Bob Kauflin on worship leaders:

Overemphasizing or consistently focusing on technology, skill, and excellence can leave most us with a nagging feeling that our musicians, our leaders, our equipment, and our songs are never quite good enough. We resign ourselves to the thought that we’ll never be as successful, used, or important as the people we see on YouTube and at conferences. Or we breathlessly pursue the trappings and externals of “modern worship,” attaching biblical authority to very cultural practices.

That’s why today I want to salute the average worship leader.

By average I don’t mean mediocre or lazy. Just normal. Because that’s what most of those leading in churches today are. Normal. Maybe you can relate to some of these “average worship leader” characteristics:

• Your musical training, if any, was years ago.
• No one wants you to sing lead on an album, but you get the melody pretty much in tune.
• Your vocal range is a little over an octave, but almost always lower than the recorded key.
• You prepare and rehearse in the midst of a full time job and responsibilities at home.
• You and some of the other musicians could do better with your dieting.

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Justin Wise on church bulletins:

Most churches print a bulletin because it’s the way things have always been done. To change that means to change a process. A process that someone is familiar and comfortable with. So if the communications team is in charge of printing the bulletin, you might say to them, “Reducing our print costs will create less work for you. Here’s how…”

Another big objection to decreasing or eliminating the physical bulletin is the fear of isolating certain community members from important information. While it’s true that most people check and use email to stay on top of things, not everyone does. In that case, you want to have a plan for how you will get information to people who don’t need or have access to the Internet.

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Trevor McMaken from Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, IL shares his search for affordable in-ears:

Unfortunately, an Aviom system for IEMs can be really expensive—too expensive for many small and medium sized churches to afford. We just quoted one for our church at $ for 8 channels. To transition each of those channels to wireless is another $.

So we came up with a simple way to take a step toward IEMs without breaking the bank, while we save up for the full system. The mix is still created at the mixing console and share by a group of musicians—we used this just for our drummer, bass guitar, keyboards, and electric guitar—but it did cut down on our stage volume drastically. I thought I’d share it with you in case you find yourself in a similar situation. Here’s what we got:

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Brian Gowing shares ideas for solving sound issues:

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve gone into a church and heard 3 or more different perspectives on the way things sounded I’d be pretty well of by now. Every church thinks that they’re unique in the sound problems that they have. I’m here to let you know that your church is no different than any of the other churches in the district. So take heart. This isn’t an unsolvable situation. In fact it’s a very common problem, not only in the church sound world but in the secular world of touring professionals. See, sound is very much a matter of perspective and perception. No two people will hear the same thing. It can be close but because hearing is one of those senses of ours that is in use every minute of every day, the environment that we’ve been a part of all these years plays a huge role in what we perceive in what we hear.

Likewise, the perception of what we hear depends significantly on the emotional impact of what we hear, especially when it relates to worship music. Because worship music, by its very nature, is designed to get you in the very dark recesses of your heart and soul, what we hear when we listen to worship music is very, very personal. What one person likes in a worship song performance can be totally different than what someone else hears in that same song.

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