Leading Worship With Recorded Music

Worship Leaders by John A. White Contributing Writer August 03, 2011

To keep your worship moving toward your goal, roughly ¼ of your songs should be calling people to worship, 1/3 to ½ should be dedicated to spiritual preparation and the balance dedicated to meeting God.

Here's an example. Let say we wanted to remind the group of God's holiness and we had time for five songs. Table 1 gives a possible arrangement of song and the reasons for choosing these songs and Appendix 1 is the wordsheet for the worship set.

Once you've selected the songs and have the wordsheets of each song, try out the worship set. Sing the complete set without stopping to yourself. At the end, note your own worship experience and ask yourself if you worshipped the way you expect your group will. If so, you are ready for step three. If not, make only small adjustments (like changing the order of only two songs or replacing only one song) and test drive the worship set again. Every worship leader goes through this same iterative process so don't feel defeated if your first go around doesn't quite work the way you expect.

Step 3 – Preparing the Music

Once you're satisfied with the song selection, you'll need to prepare to play the music and prepare wordsheets.

The music you already have but probably on several different sources. I think its best to burn a CD or record an audio tape of the songs you select in the order of the worship set. There is a legality you should be aware of. Copyright laws allow you to make duplicate recordings for your own personal use. This means that you cannot give the burned CD or audio tape to someone else for their enjoyment. If you are using CDs and have a multiple CD changer, then you can program the CDs and tracks instead of making a new recording. The goal in preparing the music is to have transitions from one song to another without distractions. In this sense, it is undesirable to be inserting different CDs or tapes into your player throughout the worship set. Not only does it distract you, it will also distract your group.

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