90% of churches are under 200 people.
That means, if you lead worship in a small church, you are not part of the minority - you're in the majority! 9 out of 10 other worship leaders are leading worship in a small church!
And yet, it seems like most resources that are available online for worship leaders are from large church leaders for people leading in a large church context. This leaves you, the small church worship leader, having to translate the information and adapt it to your own context.
Enter: Churchfront and Leading Worship Well!
Jake Gosselin from Churchfront and I recently did a live training over on his YouTube channel (youtube.com/churchfront).
Jake and I are both worship leaders at small churches so we know your struggles.
In this training, we covered 10 tips for leading worship in a small church.
These are tips that you can implement into your small church worship leading without having to go through the mental gymnastics of adapting them to your own small church environment.
These tips were written specifically with you in mind!
Jake and I spent about an hour discussing these 10 tips and then answering some questions from other small church worship leaders.
Here are the 10 tips for small church worship leaders we covered:
1. Embrace the intimacy. (3:04)
2. Relationship comes before change. (4:45)
3. Focus on the fundamentals. (6:43)
4. Lead like you are at a large church. (8:55)
5. Use what you have. (11:49)
6. Upgrade to a budget-friendly digital console and in-ear monitors. (14:02)
7. Don't compare, learn. (17:36)
8. Learn how to use a click, pads, and tracks. (19:17)
9. Put your songs in the right key. (21:55)
10. Proactively recruit volunteers. (24:38)
During the Q&A we answered these questions:
1. What are your suggestions for recruiting more volunteers onto the worship team in a small church? (27:11)
2. What if we have a full band but still want to use loops and clicks? (29:00)
3. What's the best tip for vocal training? (29:35)
4. Can you give us one tip even experienced worship leaders need? (31:33)
5. Do you have any experience with Playback by MultiTracks? (34:00)
6. How would you recommend working with only a handful of musicians willing to serve and prevent things like burn out? (34:55)
7. How important is it for a worship leader to know music theory? Is it necessary to go a little bit further than just knowing a few chords on guitar and piano? (37:45)
8. What's the best way to encourage front-line vocalists to be more expressive when leading? (41:29)
9. What's better: Behringer X32 or Allen and Heath QU24? (43:44)
10. How do I work with a worship team that isn't spiritually right with God? (44:24)
11. What are the steps if you want to record a worship album? (46:29)
Make sure to go subscribe to Jake over on YouTube for more helpful worship leading tips. He's also got something really amazing in the works called Worship Leader School - you can sign up for the wait-list at worshipleaderschool.com.
If you found these tips helpful and want a few more bonus tips, check out my FREE audio training where I cover "5 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Worship Leading!" In this training, I go over 5 worship leading tips that, if you are simply aware of them, have the power to instantly improve your worship leading. Check it out here!
5 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Worship Leading
FREE AUDIO TRAINING: Discover 5 simple tips that will instantly improve your worship leading.
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