The worship leader your church wants has to have more than just great technical skills. He or she also must have a heart for the congregation and how music fits into the entire worship experience. These are some qualities to look for, and to avoid, in a worship leader.
The Good and the Bad
For many people choosing a church, worship leaders have become a more important factor than preachers. ...
These principles can be adapted to almost any congregation to encourage better singing.
Know Why You Sing
Each Sunday, determine if the purpose of the service is worship, instruction, fellowship, or evangelism. While all these functions of the body of Christ may overlap, or may sometimes occur simultaneously, try to focus on one or two functions. After you determine the function, make sure ...
In music ministry, leaders have to keep a lot of things in the air at the same time: spiritual sensitivity, personal preparation, attention to group dynamics, thoughtful song selection, and full-bodied accompaniment Here's a mental checklist I use for our congregational singing:
1. Are the songs meaningful? Every worship leader needs to have the gentle and engaging sense of ...
The average person is reluctant to project his or her own voice unless surrounded by a host of other voices. One key is to create a comfort zone for the congregation, an atmosphere devoid of tension, where a spirit of warmth and friendliness pervades. How do you create this kind of comfort zone?
By your own personality. If you are friendly, warm, accessible, and confident, your congregation ...
Discussions of worship leadership often center on the musicianship or personality of the leader in question. These discussions should instead begin with the question, "What does the congregation need from the leader to sing well?" There are a number of approaches to choose from:
The conductor is a worship leader who leads the congregation like a choir, beating the tempo throughout each song. This often goes hand-in-hand with a congregation that sings hymns, usually singing with great skill and enthusiasm. The advantage of this style of leading is that it gives clear musical leadership. The disadvantage is that it provides more information than the congregation needs and often focuses on musical leadership to the exclusion of other aspects of worship leadership.
Studies have shown that the main factor in musical taste is familiarity. People like what they know. The pop music business operates on this principle, and we have all experienced hearing a song on the radio that sounds oddly familiar and brings up memories and feelings that one can't quite place. Some promoter has worked hard to place that song in a movie precisely because it will feel ...
Blended worship refers to the mixing and blending of both historic and contemporary expressions of worship into a diverse mosaic of praise which encourages the participation of all God's people. In our day, blended worship is staging a comeback as congregations tire of providing multiple choices and dividing the congregation along generational or preferential lines.
I've observed a disturbing trend among our university students. Increasingly, our incoming students—whom I take to be representative of the evangelical population—are ignorant of even the most well-known, historic hymns. My informal survey suggests that college students who have grown up in the church in California are familiar, on average, with about 15–25 hymns today. Only a couple ...
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