I occasionally have people at church ask about singing some of their older favorite songs. I used to get this more at a former church where we didn’t offer a traditional service. My reply usually involved something about the kind of music our leadership wanted. Sometimes if they pressed me, I would tell them that there are hundreds of songs I’ve used in worship over the years, and quite a few of them I’d still like to use.

I’m still trying to figure out how to encourage our people to clap during worship, both during the upbeat songs and after them. Most of the people in my congregation have grown up with traditional worship that sadly didn’t encourage physical expressions of worship. Therefore, clapping is, I imagine, quite uncomfortable for them. But — and I don’t want to sound New Agey here — there is an energy that builds when people clap in worship. I’m going to work on this one for the foreseeable future, taking the initiative myself to teach and model clapping. How I’ll do this while playing an instrument will be the challenge.

My first exposure to worship music was a vinyl record led by a cartoon hymnal named Psalty. Psalty the Psalter, I think it was. I remember my twin sister and me as kindergartners dancing in the living room to the songs of the first Kids Praise album while my mom made cookies in the kitchen.

Return to Sender, our youth band, led our contemporary service this past weekend. We’d needed to regroup a little from having lost a couple seniors last year, which is why we waited until February for the band to lead on a Sunday morning. Thankfully, our group is quite young, with [...]

Every worship leader has stood before his or her congregation and wondered what it would be like if we all worshiped more throughout the week. What if our gathering on Sunday morning (or whatever day and time) comprised believers who loved and worshiped Jesus every day — not just for an hour once a week?

Better late than never. I received an email from one of my vocalists who wasn’t serving this past week. Near her among the congregation sat an older man she didn’t know. Throughout the entire service he didn’t sing a note, that is until the last two words of our closing song, when he sang “to you” in a deep, raspy voice.

What a day on Sunday! Four worship services, starting with the early service and ending with our youth worship gathering. Darah led our contemporary service wonderfully, including a song I’ve liked singing but may like her doing better, “The Stand.” Included in the band were two of her brothers. I [...]

Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” last year and Billy Joel’s “A Matter of Trust” this past week. All I need is to somehow include an Elton John song in a future service.

A great service that didn’t begin very well. I should say, our soundcheck was delayed by some technical glitches. I’ve written about the PowerPoint charts we use on stage (see the post). We’ve become completely dependent on them, so there was a brief scare when we couldn’t get it to [...]

This was the second of our blended Sunday morning services. Last week for Christmas we merged both morning services into one (and a Christmas Eve service). This week we did the same for New Year’s Day. Whereas on Christmas we featured our normal “rock” band with two electric guitars, this week we scaled down to just two acoustic guitars.