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

Tips for Getting Worship Team Volunteers to Prepare

A lot of musicians from the church draw a strange line between worship and performance, as if the two are mutually exclusive. There’s often this presumption that if you’re worried about the music, you’re not worshiping, and that performance always pales in comparison to the importance of being engaged in worship. And while this is an incredibly “noble” intention behind why many volunt...

Worship Pastors: Importance of Positive Feedback to Musicians

Being a pastor of any sort is an incredibly busy (and often draining) job. You’re shouldering the weight of daily responsibilities, constant meetings, endless to-do lists, and on top of it there’s the entire relational aspect to the job. Don’t get me wrong – I know pastors love their congregations and volunteers, but when you stack the responsibilities of being personally involved in all y...

Hire or Contract? Sound Professional Edition

Most churches find it important to have someone available to run sound for rehearsals and services. While some are lucky enough to have a sound-board-savvy volunteer on the roster, most of us find that hiring a professional either to be on staff or contracting week to week can be a simple way to elevate production quality. When it comes to contracting or hiring, how do you know which route is b...

Guide Track Tutorial | Ableton in 5 Minutes

Download your free guide cue samples here! This "Ableton in 5 minutes" series is hosted by Chris Fleming, Motion Worship Creative Director, professional drummer and music director from Minneapolis, MN. In this collection of concise tutorials you will learn how to use click tracks, guide cues, and multitracks in your setlists. In this specific video tutorial, we'll cover how to use vocal ...

Should You Be Recording Your Worship Rehearsals?

If you’ve upgraded your mixing console in the past 10 years, it’s most likely a digital desk. And while a new sound board isn’t going to magically make anyone better at singing, playing an instrument, or mixing, here’s something you can do that has the potential to directly impact the quality of your musicians and techs: Record Your Rehearsals How often do you change the arrangement...

Worship Pastors: Why and How to Start Using Music Directors

I’ve been to a lot of churches that don’t have assigned music directors. It seems to mostly be smaller churches that feel they either don’t have the resources/personnel necessary for a Music Director (MD), or just generally don’t feel it’s needed. I’m here to tell you that almost any church is not only capable of introducing an MD role to their teams, but will actually be better off fo...

Tips for Sharing Worship Thoughts Between Songs

Talking in between songs is difficult. You’re often coming out of a highly energetic moment with people engaging in worship and singing along with the team... and then the lights come down, it gets really quiet, and you’re essentially expected to “preach” something of value to everyone. It can be scary. Even for those who have completely overcome the fear of speaking in front of everyon...

Advanced Click Tracks for Worship | Ableton in 5 Minutes

This "Ableton in 5-minutes" series is hosted by Chris Fleming, Motion Worship Creative Director, professional drummer and music director from Minneapolis, MN. In this collection of concise tutorials you will learn how to use click tracks, guide cues, and multitracks in your setlists. In this specific video tutorial, we'll cover some more advanced methods of customizing click tracks for your...

Building Basic Click Tracks for Worship | Ableton in 5 Minutes

This "Ableton in 5 minutes" series is hosted by Chris Fleming, Motion Worship Creative Director, professional drummer and music director from Minneapolis, MN. In this collection of concise tutorials you will learn how to use click tracks, guide cues, and multitracks in your setlists. In this specific video tutorial, Chris will walk you through the most basic method of setting up click track...

Tips for Buying & Tuning Church Drums on a Budget

Drums are incredibly expensive. I know because I’m a drummer. And I have a drum gear hoarding problem... But buying drums on a budget is a bit different than other instruments. With a guitar, bass, or keyboard, you have to buy one at it’s list price and that’s what it costs – you have the instrument. With drums, it’s much easier to mix together snares with different drum kits, cymbals...

Worship Pastors: Building Close Relationships with Your Team

You wear a lot of hats as a worship pastor. You’re doing a lot of administrative organizing tasks throughout the week, you’re finding songs and curating setlists, coordinating with staff members, and communicating to the team. But while an effective worship pastor needs to be good at driving the bus from a managerial standpoint, they also need to be relational and empathetic with their team...

New Worship Team Orientation Meetings: Best Practices

While an audition process is great for gauging someone’s capability, it’s not the end of the onboarding process for new worship team members. Maybe a singer passed worship team tryouts but after you get them involved, you begin questioning whether or not you were right about them. Are they actually ready? It’s not uncommon after a new team member is brought on to experience a rehearsal fi...

Worship Ministry: Balancing Volunteer and Paid Musicians

There are several churches that rely entirely on volunteer worship teams, while others rely 100% on a paid contract musician structure. It’s pretty easy to keep everyone’s expectations similar when the whole team is comprised of all volunteers or all paid musicians, but once you start mixing them together, the balance can get difficult. Who should be paid and who should be a volunteer? Shou...

Tips for Training in New Worship Team Volunteers

As a worship pastor, you deal with people of all sorts of skill levels. Chances are if you’ve worked in churches for long enough, you’ve seen people volunteer to help out who can hardly play an instrument, as well as volunteers far beyond your own skill level. That’s the nature of working in a church – you see a very wide array of skill and commitment levels in volunteers. And while mos...

Leading Worship With Confidence

Searching for confidence can so often feel self-defeating-— the more you try the muster up a feeling, the more elusive it becomes. I’ve discovered that confidence is less of a feeling and more of a choice. Building confidence, like building muscle, takes work, consistency, and trust in the process. Here are a few tips to get you on the path to leading worship with confidence. Tune Your Ins...

Church Musicians: Should You Pay Them?

As a freelance drummer in Minneapolis, MN, I’ve had the opportunity to play at several churches in the area. I have gotten the privilege to share the stage with volunteer musicians at new church plants meeting in high schools and theaters, as well as at megachurches. Playing at several churches has given me the chance to see how different worship pastors approach building worship teams, sched...

Creating an Engaging Christmas Worship Setlist

It’s that time of year again, where we all run around panicking about Christmas services and that our ideas won’t be executed properly. We’re kidding... kind of. Hopefully you’re more organized this year than ever before, and we’re sure that no matter what you choose to do, everything will work out fine. However, for worship pastors, there’s always a lot of stress around building...

Worship Tracks: 5 Most Common Ableton Pitfalls

Ableton is an incredibly powerful tool, especially in worship music. Churches of all sizes around the world are using it during live services for a variety of purposes. It enables keyboardists to run synth patches, pianos, and other instruments. It can be used for complex automation of keys patches, tracks, and other instrumentation during a worship service. And of course, it can be used as a simp...

Worship Pastors: How to Talk to Your Drummers

Worship pastor to drummer communication has got to be one of the most stressful things to be a part of within a worship team, but I think there’s a reason it’s so common. The drum set is such an oddball instrument, and also the only one who’s role is entirely different than most contemporary worship instruments. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the loudest and one of the most important a...

4 Best Practices: Motivating Your Volunteer Worship Team

Many volunteers live for worship team rehearsals and playing on Sunday mornings. It’s where they get their energy and they’re absolutely ecstatic to be a part of the team. But unfortunately, it’s not that way for everyone. When worship team volunteers are excited and motivated to be a part of the worship band, your team thrives. But when it feels like a weekly “to-do” item, they’re not...