I love the church I attend. I hope you do too (Yours, not mine. But if you went to mine I would hope that you would like it).
One of the many blessings I’ve received through our church is that I get to serve as a volunteer worship leader on an amazing worship team. No, we’re not Hillsong United, Jesus Culture, Austin Stone Worship or Elevation Worship, but I love every member on our team and look forward to playing with them every time I share the stage with them. Every time I look in Planning Center Online to see when I’m scheduled next, I usually smile at the names of my fellow bandmates and never look at it with disappointment.
We have fun. We’re transparent. We genuinely care for one another. And we all love Jesus. That’s what matters most.
This week, we’re welcoming our new teaching pastor to our church community and he’s preaching through 1 Corinthians (at a 30,000 foot view). So over the weekend, my job is to connect with whoever is teaching and ask what the high level theme and takeaways are from our pastor’s sermon. He’s planning on preaching about our messiness, brokenness and ugliness that we lay at the foot of the cross every day. But the good news is we’re covered in the grace of Jesus through our faith in Him. So that topic alone is a great theme to build a worship set around.
After I spend time listening to our arsenal of worship songs, I will also conduct keyword searches based on key words or phrases in the scripture we’re studying that week. Then I think about the flow of how that song will fit into our worship set and who will be leading the song, asking myself, “What story do you want to tell?” We usually conclude with a song or two that aligns with the application of the scripture to respond to the message and God’s Word.
One of the steps in my worship leading process is to learn the songs as much as possible (because let’s face it, I’m terrible at memorizing chords and lyrics), so I normally create a Spotify playlist to listen to over and over and over…again. I spend an hour each way driving to work so that’s usually a good time for me to knock the rust off my vocal cords and rock out in the car.
In case you’re wondering what we’re playing, here’s what I like to call the “Weekend Worship Set” Spotify playlist.
What are you playing at your church? Comment below! And if you do something similar, please share your weekend worship set! 🙂
