A guest post over at ChrisFromCanada.com

Dear worship leader, you make these setlists every single week, for 52 weekends a year. Those weekends arrive timely, like a train on schedule. When the setlist is off its mark the train seems to derail. Keeping a setlist on its tracks is what keeps you awake at night. Or, it surely is something you know is important.

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Chris Tomlin’s latest “Burning Lights” releases TODAY, January 8. Read a review on my blog and if you leave a comment there, you can enter to win one of 5 FREE CDs being given away!

Worship Leader Media is putting on a webinar that I am excited to teach. There are only 50 spots, so get yours while they last. Here is a practical topic that I think will help worship leaders as they work through launch, growth, and maintenance of their teams.

There are six roles or hats that take place in leading the 52 weekend services in worship. Learning what these roles are and staffing them well is the key to growing a team and preventing burnout and frustration. Leading worship is more than just a platform-driven event. There are people to recruit, schedules to keep, projects to manage, and communication to focus. On top of all the “tasks” there is the primary need for spiritual direction of all the people who make up a worship team. Learning how to leverage which of the six you should keep and which you should delegate can be the difference maker in sustaining and growing a team that can weather change.

In a smaller setting, people will surely wear more than one hat and most likely will be all volunteers. As a ministry grows, paid staff comes in to wear the hats that require more time or specialization. Here are the six hats:

• Worship Leader: This individual’s role is the upfront face, and intuitively gifted individual who can engage a congregation.
• Music Director: The details of music are important, so direction of rehearsal, preparation of charts and direction of the “sound” of the worship team.
• Tech Director: This is audio, video, lighting and setup logistics both in detail and vision.
• Service Producer: During the service, the details and flow are managed. (The larger the setting, the more this is needed.)
• Programming Director/Admin: Project manager of the content and details for execution and/or person who keeps the details, scheduling and project in check.
• Pastor/Executive Producer: Theology, the definition of the “win” for a weekend and organizational mission alignment as well as the shepherding issues on a team. This is both spiritual direction as well as organizationally driven.

The webinar would walk through how these all work together and encourage worship leaders to find which they are best to keep and which they are best to delegate and recruit others to take. Knowing these roles makes us “administer the gifts with grace” factoring in people’s shape and how that applies to leading worship.

This live webinar is FREE and limited to 50 attendees.

April 19, 11:00 to 12:00 pm.

Please note that the starting time listed is PST (California time)

REGISTER HERE

Yes, I am recording a 4-song worship EP titled “Drink the Divine” and you can go to DrinktheDivine.com to learn more! This project has been long in the works and includes four original songs. I could sure use your help! Please check it out!

This is Tehilla Music’s first return back to music publishing as well. Stay tuned for more details.

Head on over to WorshipMythbusters.com to Episode 11 and enter the CD give away of Rita Springer’s new CD “The Play List” which has been having great reviews. Ever wonder if there are some fresh tunes for the women who lead worship? You will find some answers in this CD. Also, I give a tribute on mentorship. Happy Thanksgiving!

Copyrights can be a confusing thing, but complying is really something we should be above board about, right! Copyright Solver offers help for so many issues. If you cannot afford an administrative person at your church to handle copyright compliance for your events, video syncs and other creative communications then you are gonna love this company. And, they are celebrating 10 years with an iPad giveaway! Here are some tidbits from their press release. Click the image above or links below for more information about their services or giveaway.

Christian Copyright Solutions (CCS) is celebrating 10 years of providing services and licensing solutions designed to make copyrights simple for the Christian community. CCS was launched as Church Copyright Administration (CCA) in October, 2001 and began by providing copyright administration services for Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.

CCS serves churches and ministries by providing simple and accessible online education, administration and licensing solutions at their CopyrightSolver and CopyrightCommunity websites.

“We want to say thank you to our community of loyal customers this month by giving away prizes including an iPad 2,” says CCS president/founder Susan Fontaine Godwin. “We’re also excited to unveil our redesigned site with new resource features like videos, fact sheets, free church idea kits, company highlights, and much more.”

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You can enter the Copyright Solver 10 year anniversary iPad 2 giveaway by going to their website giveaway page. They are also giving away five $25 Starbucks gift cards and ten journals.

 

By the way, it is all done on iPhone.

Worship leaders: you don’t need crazy-good luck to win!

Have you ever entered a contest to then discover that only one in a million will win? Proclaim Church Presentation Software is breaking all the rules with the Great Worship Resource Giveaway. To celebrate its coming launch into the church presentation market, Proclaim has partnered with today’s top worship resource companies to give away over $25,000 in prizes to more than 100 winners.

And because worship leaders belong to such a specific group, the chances of winning are huge!

“We put together a giveaway that will help worship leaders everywhere,” said New Media Executive Director Matt Peterson. “Proclaim is all about creating better worship services. Shouldn’t the giveaway do the same thing?”

The prizes all center around one thing—creating powerful worship services. Prizes include things like a new and professionally church created website, hosted free for a year, a year of expert video and audio podcasting, $100s in gift cards for worship music, subscriptions to the top worship planning site, membership to top worship media sites, downloadable music lessons, an acoustic guitar, tickets to some of the premier worship leader and music conference, and much more!

To enter watch the video at http://proclaimonline.com and at the end there is a list of ways to enter the giveaway. There are several one-time ways to enter and a couple ways to enter every day!

Go check out Worship Mythbusters where they will debunk damaging thinking that gets in the way of our worship services and public worship.