Kristen Gilles encourages us to fix our eyes on Jesus:

If we’re honest, we’ll admit that most of us struggle to look up and fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Sometimes our hearts even want what belongs to Jesus. We want our performance to be praised. We want our names to be great. We want to be the great Worship Leader who leads the charge into God’s throne room. We want to take credit for transforming hearts and lives. We assume responsibility for the worshipful response of the church and think that we actually made it possible for others to experience God’s presence.

But our performance is not the point. We are not able to save or transform ourselves or anyone else. What we need is to be always beholding Jesus the only Savior.

And as much as we worship leaders need to be steered away from hoping in our performance and instead pointed to Jesus, reminded that He is our Worship Leader and perfects our worship of the Father, so too the people that we shepherd also need to know that Jesus is the point of all of our worship liturgy, and the one who makes it possible! Jesus is the one we are to adore and long to experience and in whose presence we can expect to be transformed into His likeness.

Fellow worship leaders, we need to serve and lead in a way that leaves everyone gathered understanding about us and them that our performance is not what saves us. Consider the following needs of all people as you prepare to serve your congregations and point them to Jesus, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you and your team know how to effectively do that.

1) We need to continually confess that we cannot save ourselves and only Jesus can save us. We need to continually recognize that God in all His fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through Him God reconciled everything to Himself. We must remind ourselves that He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross! (Colossians 1) We need to see Jesus, our Savior and the only Living God, exalted high above every other false god that fights for control of our hearts. We need to behold Jesus, the Lamb of God slain before the world’s foundations, whose finished work has earned salvation for all who believe in His name. We cannot save ourselves and only Jesus can save us.

Continue reading.

Tiffany Deluccia on top problems churches have when trying to build a volunteer force:

Tell me if this sounds familiar: Your nursery workers look…irritated. They had a passion for ministering to young parents by providing a safe and nurturing environment for their little ones, but that fire is gone. They’ve been doing this too long. They only rotate off one Sunday a month. They’re sick of kids. They seem sick of church. The burnout is outpacing the new sign-ups.

Or this: The care ministry team can’t get off the ground. You want to empower your church members to do ministry themselves, to pray for and encourage people in need each week. But the plea for volunteers during a Sunday morning service hasn’t yielded names on the clipboard in the lobby. You feel a little stuck.

While far from exhaustive, these two examples hit on a few of the top problems churches have when trying to build a volunteer force.

How do you move the needle in this arena? Start by evaluating your church on these three points.

1) Are you creatively and consistently sharing how volunteer roles help the church accomplish its vision?

People want to be a part of something big! They want to know their time and energy and commitment is advancing the Kingdom. It’s your job to show them that it is. What creative method have you used lately in your quest for new volunteers?

Continue reading.

What do Rick Warren, Katy Perry and Jessica Simpson have in common? They’re all pastors’ kids. A fascinating new study of children of the clergy is making news today, with some remarkable insights for us all.

You’ve probably heard of the stereotypical prodigal pastor’s kid who was raised in the church but wants nothing to do with God today. Actually, only seven percent of pastor’s kids no longer consider themselves to be Christians. This is below average: nine percent of their peers would say the same. Southern Baptist and other evangelical pastors’ kids are even less likely to reject the faith, at three and two percent, respectively.

However, 33 percent of pastors’ kids are no longer actively involved in church. Pastors account for this fact in a variety of ways: unrealistic expectations placed on their children by others and exposure to negative aspects of church life head the list. While only five percent “wish they had given their children more Bible teaching,” 42 percent “wish they had spent more time with their children.”

Continue reading.

From Mark Powers, Director, Worship & Music Office SC Baptist Convention:

There is good news and bad news for the modern Evangelical church. The bad news is that we are in a rapid statistical decline in almost every category of evangelical life: 80% of our churches have plateaued or declining and church growth experts say that one of every three churches in America may close their doors if this decline continues over the next 10 to 20 years.

The good news, however, is that the same methods that the early church used to grow from 4,000 at Pentecost to 4 million by 200 AD are still available to us today.

