Worship Leading

A Guide to Worship Leading – Part 1

Posted on by mattodegaard

Worship Leading1

A Guide to Worship Leading – Part 1

When I begin mentoring a Worship Leader I always start with a conversation about three things.

The first thing is ‘Worship Leading.’ Now that might seem a bit obvious, but what I mean here is everything besides singing and playing and music. That’s right, the ‘Worship Leading’ conversation is about LEADING worship. This is what happens before the service, between the songs, and during the week. For some this comes naturally but for others this is what requires the most development. This requires thought and planning and personal, spiritual development.

Worship Leading is being sensitive to the Spirit and being sensitive to the congregation and being the intermediary between the two. This is a place of tension. When you pursue God on your own you can be free to get lost in the moment. When you are a ‘rock star’ you can be egotistical and let all the praise be about you. When you are a worship leader, the moment is about God and about the people. You, the worship leader, have to live in the ‘in-between’ place. You have to be aware of God’s leading and follow Him, but you also have to be leading the congregation to God. Unfortunately, I have often seen both extremes in worship leaders. I have seen ‘rock star’ worship leaders not leading worship, but putting on a show instead. That’s no good. I have also seen worship leaders so entranced in the moment that they forget the congregation was there. Let me make a quick note, that this is actually ok sometimes. As long as you, as the worship leader, comes back to the present moment to lead, ’cause that is your job! For example, if you, as the worship leader, have an amazing personal worship experience, but the rest of the congregation is sitting there wondering how to engage, you have missed the opportunity to lead them to the feet of Jesus.

The job of a worship leader is SO much more than singing or playing guitar. If you are a worship leader, make sure you spend time this week preparing to lead people to Jesus! Think about the words you will say before and after songs. Think about how you will connect the awesome message of Jesus to the people who need God’s amazing grace!

Prepare to LEAD worship!

Stay tuned for A Guide to Worship Leading – Part 2: Music

Worship Song Choices

Posted on by mattodegaard

In this post I wanted to lay out my process for weekend service song selection.
This one is a bit more detailed and specific.
There’s nothing magical here, but I do have a pretty standard, time tested process that I believe helps accomplish the main goal for worship leading -> getting people to sing!
First of course, the song has to be theologically accurate. If it is not true, we won’t sing it!
From there, I have three categories that I file songs in for service selection: Current, Classic and New songs.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the categories:
Current – I keep this list to around 25 songs that the congregation knows well.
Classic – This is for older songs and hymns that are, in fact, classic.
New – This list is shorter, around 10 songs, and is songs we don’t know all the way yet but are good, new songs.
Every week I try to choose at least one song from each category and never more than one New song. This way the songs we sing are well known and have the most potential to have high participation.
I do have an additional list which I call ‘On Deck’ where I put potential songs to introduce. The introduction of new songs is limited to one per 4-6 weeks. Once a song is introduced it goes into the New Song list and I’ll repeat it for a few weeks in a row to try to gain traction as we learn it.
I also have a secret, subliminal process with new songs where I put them on an iPod before the service for at least 3 months before I introduce the song. That way when the song is actually introduced, people say ‘Oh, I know that one’ even if they don’t know how or where they know it is from!
Feel free to use any or all of these suggestions and as always, if you have any questions, let me know!

Focus

Posted on by mattodegaard

Focus
In our culture we actually don’t have a worship problem, we have a focus problem.  Worshipping is easy.  Figuring out what to worship is the hard part.
Let’s read a story from the Bible where Paul, one of the New Testament leaders, talks to a culture that is not actually that different from our own.
Here is a paraphrase of Acts 17:16-33:
Paul is talking with people in Athens and they are confused because they believe in MANY gods and he is trying to tell them about the ONE God – Jesus. Then he walks around this hill with different idols for different gods and he finds this one and realizes, this is it!
Here’s verse 22:
 22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.
So he takes their own idol and realizes that they are so ‘religious’ that they want to cover all the bases, even if they don’t know what they are covering.  So they make this idol to the ‘unknown’ god.
Paul names this god for them.  He tells them that this God is Jesus.
Then he tells them about their worship problem.
They worship EVERYTHING but they miss the ONE thing they should be worshipping.
Verse 23 cont: ‘…so you are ignorant of the very thing you worship.’
The Athenians have many similarities to us.
They did not have a ‘worship’ problem.  They worshipped EVERYTHING, but they didn’t worship the RIGHT thing.
Just like the Athenians, we don’t have a worship problem, we have a focus problem. We worship all kinds of things, bands, cars, jobs, kids… But Paul reminds us that we are called to worship the living God.  The one true God.
God wants to have your worship.  He wants a relationship with you.
Part of being a follower of Jesus is our focus on him.  The Bible calls us to direct our attention towards God.  The Bible tells us to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess 5:17) but this concept may be easier to understand if we think about worshipping without ceasing.
Once we know WHAT to worship (Jesus) we can learn HOW to worship -> without ceasing.
We must learn to worship through ALL we do.
We must learn to praise in ALL we do.
We must ask God to transform us from who we have been into who we are created to be.
We are created in the image of His Son, Jesus.
Transform us from the inside out we pray…

Morning by Morning

Posted on by mattodegaard

morningbymorning

Morning by morning,

New mercies I see.

Great truth from the hymn – Great is Thy Faithfulness.

Every morning we are given a chance to make the right choices.

Lamentations in the Old Testament tells us:

‘The faithful love of the LORD never ends!

His mercies never cease

Great is HIS faithfulness

His mercies are new every morning!’

Don’t be hung up on the past.  Take this opportunity to grow and become the person God has created you to be!

Growing Worship

Posted on by mattodegaard

Welcome to Growing Worship!

My name is Matt Odegaard and I am the Worship Pastor at Hopevale.org.  I have been leading worship for more than 20 years in various churches from 200 to 10,000 people in attendance.  For a long time I have wanted to share my experiences and lessons learned in Worship Leading.  If you have found your way here you may be interested in growing your worship ministry, I’m here to help!  I love mentoring! I love Worship. I love empowering people with their gifts in serving the Church.  I will post stories, tips, techniques, and practical advice for worship leaders and pastors.