Dan Leverence on crafting your praise set:

Several months ago, I attended a large gathering of worship leaders and during one of the sessions, someone introduced themselves by saying, “Hi, I’m __________ and I’m a recovering thematic worship planner.” I didn’t realize that thematic worship planning had become taboo and lots of questions began to flood my mind.

Why in the world would he say that? And what did he mean? Have worship leaders really begun to abandon the potentially beautiful connection between the music and the message? Doesn’t that do a disservice to the people we lead?

After gathering my thoughts again (and pondering the value of thematic planning for weeks afterward), I began to realize that there are still compelling reasons why I continue to plan worship thematically. Each week, I prayerfully, assiduously, and deliberately choose songs that will help reinforce the message that our church community will hear from the Word of God. And I do it unapologetically. I still believe that thematic worship planning has remarkable benefits and while some are the obvious ones you might expect, not all of my reasons are simply for the congregation at large.

Thematic Planning Reinforces the Message
This one is most obvious. Particularly in America, where it seems Biblical literacy is at an all-time low, anything I can do as a worship leader to help underscore any piece of truth from our weekend teaching is worth it to me. Music and the spoken word have the ability to dance together in perfect form and when one of our songs complements a teaching pastor’s message perfectly, our people connect to God’s truth on a different level – one that I believe is helpful.

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Jon Nicol on starting your services promptly:

We aren’t naive about what it takes to change something that’s not only ingrained in the culture of our church, but in the broader culture of our community. So we’re taking a long, slow, multifaceted approach to changing our culture of tardiness.

7 Tactics to Curb Lateness
Here are some of tactics we’re using to encourage on time arrival. Some of these will work for your church. Some will not. But hopefully the list will spark some ideas that can help your situation.

1. We close the auditorium doors at start time. Our new building has two sets of main doors off the lobby that enter the right side of the auditorium. A secondary set of doors are down a large hallway and enter in the back of the auditorium. We now close the main doors right at 9:30. These doors have a sign that reads: “Please enter through the back entrance after the service begins” with an arrow pointing towards the secondary entrance.

It communicates to people that starting the service on time is important to us, and we want to eliminate distractions for those already worshiping. One chronically-late church member jokingly calls the rear entrance “The Door of Shame.” We opted not to use that particular moniker for the rear entrance signage.

2. We shut down kids-check in at 9:30. This one is both an administrative thing and a lateness-deterrent. At our church, we dismiss the kids to their worship time partway through our service. So parents who miss kids check-in have to leave the service with their kids and check them in at the classroom.

A couple things to note here: To avoid new people from missing check-in, we give them the “fast pass.” Our host team is on the lookout for new families. They greet them and lead them to the front of the line. After checking them in, they get a quick tour of the classrooms where their kids will go later.

And one thing we’ve realized: guests aren’t typically the ones who arrive late. It’s our regular attendees. So that led to the next two tactics to help change behavior.

3. We communicate clearly the beginning and end of our kids ministry check-in. Our check-in time runs from 9:10 to 9:30. This time was added to our website and printed material. It’s a subtle hint that people should arrive before the posted service start time.

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David Manner on part time worship leaders:

Now that I have your undivided attention, I do believe that full-time worship ministry is indeed a worthy calling and vocation that requires preparation, education and skills. And yes, it is a real job. But what if opportunities were no longer available for you to lead worship vocationally? What if you needed to voluntarily or were asked involuntarily to step aside from full-time worship ministry for an interim or extended period of time? What if you are unable to land a worship ministry position after graduation? What would or could you do to provide for your family while still responding to God’s call? Some of us have found ourselves in that situation only to realize we are not trained or are not training to do anything else.

Statistics show that 95% of churches average 350 or less in worship and that 75-80% of those churches average 150 or less. Forced terminations as a result of corporate business modeled leadership, unhealthy staff relationships, and ageism are all on the rise. The church planting movement has amplified the need for additional volunteer and part time worship leaders. Even larger, more established congregations are no longer realizing the need for full-time worship and music staff as they try to stretch their financial resources to accommodate their various multi-generational, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-venue worship needs.

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Bob Kauflin on choosing popular worship songs:

If you’re a worship leader or music minister there’s a good chance you’ve heard another leader talking about the new song they just introduced. They describe it as the most “incredible, life-changing, awesome, heaven-releasing, God-calling-down, what-you-haven’t-heard-it-yet” song they’ve ever done. You heart sinks as you realize that not only have you not heard the song, you didn’t even know the CD was out. When you think of the 80 CD’s on your desk you still haven’t listened to, you really feel like a loser. “How can anyone in my church even worship?”

If you’ve ever had those thoughts, you’re not alone. The problem lies mainly in our sinful hearts. We don’t want to be out of the loop when it comes to what’s happening in the worship world. We don’t want to look like we have our heads stuck in the sand. After all, we only have to spend a few minutes on the web to know what’s going on. It’s not like you have to go to a record store…But somehow we fall behind in our new song awareness, and start to panic. That’s our pride showing.

The worship song industry doesn’t always help us. Recently I received this advertisement for a new CD in my in-box:

51 Must Have Modern Worship Hits

Few music collections capture the very best moments of an entire genre of music, but 51 Must Have Modern Worship Hits does just that. Packed with the best of the best songs that have shaped modern worship as we know it, this essential 3-CD set includes…”

I realize that this is simply a company trying to package and promote songs that God seems to have used in the church. I have no doubt there are some great songs being offered. But I think it reveals a flaw in the way many of us think about worship songs. I wanted to draw attention to how the way these songs are described might tempt us as we seek to serve our churches.

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