It’s easy to falling in the habit of weekly ritual, especially for worship leaders. Whether you’ve been leading worship for ten weeks or ten years, why not take a moment to review these worship leading mistakes to see if there isn’t room for improvement in your ministry?
5 Worship Leading Mistakes
1. Being practically unprepared to lead
This one is pretty simple: Know your music, lyrics and chords, and know it well. And have your music clearly marked with any key changes, etc. If you don’t have it memorized, make sure you have your music organized and easy-to-read in front of you while you’re leading. If you’re fumbling through your chords and lines while leading, your congregation is surely going to be distracted. This will be a hindrance to them in focusing their individual and corporate attention on our God who is most worthy of praise. Avoid drawing any unhelpful attention to yourself. Which brings me to number 2…
2. Drawing attention to yourself by dressing inappropriately
In this regard, it’s not necessarily best to let your conscience be your guide. My former worship pastor, Mike Cosper, encouraged our team along these lines:
“As worship leaders, you’re a representative face for the church. Your particular visibility communicates a lot about the church and the community. We don’t want to lay out any weird expectations, but we want to make sure that we send the right message visually. “Dressing down” can say that we don’t care about putting our best face forward, and “dressing up” can say, “LOOK AT ME!” What we want to do is dress in such a way that:
- Communicates to the church, “We’re glad you’re here.”
- Honors men and women.
- Doesn’t distract from the gospel message of the songs and texts.”
RELATED: Great Tips for Rookie Worship Leaders
3. Acting like a rock star
It’s not helpful to anyone in the congregation for you to be giving your best rock performance during gathered worship times. Save that sort of showmanship for other arenas and stages. We serve our people best when we point them to Christ, and not to ourselves. We are not to be performers seeking our own fame and glory. We are servants, the redeemed of the Lord, seeking to glorify and make much of Christ who saved us.
