3 Tips to Successful Worship Leading

Whenever a worship team feels they have a bad set, it brings to question what is it that makes a time of worship good? Or another way of saying it, what makes it successful?

Are Worship Leaders Being Suffocated?

This post was originally published here and has been republished with permission.

I’ve heard a common statement recently. It goes something like this, “That worship leader is too self-centered” or “That worship leader is doing nothing but putting on a show.”

I agree with the premise that we need to get the focus off of ourselves and onto God. However, I’m worried about the response this causes from pastors and the congregation.

A few requests I’ve heard are:

1. Sing songs in a key that the whole congregation can sing
2. Sing your original songs very sparingly
3. Don’t do songs that only hype people up
4. If I pay you, you’ll only look at this as a job
5. Just sing the songs like the CD. We don’t need your extra artistic flair
6. (Insert your own churches preferences on what worship leading should look like)

While there are helpful tools in all of these suggestions, they can become more like rules.

Why you should sing at Church

I grew up going to church. Every Sunday I would walk into church with my family, climb the stairs to the balcony, and sing a combination of worship songs with the congregation. Some of the congregation could sing, some couldn’t. But still, we sang our songs—waving our flags, clapping our hands (on and off-beat) and tapping our well-meaning, clumsy feet to the strums of the guitar and the beat of the drums. I loved it.

But did you ever wonder why we sing in church? Why do we attempt to reach those unattainable notes with our morning voices? Why do we repeat the words to well-known songs over and over again, week after week?