for strategically planning series and services.

4. Eliminate Distractions – One of the main responsibilities for worship leaders, is to minimize, if not eliminate any and all distractions in worship. Our job is to create an environment where people can see Jesus clearly and respond to him. When the words to our songs are lagging behind, this is a distraction. When the sound tech forgets to mute the band as they’re exiting the stage and a guitar string is accidentally hit causing a loud and strange noise, this is a distraction. The list is really endless, so we must do our best at teaching and training our teams about worship order, service flow and how to eliminate any and all distractions.

5. Work Hard at Transitions – Transitions, between songs and service elements, play a large role in eliminating awkwardness and creating a good service flow. On the other hand, bad transitions (or no transitions) can create a choppy, jumpy service that will be remembered for all of the wrong reasons. As you plan and think through each element of your service, be intentional in how you will transition from one to another. Can you smoothly move from one song to another seamlessly? Does your associate know when he should be on stage for the welcome? If you can plan and prepare your team for each transition, you’ll see a much smoother service flow which is always a good thing.

6. Plan Everything Out – This should go without saying but I cannot reiterate this enough. Just as you start planning out each service element and the appropriate transitions, be very careful to plan out every word you will be saying. This means, when you want to teach your church about a particular bible verse that will lead them into worship, don’t shoot from the hip. Write out what you want to say, read it out loud, and make sure that you are clear. Of course, we must always be open to the Holy Spirit’s leading, but let’s just make sure we are doing our part first and remember that He is with us while we plan.

This may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but let me just say that these are suggestions. Take them for what they’re worth but I have found them tremendously helpful in my organizing and planning of the worship services I lead. Don’t be afraid to start with one of the above suggestions and experiment a little. Don’t bite off more than you can chew but as you slowly start chiseling away at your leadership and worship leading, I hope you’ll find these principles helpful.

Again, being prayerful and intentional goes a long way! Grace and peace to you my friends!

Ronnie Martin remembers his days as a young worship leader.

I’ll be honest, I was scared out of my wits when I first started leading worship. Although I had played rock and roll shows in clubs, festivals and venues around the world, Saturday night had me bound in fits of panic as I contemplated what was facing me the next morning. I knew what the issue was, and it wasn’t the music. I knew how to play my instrument, arrange a song, lead a band, and sing in-tune, sort of. The thing that had me nervously pacing the floors at midnight Saturday was what happened in between the songs. What we call transitions. Or what we might call the actual LEADING part of worship leading.

Like most things that have to be learned in front of a live “audience” (c’mon, you know what I mean by that), there were some awkward moments I’d be happy to forget. Of course, it was time spent in the saddle along with a healthy dose of prayer and wisdom from other WL’s that helped me survive some of my early woes. Along the way, I learned some good, general principles for transitions that I think can apply to WL’s in all seasons.

Be Prepared

I know there are different opinions on this, but I think it’s a good practice to write down what you’re going to say. If so many good preachers write out their sermons in manuscript form, why should WL’s be any less prepared than that? Obviously, reciting anything in written form can resemble a lecture, so the key is to write in the manner of which you speak. If you’re starting out, this can help calm the nerves before Sunday and give you a way to practice your speaking parts before you play.

Use Brevity

I was at a church once where the worship leader started with a story that lasted for a good 7 minutes. This was after announcements and a greeting that had gone on for 10 minutes. Transitions are not sermons, so whatever type of liturgy you have at your church, try to keep them concise and transitional.

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