As worship pastors we dare not put our head in the sand and assume that the task of church revitalization is another staff member’s responsibility. God is calling worship leaders to focus our worship totally on Him, to become intentional about making disciples who make disciples, then lead our worship teams to join God on mission in our communities. Here are four things to consider:

1. God created worship for Himself. The Biblical words for worship portray falling prostrate at God’s feet and giving up our right to ourselves. Jesus gave us the formula for true worship when He said. “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me.” Regardless of our style of worship, the heart of worship is totally focused on God and the gospel of our Lord Jesus and understood as a daily lifestyle for all Christians. Why? Because God knows that worship is the context of relationship, and relationship with us is His ultimate aim. Let’s call our people back to worship that lays our lives before Him.

2. God is calling His people to make disciples who make disciples. Too often, our goal is to build the institutional church. Self-centered people build self-serving institutions. But worship leaders, too, must engage in an intentional process to make disciples who make disciples. Jesus did not build His Kingdom on the crowd, He built it on disciples. He raised disciples by doing life together in a small group, building accountability from relationships, and teaching through storying. Have you ever been truly discipled? Are you discipling anyone?

3. Culture is a gift from God to connect people with Him. In this world, as we follow God’s mandate to have dominion over the world (Genesis 1:28), people produce many different cultures. Culture includes style, language, social patterns, etc. Missionaries understand that they must learn the culture to which they are sent and use it to connect people with God. But we often want to put our own culture on the throne in place of God. Disciples are called to join God in His mission to redeem the world by using culture as a tool to connect people with Him. Discern the heart language of your church and use it to grow them as disciples and send them on mission. Our target is to use your church’s indigenous cultural language to grow “worshiping disciples on mission”. Then we lead our church to learn other cultural languages to go reach our communities for Christ.

4. Where in the Bible does it say we will win the world by getting the world into church? It doesn’t. The Bible says we will win the world by getting the church into the world! My definition of missions is: “Meeting people at their point of need, in your community, on a regular basis, to build relationships, which lead to witnessing opportunities.” I believe that our worship ministries can lead a church to discover how God grew the early church into a powerful force in the world. Will you dare to consider adopting that process in your ministry?

My book GOING FULL CIRCLE: Worship that Leads Us to Discipleship and Missions (Resource Publications, an imprint of Wipf & Stock, Eugene Oregon, ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-994-8) will help you renew your understanding of worship then develop a process to lead your worship ministry to grow disciples and lead them to exciting missions in your own community. It is available from Amazon in paperback or on Kindle or can be ordered from the publisher’s website here.

Sign up to receive weekly WorshipIdeas every Tuesday morning in your email:

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

 

We guarantee 100% privacy.
Your information will not be shared.

Hoss Hughes on selecting songs and organizing your set list.

There’s many creative ways to plan the music for any worship service: drawing songs out of a hat, throwing darts at your pile of sheet music, singing whatever feels good on Sunday morning and hoping the band can keep up. As worship leaders, I think we sometimes get exasperated by the week-in, week-out task of being purposeful in our worship planning and sometimes resort to the “throw it at the wall and see if it sticks” mentality. But there are some basics that we sometimes have to revisit to make sure we are giving our congregations every opportunity to connect with God.

Getting beyond the music

I sometimes fall into the trap of placing songs within a service because I know the music will sound good in that situation and everything will “flow”. But I need to slow down and think about what Joe Churchgoer (who might not be involved in church like I am…who might be going through a hard time in his walk with Jesus) will be hearing when he comes into service AND what I want God to do in the short time we have.

When it comes down to it, there are three different types of worship songs and how I organize those types of songs can increase (or decrease) the likelihood that true worship is achieved. I think these song types are so important that they should all have some representation in each service I plan.

Songs of Invitation

Since most ministry leaders are at their churches 24/7 (or so it seems), it’s easy to forget that people have had to deal with a week’s worth of berating bosses, looming deadlines, family struggles, etc. We expect them to show up and immediately be transported to this intimate place of worship with God with little to no preparation. But we are table setters. We show the bountiful feast that is in store and invite them to partake. In addition, we can invite God to reveal Himself to us. These songs are best used at the very beginning of worship or perhaps the beginning of a communion.

Some Favorites: Awakening (Hillsong United), Presence (Newsboys), Abide With Me (Indelible Grace)

Continue reading.