Blog – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

Where to Find Inspiration for Unique Sermon Series

Anyone who works a repetitive job is prone to going through creative ruts at some point in their career. Obviously, no week is every the exact same as a pastor, but there’s no doubt that you deal with a lot of repetitive tasks on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. The most obvious task that falls in that category is sermon prep. Sermon prep is the most repetitive task of a lead pastor at a church, but it’s also one of the most important. If you’re not putting your best foot forward...

Most Common Pastoral Care Challenges

Most pastors consider their job a great privilege and blessing. Having the opportunity to lead a congregation and grow their understanding of God’s word is an incredible joy. However, being a pastor isn’t without its challenges, and pastoral care can be an incredibly difficult job at times. Most Common Pastoral Care Challenges As a pastor, every day comes with unique blessings and challenges. Pastoral care is one of the most important jobs, but it can also be very demanding. While ther...

5 Tips for Creating a Committed Worship Team Culture

Commitment is everything when it comes to building a healthy worship team culture. When volunteers aren’t committed, they are minimally engaged and seldom excited about ministry goals or long-term trajectory. 5 Tips: Create a Committed Worship Team Culture If you’re struggling to keep volunteers committed and engaged with worship team, it may be time to revise your approach. Creating a culture of engagement and commitment within your worship ministry revolves around a few key practices...

3 Tips to Be More Efficient with Sermon Prep

Being a pastor isn’t a typical day job. You’re pretty much on call 24/7, and it’s rare that you ever have the ability to devote 100% of your attention for an extended period of time to any one thing. That’s just the nature of the job. Being a pastor is a lot more than speaking on a Sunday. But… sermon preparation is incredibly important and it’s a weekly activity. While you probably get faster the more you do it, it’s also gets easier and easier to let distractions get in the wa...

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Ditch the Drum Shield: A Message to All Churches

Drum shields are a touchy topic. Primarily because everyone seems to be super opinionated about it. Drummers *hate* climbing into an enclosure, and sound guys *hate* dealing with loud drummers. I’ve played drums in countless - differently sized - rooms for various styles of music and I can tell you with full certainty that drum shields are not necessary. Don’t get me wrong - I completely, 100% understand why sound guys/worship pastors reach for drum shields as a solution, but I want to de...

How Often to Introduce New Songs at Church

You want worship music to be engaging and reflective of your church’s culture. Every church will have a unique selection of songs that fit their congregation best. However, while sticking to your roots is smart, that doesn’t mean you need to leave your congregation singing the songs over and over. In fact, if you are frustrated that your congregation is not involved and engaged in worship as much as you’d like to see, it may be because the songs have grown stale from overplaying them. H...

Why is My Church’s Giving Decreasing?

Church giving is so important for your ministry to thrive. You know more than anyone how valuable congregational giving is for the growth of your church, and the investment in worship, youth, young adults, and other ministries. But giving isn’t always the easiest topic to deal with. Your church will almost certainly go through seasons where congregational giving is down. The question is - why is it happening, and is it preventable? If you’re trying to lock down a reason (or several reason...

Working Ahead: Building a Sermon Calendar

Staying on top of your work as a pastor can be difficult at times. You wear a lot of hats, and depending on your church size and culture, you may be working what feels like much more than a single job. But your primary job as a pastor is to lead your congregation and “make disciples”. While preaching a sermon allows you to teach someone about a single concept or passage of scripture, “discipling” people requires trajectory. Essentially, aside from what people gain from each individ...

Will a New Building Grow My Church Attendance

Being a church planter is one of the most difficult and demanding jobs you can have. You’re starting a ministry from scratch, and while you may have a solid idea on why your church needs to exist and what its long-term goals are, it can be really difficult to get people on board during the early stages of your church’s life. If you are trying to grow your ministry, and moving into a new building is one of the many items on your checklist, you’re probably eager to get the ball rolling. B...

Finding a Location for Your Church Plant

Starting a church plant is a big task - there’s a great deal of courage, prayer, support, and planning involved by you and others that’s required to make it all happen. All that said, when it comes to the final step of finding a location for your church plant, things can get a bit stressful. You have enough on your mind as a church planter - you don’t want to make the wrong call and find yourself fighting locational challenges on a weekly basis. Picking the Right Location for Your Ch...

