Ron Edmondson on church burnout:

This is a hard word for some pastors, but after a recent post I was asked about how I protect my Sabbath. That’s a great question, because many pastors struggle in this area. In fact, many pastors I know who would teach their church to observe the Sabbath, seldom do so personally. This fact alone is one of the leading causes of pastoral burnout, in my opinion.

Protecting my Sabbath has proven to be crucial in protecting my ministry.

I observe my Sabbath day on Saturday most weeks. It’s my day with Cheryl. It’s not a day where I do nothing. That’s not how I rest. It’s a day where I do what I want to do. On my Sabbath, I don’t work. I play. I rest. I recharge. I clear my head and prepare for the week ahead.

Here are 7 ways I protect my Sabbath:

Recognize the value – I have to realize there is a reason to observe a Sabbath. It’s almost like God knew what He was doing. If I value it enough, I’ll make it a priority. The value of a Sabbath is not only for myself, but it aligns me with God’s design for mankind. “On the 7th day He rested”. Have you read that somewhere? We were created with a need for the Sabbath. That makes it valuable.

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Building and maintaining good, useable websites are a struggle for churches of all sizes. Large and small alike have websites that don’t accurately represent who they are and don’t help people better connect with their church. There are many reasons why websites don’t reach their potential, but here are three things I think churches commonly underestimate about the web.

1) Pictures Have Power

There is little doubt in my mind that visually-driven websites are becoming more important. As the quest continues to build simpler, easier to use websites, the need for visuals becomes more important.

The easiest thing you can do right now is to add more pictures showing the real people in your church in action. From a visitor’s perspective, this is how you show them who you are. All of us are more aware of stock photography. We see it every day in so many places. So if a visitor comes to your site and sees a bunch of clearly fake people, they’ll wonder what you’re hiding. Or they’ll question your authenticity if you care more about showing perfectly posed people than your real members.

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Scott McClellan on worship planning:

Churches everywhere should be thinking carefully and critically about how their local bodies worship week in and week out because, according to the triple-lex, our worship practices and patterns have lasting affects on individuals, families, and communities.

But maybe, instead of thinking first about what kind of worship services we ought to create, we should put that on the back-burner for a bit. Maybe one implication of the triple-lex is that we should start with what kind of lives we want to lead people to live. Maybe we should start at the end of the triple-lex and reverse-engineer our worship services. Here’s what I mean. Continue reading.

There isn’t a worship leader in the world who doesn’t struggle with regular, persistent, frustratingly silly (but still dangerous) moments of doubt/fear/anxiety/self-consciousness/jealousy. We start to believe myths that tell us we should be different, or we aren’t talented enough, or we shouldn’t uphold certain principles. These myths weaken our ministry as worship leaders.

Here are ten common worship leading myths that come to mind:

1: Every week you have to be more creative than the last. Wrong. Every week you get to point people to Jesus again.

2: Don’t waste too much time thinking/praying about songs for Sunday. Wrong. This is your most important job.

3: You need a great voice. Wrong. If God calls you then you’re the man for the job. Sing with abandon.

4: You have to stay up-to-date with all the new stuff. Wrong. None of the stuff changes lives. Jesus does.

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Recently I was visiting a church with a non-musical friend and he commented the music wasn’t that great.

It wasn’t – and I explained to him why.

The band was good – above average, actually, but the problem wasn’t musicianship – it was worship flow.

The praise team led three songs and we only knew two of them. The first song was a slow, meandering ballad. I couldn’t tell you the name of it or what it was about except to say it dragged on for what seemed like ten minutes.

After the song finally finished the band suddenly started a super uptempo, full band rocker. The rocking continued with driving guitars through the ten second intro, then dropped down to a light groove with bass and drums. All momentum came to an abrupt halt.

After being jerked around for two songs the team concluded with a popular praise song. The congregation enthusiastically participated, as if to say “finally, a song we know!”

Each week, analyze your flow. Where are you going? How are you getting there?

If you only lead three songs in your set your options are limited: you can start fast and end slow, or start slow and end fast. For people to engage you should do at least two familiar songs. And 90% of the time I recommend starting with two upbeat songs followed by a ballad. Early Sunday mornings are not a great time to kick off with a sleeper ballad.

God inspires us to select songs for worship. But like any other creative process, worship flow is a skill that can be honed with the Holy Spirit’s guidance.