Alexander Green

Song Selection Tips

UK worship leader Andy John Smith talks about selecting songs for your praise set:

1. Choose songs that suit the context.

It may seem obvious, but you should choose worship songs people will enjoy singing in the context in which you are leading. Are you leading worship at a youth event or in an old folks complex? Are you visiting a prison or playing for a wedding where there will be many visitors in attendance? I have lead worship in all these contexts and a few more, including: prayer gatherings, conferences and city-wide ecumenical events. It may be your regular Sunday service, but in each case think about the sort of songs that the people will be familiar with and will connect to. If there are lots of visitors who are not used to church, a hymn like Amazing Grace may be accessible to them for example.

2. Is there a theme?

Knowing the theme to the service, or the bible passage the preacher will be using, can be a great help in focusing on worship song choice. But remember that you are not leading people to a theme about God, but to God Himself, so getting the balance right is important. If you don’t get this information given to you, there is an opportunity for you to spend time talking with your pastor or vicar. Ask them how God is leading them in this season of church life and look to include songs that serve their vision.

3. Listen to the Holy Spirit.

I always pray and ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. I usually get a sense of one song that will be important in the service, then I fit other songs around that song. For some this may sound a bit mystical and mysterious, however everyone can hear from God in this way. We just need to be still and persevere in listening. It’s wonderful, when you choose a song that fits perfectly with the message of the sermon, especially when you didn’t even know what the theme would be. It also is a great encouragement for the preacher too!

Continue reading.

No Comments

Battle of the Megachurches!

Last week I talked about how elder drama can ruin thriving churches. People asked “what about worship leaders who have affairs?” That’s another epidemic. In the roughly seven churches I’ve worked at or played at during my career, two of the worship leaders had affairs and two were on the verge. (I’ve often thought about writing an article entitled “Worship Leaders: Keep Your Pants On.”)

However, I personally haven’t seen a worship leader’s indiscretions do much to change a church’s attendance. Sure, a few people may leave and there may be a good bit of hurt, but a worship leader isn’t generally considered to be on the same level as the senior pastor (I’ve always heard the average tenure of a worship leader is 2 years.) A senior pastor’s affair is much more devastating.

Plus, the congregation may never even find out about the affair – in two of the churches I’ve mentioned the leadership brushed the worship leader scandals under the carpet – the staff knew but the congregation didn’t. Hiding the truth can be a recipe for disaster and cause more harm than the affair itself. Be open about staff problems – people will probably find out anyway and end up mistrusting the church leadership.

But back to another cause of dinosaur churches: megachurch battles. A megachurch that was hip and cutting edge 15 years ago stagnates and is usurped by a brand new hip and cutting edge church.

One megachurch battle example was the first Willow Creek model in a certain town – in the mid 90’s they were following the Hybels handbook of secular pop music, skits and topical sermons – and they were booming.

By the mid 2000’s their numbers were drastically dropping (down 2,000 in one year alone) as a new modern church franchise was planted down the road more in stylistic step with the times. This new church is now THE church in town, is growing like crazy and has blown past the original megachurch in attendance. Suddenly, the Willow Creekish church’s paid brass section (can you imagine paying for a brass section!) playing jazz riffs along with the 80’s guitar solos and skits felt dated, if not odd, to 21st century hipsters.

The Willow Creekish church had an identity tied closely to the culture of the 90’s. When they become out of step with that culture pride set in – they were once THE church and couldn’t understand why they should change. So they keep speaking the stylistic language of a previous generation and wondered why the congregation was aging (and shrinking.)

It’s all a cycle. The big churches of yesteryear with their pipe organs and performing choirs stood their stylistic ground and lost members to contemporary worshiping churches. And in fifteen years the new modern church drawing crowds today will find themselves in the same predicament if they don’t remain sensitive to the culture.

I really believe it’s all good and every style has its place. Some people still love pipe organ churches and dislike praise band churches – it’s just that those people were the majority thirty years ago and today they’re the minority (but they still need a church.)

Bottom Line: A variety of church styles reach as many people as possible. But if your style is closely tied to pop culture be willing and eager to change on a cultural dime or you’ll find yourself irrelevant.

Saddleback Church Gathers to Share Grief Over Death of Rick Warren’s Son

Members of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., came together this weekend to pray and worship, and “to be real” in facing the death of the 27-year-old son of their pastor, Rick Warren, after a lifelong struggle with mental illness.

