You’ve got your pastor’s outline. Creativity is flowing. You know exactly what songs, where and when to use them. But now: how do I get the right resources for my team? I have a five-step process for worship planning that takes about 20 minutes to get your team ready for Sunday mornings. It’s not completely error proof—but it’s the best way I have found to get my team ready.
5 Steps to Worship Planning
STEP #1 – PRAISE CHARTSÂ
The first step for me in worship planning is finding the needed resources. In this case, it’s the music. Typically, I’m going after three pieces of music for my team: sheet music (SATB for praise team & choir, Lead sheet for piano), chord charts (acoustic, bass and electric guitarists), and rhythm charts (acoustic guitar & drums). Other worship leaders’ opinions vary on Praise Charts, but for me, I have found them to be extremely accurate and reliable for what I need, and they always have fantastic prices. (If you use Song Select for your chord charts, I fervently ask you to check over your chord progression before you hand out the sheets. I have had issues in the past with wrong chords.)
STEP #2 – MULTI-TRACKS
The second step is if I want to use a click-track with our music. (If this doesn’t apply to your church’s worship ministry, head down to step 3). We currently have a five-piece band (Piano/Synth, Lead Electric, Acoustic, Bass, Drums), which is the standard for many churches. However, there are some songs out there in which the strings, percussion or rhythm electric parts just make the song that much better. MultiTracks.com has an easy platform where you can create your own track using their online interface, than using software like Ableton or Pro-Tools. Basically…it’s easy as pie to take out the bass part and leave the strings. We use this a lot, and it can add so much more smoothness and flow to our songs.