Hiring Your First Church Staff Member

As a pastor, you deal with a ton of difficult tasks. You’re faced with growing your ministry, leading a congregation, and leading volunteers in places of leadership over your church; not to mention all the administrative tasks you have to take care of on a day-to-day basis. One of these difficult tasks you’ll encounter is hiring your first church staff member. Tips for Hiring Your First Church Staff Member First of all, if you are considering hiring your first church staff member - con...

Preparing Your Church to Move Into a New Building

Finding a location to do ministry in is difficult. Church plants often struggle to find willing venues and schools to host Sunday morning church in, and even after finding a venue, it’s a lot of work to setup and tear down the necessary gear every Sunday. But it’s almost always worth it - despite the work, the commute, the long hours - you do it for the community of believers that call your church, “home”, and you do it because it’s your way of giving back to God for what he’s done f...

Where to Find Great Affordable Church Media

The modern church relies heavily on media for worship music, lyric and sermon slides, sermon videos, livestreams, and social media. The reason is simple - media can aid in communicating a message clearly. Audio and visuals accompany messages to make them “stick” with people. Whether it’s premade and purchased videos and mini-movies, or separate media components for in-house video production, finding quality church media at an affordable price can be really difficult. Finding Affordab...

How to Effectively Lead Older Worship Team Members

It’s not always the case, but the job position “worship leader” seems to be appealing to a younger audience these days. It’s common that worship leader positions get filled by recent college graduates, which is great for a lot of reasons! Primarily, it’s bringing church leadership to the hands of younger generations, prepping them to lead ministries as the baton gets passed on. But worship leaders are tasked not only with controlling the quality of music and creative direction of th...

Emergency Volunteers: How to Handle Volunteer No-Shows

We all want to be able to rely on our teams. With staff members, you can usually assume they will be there when they’re supposed to. But when it comes to volunteers, things can get a bit problematic. Depending on the position they’re volunteering for, level of commitment, communication they’ve received, or just plain old forgetfulness, there may come a Sunday morning where you’re short volunteers because of a “no-show” situation. Importance of Emergency Volunteers: Handling No-Sho...

5 Tips for Improving Church Volunteer Meetings

Every pastor understands that meeting with their teams is absolutely crucial. But often times, the meetings happen between leadership staff and other employees while neglecting volunteer teams entirely. The truth is, volunteers often provide just as much value as the employees of a church, and attempting to run a ministry without them would be nearly impossible. That’s why it’s crucial to devote time to meeting with volunteers – in teams or individually – to keep them engaged, excited ab...

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How to Increase Church Giving at a Small Church

As a small church, you rely heavily (if not entirely) on the giving of your church’s congregation. Giving is important for a variety of reasons - not only does it allow you to cover all base expenses, but reliable, recurring giving enables you to more accurately forecast your budget. This makes it easier to meet church goals of hiring staff, upgrading equipment, moving venues, funding missionaries, or any other goals your church may have in mind for the future. However, at small churches, i...

Letting Worship Team Members Go: How to Handle It

The people you have on your worship team contribute so much to your church. You know better than anyone that being on a worship team is not just a fun activity – it’s a spiritual leadership responsibility. The worship team members standing on stage carry a responsibility to demonstrate their love and commitment to God on and off stage. In addition to that, performing with musical excellence is important; not for the sake of the music, but out of respect for the congregation, other team membe...

3 Crucial Church Snare Drum Mixing and EQ Tips

Mixing drums in live worship music can be really difficult. Not only are you battling the mix of the entire band – the room you’re in has limitations regardless of how small or big of a space it is. On top of that, the mics used, sound equipment installed, and mixing board will all play a role in the final sound of your mix. However, there are a few concrete “principals” that can be applied to live mixing that will help your drums cut through. Church Mixing & EQ Tips: Snare Drum Th...

Things That Won’t Grow Your Church Attendance

You’ve probably had this conversation with yourself in one way or another: “If I could just do this one thing, I could really grow my church’s attendance.” We look to other thriving and growing ministries around us and are inspired by certain aspects of their church. We convince ourselves that if we could change that “one thing” that our ministry could grow tenfold. Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. 4 Things That Won’t Grow Your Church Attendance If you’re wa...