The service at the church began with Tom Holladay, teaching pastor at Saddleback, praying for Pastor Rick Warren and his wife, Kay, on Saturday, the day the internationally known Christian leader announced that his youngest son, Matthew, took his own life after struggling with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life.

After praise and worship, Holladay told the congregation that Pastor Warren had called him earlier during the week to request him to preach to the church during the weekend. When Holladay asked what he should preach about, and what was on Warren’s mind, Warren said he wanted the teaching pastor to preach about what to do on the worst day of your life – not knowing that later that week he would face Matthew’s death.

Holladay’s sermon was based on 1 Samuel 30, which is about David coming back from the battle and finding out that the entire town of Ziklag had been wiped out. The response of David and his people is a model for us to deal with a situation where hope seems distant, he said.

Continue reading.

No Comments

Choir Musings by a Soundman

David Stagl on trying to mic the choir:

I think I’ve turned a corner in my career. Earlier this year our music department approached me about trying a choir at one of our PM services. Historically I haven’t been a fan of choirs, but I was actually into the idea of us trying it out. I believe the term “mini-choir” was actually used in pitching this, but since then we’ve actually had a few choirs in varying sizes on stage this year.

So why would someone like me with mostly disdain for the church choir actually be interested in having one?

Well, for one thing I knew it would be something different and a new challenge. In my entire time on staff at North Point, I’ve only dealt with a choir maybe twice and I don’t think those counted. In some ways, the choir is one of the true audio challenges in a modern church setting. It is true combat audio: un-amplified voices against the roar of a rock band.

Secondly, I knew it wouldn’t be the stereotypical church choir. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years about our music department, it’s that I can trust them to put the best people available on stage. I figured it was a safe assumption that these folks would actually sing out unlike some “choirs”….

But my real reason for getting behind this is I had a different vision for what a choir could be for us within the context of the mix and the room and the overall experience.

One of the bigger challenges for me is the feel of our East Auditorium. We have a lot of absorptive acoustic treatment up throughout the room. On the one hand it’s a blessing because as a mixer I don’t find myself fighting against the room much, and I have a lot of control of things. On the other hand, it can be a challenge because the dry-ness of the room can feel unnatural to me at times; the room doesn’t naturally help with feel like some venues. When we do events where everyone shows up ready to sing such as conferences and nights of worship, the room generally feels pretty good. But Sundays can be interesting because we always have a lot of first time guests and folks just checking things out.

So I started wondering, what if the choir wasn’t just a choir? What if the choir was also what the room could sound like?

In a large church, I think it can be challenge to get people connected, but it’s not really a church if that’s not happening. That’s why we are so big on moving people out of rows and into circles.

Something I want to do with the sonic experience on a Sunday is engage in that vision by making first-time guests feel like they are part of something in that row because maybe if they feel like they’re already part of something that next step of moving beyond a row will be a lot easier.

Continue reading.

No Comments

Marcus Mumford: “I Wouldn’t Call Myself A Christian”

Labels can be helpful when, for instance, applied to cans of soup or barrels of toxic waste. But they are less so when affixed to human beings — particularly when labels are meant to summarize, indelibly, one’s spiritual identity.

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Marcus Mumford, the 26-year-old lead singer of the wildly successful British band Mumford & Sons, raised the hackles of religious folks (in some quarters) when he declined to claim the “Christian” label as his own.

You see, Marcus is the son of John and Eleanor Mumford, who are the national leaders of the Vineyard Church in the U.K. and Ireland, an arm of the international evangelical Christian Vineyard Movement. Last year, he married actress Carey Mulligan, whom he’d met years earlier at a Christian youth camp.

And the music of Mumford & Sons, for which Mumford is the main lyricist, is laden with the themes and imagery of faith — often drawing specifically upon the Christian tradition. They explore relationships with God and others; fears and doubts; sin, redemption, and most of all, grace.

During an interview last month, the Rolling Stone reporter, Brian Hiatt, asked Mumford whether he “still consider(s) himself a Christian.”

Mumford gave the following answer:

“I don’t really like that word. It comes with so much baggage. So, no, I wouldn’t call myself a Christian. I think the word just conjures up all these religious images that I don’t really like. I have my personal views about the person of Jesus and who he was. … I’ve kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity.”

His spiritual journey is a “work in progress,” Mumford said, adding that he’s never doubted the existence of God and that his parents are unbothered by his ambivalence toward the Christian label.

Continue reading.

No Comments

About Blog

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.

worshipideas:

Essential reading for worship leaders since 2002.

 

Get the latest worship news, ideas and a list

of the top CCLI songs delivered every Tuesday... for FREE!