I love leading God’s people in worship. I have been blessed to have led Sunday worship teams at home and around the world for over 30 years. Here are a few things that I have learned along the way that help lead toward next level worship.
8 Steps Toward Next Level Worship
1. For Next Level Worship, Pick Great Songs
Picking great songs for your congregation and worship band is one of the most important tasks of a worship leader. Great songs have a sense of God’s Spirit on them. Great worship songs make you want to sing them again and again. Great songs cause your spirit to rise in worship to the Lord. (Check out my blog on “12 Keys to Picking Great Songs for Worship.”)
2. Put Great Songs in a Great Order
I have found that congregations often rush to church, just trying to get there on time and are often unfocused on God. One of my jobs is to pick great songs that help get them focused on God as quickly as possible. That usually works best by finding an uptempo worship tune that is easy to sing and gets them engaged as soon as possible.
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I usually have 20-25 minutes to do worship on a Sunday morning service, so for my team, that means four or five songs. My general rule of thumb is to do two uptempo songs—often more praise orientated—and often the second song is slightly faster than the first one. Then I do a strong median tempo transition song and then end with a powerful worship song that is sung directly to God.
This general guideline helps the congregation go from focusing and singing about God to worshipping God directly. It is not meant to be a formula but an overriding time-proven way to help achieve the goal of getting the congregation to focus their hearts and worship on God.
3. Have Great Rehearsals
I normally have two-and-a-half hours of band rehearsal for every 30 minutes of worship time. The goal is to get so proficient at doing the music that you do not have to think about the music during the live worship time. You need to get past just performing music to focusing on and worshipping God!
My normal practice is to have a strong, two-hour midweek rehearsal (Thursday night is my favorite) and then a 45-minute rehearsal on Sunday morning. These rehearsal times give everyone time to learn the music properly and work out any problem areas.
4. Work on Great Sound & Media
A good sound tech can make or break you! There is no use having great songs and rehearsals if the sound mix is not working for the congregation. I have learned that putting the drums in a full cage generally helps gets the best overall mix. Also, putting baffles around guitar amps (or better, putting the amps offstage in sound-proof rooms) and putting the band on in-ear-monitors really helps the person running the sound. I also try to take a Sunday off the stage to listen to the front-of-house mix.
In the same way, having a media person who is on top of the projected lyrics is huge. Beside having the lyric screen up front for the congregation, I also have a large screen at the back of the auditorium and smaller screens up front for the singers to see the lyrics.
If you can have the sound person giving you a great mix and the media operator giving the lyrics at the right time. You have a strong sound and visual foundation on which to work off!
