Worship Matters

In an earlier post I mentioned a question left in one of the comments. Collin wrote: With my limited experience I am able to lead a full band on Sunday mornings but it stops there. Our church has many capable individuals that would be involved in a choir but my limitations keep me from taking [...]

Zach Nielsen, whom I’ve only met once but felt an immediate kinship with, hosted a Church Band Seminar a while back for church musicians. He invited three Nashville musicians (Tim Rosenau on guitar, James Gregory on bass, and Scott Williamson on drums) to talk about and demonstrate playing music for congregational worship as part of [...]

Recently a discussion developed over at the New City Church blog about a paragraph in my book. Here’s the paragraph in question: Even though musicians aren’t necessarily “elders” or “teachers” their presence in front of the congregation week after week implies that their life is worthy of emulation—not flawless, but demonstrating the fruit of the [...]

Yesterday, the blogosphere became a better, more Gospel-centered, and funnier place. That’s because my mentor, friend, and hero CJ Mahaney started a blog on the Sovereign Grace website. The by-line is “C.J. Mahaney’s View from the Cheap Seats & Other Stuff.” His co-blogger is Tony Reinke, who not only has his own blog, but has [...]

I received this question from Steve: In the past year or so I’ve been encouraging the vocalists on our Sunday morning worship teams to feel more freedom to sing spontaneously between verses or musical lines. They hear me speaking or singing during a song and a few of them are beginning to grow in freedom. [...]

Recently I was talking to Jon Payne, the worship pastor in the Sovereign Grace church in Gilbert, Arizona. He brought up a question he had been asked about how to handle membership on a team. The particular issue was managing how long people should be on the team, given changing church size, addition of new [...]

I’m getting questions every week now on topics related to worship and music. I wish I had time to answer each one, but I can’t get to them. But thanks so much for writing and assuming I might have an answer to your question. I received this question from Stephen: What effect do you see [...]

Kyle wrote in to ask this question: I am about to start leading a worship team that consists of a good number of talented people and a variety of instruments. To this point, the band has used printed sheet music for all of the songs they play; this means that someone has manually entered everything [...]

I recently received this question from John: We currently have four worship teams, giving 15-20 people a month a chance to lead in music, either by singing or playing an instrument. I’d guess that a quarter of these people are very skilled musically, and have been split among the four teams. We’ve discussed cutting the [...]

Last week I had the privilege of speaking and leading worship at the Calvin Worship Symposium in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Why I chose to go to Michigan in January is a question I still haven’t answered. On Thursday, I taught an all-day seminar called Musical Arranging for God’s Glory. I shared thoughts not only on [...]

Josh wrote in to ask: As far as an audition goes I was wondering if you had any specific suggestions on the best way to hold an audition. Should it be with the band? A one on one audition? A song that they would like to sing or something you would like them to sing [...]

Dave Wilcox, the technical director from my church has started a blog that I couldn’t recommend highly enough. I’ve known Dave for about seven years, and he’s been on staff here at Covenant Life Church for five years. He completed his degree in 1998 in Audio Engineering and Visual Media Communication at American University and [...]

[Sorry if you tried to post a comment today. Typepad was down most of Friday, so I couldn't post either.] Question: Can you share your standards for those who participate “up front” on Sunday mornings? After my last post on this topic, Matt Blick wondered if a list of standards would even be helpful. He [...]

This question was sent to me a while ago, but is relevant to many of us. “What do you think of asking music team members to adhere to stricter/higher personal standards re: dress, devotional life, testimony, etc than members of other “teams” in the church because of the public, “up front” nature of the work?” [...]