Blog | Preparation
How to Be Proactive About a Pastoral Transition
Pastoral transitions are never easy. There are a number of reasons they occur - your pastor is retiring, transitioning jobs, moving, or being asked to step down. Regardless of the purpose, the fact remains that pastoral transitions are tough on everyone; your congregation, your staff, and your volunteers. While you can’t avoid all of the challenges associated with a pastoral transition, there...
Read MoreBuilding a Leadership Team in your Church Plant
When you’re planting a church, it’s important to equip capable, trustworthy leaders to help bring the vision to life. Finding these leaders, however, can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re juggling everything else that comes with planting. Here’s a four-part roadmap for finding, recruiting, and nurturing a successful team for your new church: Pray with people you trust Jus...
Read MoreHow to Lead Efficient Worship Team Auditions
Developing a tight audition process can save you headache and awkward conversations down the road. Setting clear expectations and hosting intentional auditions sets new musicians up for success and makes it easier for you to find good fits for your team. Here are some suggestions for running efficient, heartfelt auditions from the first introduction to the inevitable follow-up. Pre Screenin...
Read MoreEffective Feedback Management as a Service Producer
Working as a service producer at a church is tough work. You’re always right in the middle of everything. You’re responsible for everything going as planned, but the actual execution of everything is often in the hands of others - the worship pastor, the sound engineer, lighting people, other volunteers, etc. Naturally, you’re put in a predominantly managerial role. You get to decide on s...
Read More4 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...
Read More5 Tips for Being Efficient at Church Media Production
There are so many moving parts in church media production. As a media director, you’re constantly doing things on the fly – changing song setlists, replacing lyrics, reordering songs, switching backgrounds out, importing and adjusting sermon notes, etc. You know the story. That’s why it’s so incredibly important to have a good grasp on ways you can make your work more efficient. The quicke...
Read MoreWhen is My Church Ready for a New Building?
Many church leaders dream of the day when their ministry grows enough for them to be able to move to a new building. It’s an exciting prospect! Having the chance to search for a place that will be the ideal building and location for your ministry is huge. But knowing when the day has arrived can be tough. You may be financially ready for the move, but is that the only thing that matters? If y...
Read MoreWhat Drum Equipment Needs to be Replaced at My Church?
Drums are supposed to be the life, dynamics, and foundation of any worship song. But usually… church drum sets sound BAD. If you’re reading this article, you probably are experiencing it firsthand. Obviously, as with anything sound-related, getting a good drum sound is a multi-facetted topic with endless factors including equipment, room, acoustic treatment, mics, mixing, the drummer who’s a...
Read MoreHow to Plan Ahead as a Church Tech Director
You’re the first one to band rehearsal and often the last one to leave. You may frequently be in charge of setup and teardown in addition to all the work you have to do during rehearsal and on Sunday morning for all services. Being a church tech director is a lot of work. We understand! Most church tech directors will agree that the most valuable thing to them is “time”. You need time ...
Read MoreReducing the Impact of Church Staff Turnover
Working in ministry can be one of the most demanding jobs. Aside from a few very large churches with hundreds of employees, most church jobs require you to be flexible and versatile in a variety of areas. Any church staff member will tell you how grateful they are for their fellow coworkers, as they recognize just how much each person carries on his or her plate when working in ministry. That b...
Read MoreWhere 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...
Read More3 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...
Read MoreWorking 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, “dis...
Read MoreFinding 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 ...
Read MorePreparing 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 ch...
Read MorePart-Time Worship Leaders: How To Get Everything Done
There’s a reason that “Worship Leader” is often a full-time role. It’s an integral part of the church, you’re driving an entire ministry on your own, and there’s usually more than 40 hours per week of work. But with smaller churches, or churches splitting the worship leader responsibility between 2 or more workers, it can be daunting to manage the workload in a part-time employment sit...
Read MoreChurch Volunteer Management: Volunteer Scheduling
Handing off church ministry responsibility to volunteers can be a huge benefit to your church. Introducing volunteers in more circles within the church often means the responsibility over details is alleviated from leadership, allowing them to focus on managing and directing the overall goals and mission of the church. However, while having volunteers is a great idea, actually making it happen ...
Read More4 Tips for Growing Your Worship Ministry
Ministry needs people. That’s a plain and simple matter of fact. And unfortunately, we’ve heard all too-often that worship pastors will turn down an idea because they simply don’t have enough people to pull it off. If your worship ministry doesn’t have many people involved, you will frequently find it to be a bottleneck for creative pursuit and growth. Growing Your Worship Ministry: 4 H...
Read MorePicking Songs for Church: Staying Current With New Music
Picking songs for church can be a tricky task. There’s a ton of factors that play into finding the right set of songs, from the average age of attenders to worship culture, past songs, type of sound system and building, and so many more. The task gets especially difficult when it comes to new songs. They may be playing on the radio, but that doesn’t mean you can assume everyone knows them (or ...
Read MoreScheduling Volunteers for Their Strengths
Having a strong volunteer team can dramatically improve the experience for visitors at your church. A well-operated volunteer team means everyone is present, educated, and ready to go for their respective areas. But volunteers are needed for a diverse set of roles within the church – some dealing with kids, music, relations, guests, leadership, and so many more. For example, just because someone...
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