How to Work with Your Music Leader for Seamless Worship

Written by Rick Ezell

As the pastor and worship leader, you are to create an environment where people can meet God. You can’t make people encounter God, but you can create an atmosphere where people are welcomed into his presence. For that to happen, the pastor and worship leader must be a team - dreaming, planning, and working together - leading people into God’s presence.

Preaching with Bold Assurance

Here are four steps you can take to towards seamless worship:

1. Meet regularly prior to Sunday’s worship.
Ideally, several meetings are needed to achieve the results stated above. As a minimum, at least three months out to discuss the coming month’s service themes, monthly to narrow the scope of each service, weekly to make sure that all the plans, people, and resources are in place. In my opinion, worship is the most important activity the church engages in, therefore, it should be reflected in the use of your time.

2. Plan services around a theme.
I plan several months out regarding my preaching plan. I not only give the worship leaders my text and the working title of the message, I provide them a one-paragraph summary of the direction of the message. This enables the music, video, testimonies, drama, and other elements to complement the theme of the service. By the way, I believe that God can and does speak to me months earlier, as well as the week before and extemporaneously.

3. Help the service flow.
In real estate, the three most important words are: location, location, location. In a worship service that seeks to be seamless, the three most important words are: transitions, transitions, transitions. Having fewer transitions by grouping elements of the worship together will help it flow. As an example, group all the congregational singing together. This action not only reduces the number of transitions, it also provides a freeing worship experience by creating a reverential mood and sense of anticipation of what is to come.

Reducing verbiage helps the service flow. People talk too much when they get a microphone in their hands. Instruct your worship leaders, soloists, scripture readers and those praying and sharing testimonies to keep their words to a minimum. While you don’t want your worship to appear like a hundred yard dash, you do want the service to have a good pace.

4. Make changes that everyone will appreciate.
Seamless worship involves more than what happens on the platform.

Here are eleven suggestions:

Clean up the clutter
Turn up the volume
Shorten the service
Start on time
Make no more than three announcements
Paint the walls lighter
Install brighter lights
Provide directional signs
Upgrade the quality of the bulletin
Train the ushers and the greeters
Install a video projection system

One final suggestion: Since you are generally the leaders up front whom people are watching, why not enlist someone to videotape your service so you can see what others are seeing each Sunday. The camera doesn’t lie. It will be a real eye-opener.

Rick Ezell is the pastor of First Baptist Greer, South Carolina. He has served churches in Naperville, IL, Scottsburg, IN and Overland Park, KS for the past twenty-three years. Rick has been married to Cindy for over twenty years. He is the author of several books including, The Seven Sins of Highly Defective People, Strengthening the Pastor's Soul, Sightings of the Savior, & Cutting to the Core.

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