Blog – Page 3 – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

When Someone Says The Music Is Too Loud

If your church plays modern, pop/rock style worship songs, you’ve likely heard this complaint: “The music is too loud”. For those of us who are musicians and tech team members, this can be frustrating feedback. You’ve put hours into preparing the service and the environment, and instead of focusing on the impact the service is having, you’re staring down what can feel like an endless st...

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...

Facilitate Tough Conversations with Your Youth Group

Youth ministry, at its best, has long been a space where teenagers and adults can speak candidly about difficult topics. However, today, those topics extend beyond sexuality and our existential place in the world — racism, politics, and national tragedies all deserve a seat at the table. These days, students expect the adults in their lives to address difficult topics and big events as they ...

6 Tips for Attracting Children’s Ministry Volunteers

Recruiting, developing, and retaining volunteers for your children’s ministry is no small task. If you’ve been working in a children's ministry for any amount of time, you understand what an important role volunteers play in the lives of your kids. They interact, lead, and shape these young minds and help make your gatherings safe and possible. Finding and keeping volunteers engaged can be ...

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...

Circumvent Common Easter Sunday Disasters

Easter Sunday is one of the biggest weekends of the year for churches. While you’re putting finishing touches on your resurrection celebration, it doesn’t hurt to incorporate a plan for how to manage any potential fail points. Securing a few precautionary measures will help you feel confident to tackle any last minute issues or demands when Easter rolls around and elevate your peace of mind so...

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Church Leaders: How to Be Seen as an Effective Leader

It’s one thing to work on your appearance as a good leader – it’s another to actually demonstrate it through action. It’s this discrepancy that leads to so many leaders appearing to be incredible from an outside perspective, but to have so many negative reviews from current or former employees. An effective leader isn’t someone who centers control of all things to themselves and opera...

Churches: Creating a Positive Feedback Culture Among Staff

We throw around the terminology, “plateau” a lot, but the truth is, plateaus never exist for long in a church. Quality in production, ministry, and other areas of your church is usually traveling in one direction - forward or backward. For a short season, your church may seem to plateau in some way, but the problem with plateauing is that after a while, things shift. Staff members leave or ...

7 Tips for Facilitating Successful Online Meetings

Just like the rest of the world, people in ministry are holding a lot of meetings online these days. Almost everyone can agree that there are plenty of pros and cons to these virtual calls. We might miss gathering together and might be struggling with “zoom fatigue” but still appreciate the flexibility connecting remotely affords. Whether you love it or hate it, online meetings are a very real...

Key Qualities of Great Ministry Leaders

As someone who works alongside church staff and leaders all the time, I understand how challenging and intimidating it can be to simply get started. That first church plant. That first job in leadership. Whatever it is, that first step can feel like your scaling mountains just to begin. And then it finally happens. You’re running a ministry, or in leadership in some capacity. You make a paych...

6 Ways to Keep Christmas Visitors Coming Back

Around holidays like Christmas and Easter, churches can expect packed attendance, full of faces both familiar and new. While it’s exciting to see new people in our rows, how can churches create a Christmas Eve experience that goes beyond a “one-hit wonder” and entices newcomers to come back for more? Ideally, the message of the gospel does the compelling work of winning hearts, but organi...

5 Strategies for Managing (and Preventing) Christmas Ministry Burnout

Christmas is one of our busiest seasons for those in ministry. That’s just the way it is. For many churches, the Christmas season means a month of events, service opportunities, and services, media, and more opportunities to celebrate advent. For this reason, Christmas is an incredible opportunity for churches. Come the month of December, our culture at large, not just the church, is ready fo...

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How to Get Young Adults to Your Church

Every church has a specific age range that occupies most of their attendance. Several churches are great at working with young adults, while others may cater more to retired couples and elderly people. Before we talk about what you can do to expand your church’s reach to other generations, know this - God has placed you in your role to minister to and grow people of all ages, backgrounds, and...

4 Things to Consider as You Plan Your Christmas Services

It’s officially fall, which, in ministry-world, means Christmas is just around the corner. As we all know, the holiday season is a huge deal for churches and it pays to be prepared. Here are four tips to give you direction and help keep you grounded as you take on one of the busiest and most beautiful times of the year. 1) Know Your Point Just like with any sermon series, the first thin...

3 Steps to Build a Small Group Ministry with Roots

Small groups are the lifeblood of church communities. While big Sunday services might draw people in and introduce them to Jesus, small groups take discipleship to the next level. It’s within groups that people find meaningful friendships, experience spiritual development, and learn to put their faith into action seven days a week. If your church doesn’t have small groups yet or is looking ...

8 Tips for Finding and Hiring Pastoral Staff

Adding new members to your team can feel like a daunting task. There’s no one clear path to finding candidates, especially when you’re looking for someone that can be both competent for the role and fit in with your staff’s culture and church’s mission. However, with a bit of planning, strategy, and a whole lot of prayer, even that tall order is totally achievable. Here are eight way tips ...

How to Plan a Sermon Series with Impact

Creating a sermon series can feel overwhelming. Maybe you’ve been inspired by a creative hook, but don’t know how to keep the momentum going for multiple weeks. Maybe you can get lost for hours exploring themes and big ideas, but are struggling to distill that information into a format that will actually translate with your congregation. Planning a sermon series is an organizational art, an...

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...

Tips for Encouraging Students to Take Ownership of Their Time With God

As a youth pastor, one of your greatest desires is to see your students taking ownership of their relationship with God. At youth group or bible study or on retreats, it’s easy for students to feel close to God. But what about when they go home, or they’re at school, or hanging out with their friends? Pursuing Jesus on your own time, in your own life, can sometimes feel paralyzing. Much of ...