Encouragement for worship leaders in small churches

hey this is Brian with worship tutorial calm I hope you're having a great Monday and I hope you had a great Sunday yesterday as well especially if you were involved leading worship or on a worship team at a church somewhere we had a fantastic Sunday and I wanted to spend a moment today encouraging you so if you know anything about my church where I lead if you follow some of the Sunday blogs you know that I lead in a large multi-site Church and I lead at our Durham campus but I often lead in an alternate venue within that campus called coffee house our coffee house campus is purposefully a lower key more intimate environment for people who want to experience worship in that kind of an environment so it's an acoustic environment we typically don't use like a full drum kit will do percussion like a cone or something like that and we usually have about four or five people on our stage but yesterday we only had two people on our stage sometimes it just works out with volunteers and a few scheduled volunteers you know how this goes we're you know not everybody is available so yesterday we had a keyboard player and me on acoustic guitar singing and it was one of the best worship experiences I've had in a long time and not just for me but like the room of people were so engaged and our coffeehouse venue the room itself will hold a couple hundred people usually what we see is you know between 70 and maybe 120 people so I have a feeling that a lot of you lead in environments that are like that the average Church in America is well under a hundred people so maybe you lead worship in a church and there are 30 people in the room or 50 people in the room or 150 people in the room and I know from experience because I've been on staff the churches that are that that it can be frustrating because you feel like you need more financial resources to accomplish the vision that you have for worship in the church and through the worship leader you feel like you need more personnel more volunteers higher trained volunteers as far as production goes that kind of a higher level of musicianship and I understand those struggles well but yesterday we had such an amazing time of worship together and I wanted to share with you why I think that happened so hopefully a horse tutorial you've heard me say or you've got this from our content that the vision that we have at worst tutorials is that every Church in the world would have worship that is both excellent and authentic and I believe and we believe that you can accomplish excellence and authenticity regardless of budget regardless of personnel if it's just you on a guitar or singing or something in a living room with ten people you can do it you can lead with excellence and you can lead with authenticity and I believe that is why our worship was so great yesterday at coffee house everybody showed up very well prepared our ally our keyboard player knew all the songs so well she and I had spent time during the week listening and preparing and so when we played together on Sunday we did we typically don't have a midweek rehearsal for coffeehouse we come together Sunday morning at 6 a.m. and rehearse for our 8:45 we have at 8:45 and at 10:45 for service so we we came well-prepared and she and I played parts of the complemented one another our production team was also very well prepared my Quinn der so you seen in some of the vlog videos leads that team but it's a team of volunteers we had a person on computer graphics we call it CG anything that goes on the screen you know slides video imagery that kind of thing in some audio as well with a lighting person and we had an audio engineer and the transitions were just completely flawless every week after the service we get together as volunteers and staff and coffee house and we celebrate the things that went well and I celebrated the fact that the worship was just so engaging is so excellent this week and it was moving for me not only as a worship leader but as a worshiper and our campus pastor looked at me and he said well Brian you you were worshiping passionately and that that helped people engage and I kind of laughed and I said well it's nice you know when your worship leader worships that's what you want but I came back to it and I said it it kind of seems like yeah your worship leaders need to worship but it doesn't always happen and I speak from experience more times than I'd like to admit you know it's easy for us worship leaders to show up on a Sunday just feel like we're running on human it's so important that we spend time day in and day out spending time with God reading the Bible spending time in prayer asking God to lead us if you're a worship leader ask God to lead you the scripture that you can share with people ask God to reveal to you what is the holy spirit going to do and our worship service this week how can I prepare for it so that I can facilitate it how can I prepare for it so that I can lead people to a place where the Holy Spirit is going to move and their lives and this weekend that's what I believe the often tend to be parted so the excellence part has to do with how well you prepare how well do you know the songs coming in to Sunday how well have you thought through what you're going to say between some how well has your production team or whether it's just you know a couple people in a booth in the back how well have they been trained and have they anticipated how you're going to get from one part of service to the next because that's tough all matter that's excellent the authenticity part is how well have you prepared yourself spiritually to lead so that you're not just saying the same thing every time you say something to a song or you're not just saying hey we're going to sing a song that says you're a good good father because you're a good good father let's sing it I mean that's just a lyric song that doesn't take much preparation sometimes it might be appropriate but there is a way better way to lead people into that song if you're going to say stuff that's just me but I just wanted to encourage you today if you'll be worship in a small environment and you feel frustrated or if Hughley worship in a large environment and you feel frustrated and you know you feel like you don't have the budget or the personnel or whatever it is that you need to accomplish your vision those things are important but what is also important and something that you can control every single week is that you prepare yourself to lead with excellence and you compare yourself to lead with authenticity and that you spend time with God every single day preparing your spirit and your heart in your mind to lead people authentically and lead them to a place where the Holy Spirit is going to move and change their lives the last thing I'd like to share with you is the last thing I shared with our congregation on Sunday is that we had so we had just come through this day powerful day people we had a Salvation invitation at the end of the service and there were multiple people in the room that raised their hand to receive Jesus as their Savior and we should never lose our sense of law when that happens when people's lives when they cross from death to life in our midst and we can witness it happen it's an amazing thing so we had just gone through all that and we we have sung a song at the end of the service and it was really powerful and I shared with people and I said I can't remember exactly what I said but something like this I said you know such such a privilege to worship with you and among you today and I said the Bible tells us that any time we gather in Jesus name that the Holy Spirit is there with us every single time the spirit among us sometimes we don't perceive it as a little bit sometimes we're not as in tune to it but when the Holy Spirit is in our mint the Holy Spirit expects to change people's lives the Holy Spirit expects to save people I heard Don Mellon say this one time it really changed the way I think about what we're doing on a Sunday the Holy Spirit expects and anticipates to move in powerful ways and to save people to heal people and that is what is happening every single time that we gather in the name of Jesus whether we feel it or not so my encouragement again prepare yourselves well but understand that that is what's happening on a Sunday and ask God help you lead people to a place where the spirit does that in people's hearts and minds and lives again I hope you had a great Sunday hope you have a great week and for the next time that you're involved in a worship service on a Sunday or whatever day it is that you gather keep these things in mind prepare yourself to lead with excellent and authenticity and I know that God is going to do amazing things through you hey if you'd like to stay up to date with everything that is going on at worst tutorial just click right up here and you can subscribe to us on YouTube thank you so much for watching see it in the next video [Music]

Channel: Worship Tutorials

Views: 36,296

Rating: 4.9478583 out of 5

Keywords: worship, church, worship leader, worship leading, encouragement, tips

Id: AOcV0Ft8RbU

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2017