Tag Archives: Worship

Don’t Be Crippled By Striving For The Way It Could Be

August 01, 2011   Russell Martin   No comments

At one church I was at we held our contemporary worship and traditional service back to back in the same location. This made for some interesting transition times, and meant we had to be creative with our warm-up arrangements. Since we could not get into the worship space sooner than 15 minutes before we had to play, we would rehearse in a small classroom, using amps, a small electric drum set and often no microphones. Not the ideal situation.

I mentioned one time that I couldn’t wait till we could get a bigger space, more ideal equipment and more time to set up. One of the members looked at me and said, “Yeah.. but we’ve come a long way. A few years ago the drummer used a couch seat for a snare and pillows for cymbals.”

I was looking at where we were currently, and where I thought things should be. I was totally forgetting how far we had come.

This is something that I constantly struggle with, mostly in areas of my ministry. I see how I think things should be, how they could be so much better, cooler, more effective. I forget to look back and celebrate how far things have come from that point. As I have reflected on this I have found that always looking ahead has some negative effects:

1. You are never satisfied- You have to realize that when you constantly look to how it could be, you’ll never get there. There is always sometime else, something more, something better. Yes you should strive for what’s next, but first take some time, enjoy where your at, smell the roses and look back and see how far you’ve come

2. You dismiss others accomplishments- You may be one who doesn’t need as much time to stop and  enjoy how far you’ve come, but sometimes others do. Others on your team, staff, ministry, and family may need more time to enjoy their accomplishments. Don’t rush on, let them enjoy the fruits of their labors.

3. You get lost in the journey- It is hard to see where you need to go,  if you don’t take time to stop every once in a while. By relaxing, and looking back on where you have been you get a chance to get your bearings, and reconsider the path you are going.

How do you get crippled by “How it Could Be?”

What ways can we correct that thinking?

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarae/

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Simple Worship Stage Design: PVC Geometry

July 31, 2011   Russell Martin   2 Comments
Photo Jul 31, 6 08 27 AM

 

Here is a simple way to make an interesting background for your worship stage.

The cross is made out of 2 ft sections of PVC pipe using corner and middle connectors. We hung it from the top using two ropes over the top of the short curtain bar.

The large diamonds are four foot PVC pipe sections with corner connectors. Fabric clips hold a spandex type material in place to create the “screen”.

The smaller diamonds are two foot sections of PVC pipe with corner connectors. All are suspended by a rope over our back curtain bar.

Each diamond and the cross then has an LED bar light lighting from below.

All in all I think we spent somewhere around $50-$60 for everything, not including the lights of course. We still have tons of pipe left over that we haven’t used yet. Oh, and we fit the pipe together, but didn’t glue it. This way we can pull it apart and reconfigure it as needed in the future. If you need a more secure fit, try some white electrical tape to help hold it in place.

This design was made using simple, easily available items. What simple items have you used to make a stage design? I’d love to see your stage design.. send me a link in the comments. Or find me at twitter.com/rgmmusic or Facebook.com/russellmartinmusic

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Finally a Rehearsal CD Solution

June 05, 2011   Russell Martin   No comments
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For many years as a worship leader I have struggled with making rehearsal CDs for my team to use. I was told that I could legally make them under the fair use policy. As I looked across to many different worship teams, and worship leader friends I could see that it was a common practice. My mind started to think, “as long as everyone else is doing it, it’s ok.”

The truth is that it’s not ok. And though the practical worship leader side of me understood the need to distribute music mp3s for rehearsal, the copyright holding, songwriter, not to mention law abiding not wanting to get sued for $150,000 per song side of me saw the reasons not to.

Finally, there is a solution. After years of waiting, CCLI has worked out a license for you to make rehearsal CDs, load music onto iPhones and iPads, email and even upload music to planning center. It’s called the Church Rehearsal License. It seems fairly simple, and the pricing seems good, especially when compared with multi thousand dollar fines.

Our church will be checking out this license and using it for our rehearsal cd needs.

Of course there is also a lot to be said about not being a Praise and Worship cover band and doing the songs just like the cd.

So what do you think? Will you be looking into this license?  How do you handle rehearsal CDs? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.

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50 Free Neon Backgrounds

May 01, 2011   Russell Martin   3 Comments

Looking for some different backgrounds to use with your worship songs, or presentations. What about something on the neon side. At one mission trip I attended last year, one night we had a glow in the dark dance. Participants painted their own glow in the dark shirts, we got a few hundred glow sticks, turned out the lights and turned up the music.

As always I wanted to get photos of the event, so I set out on the dance floor. Every time I tried to take a photo it ended up being blurry. After a while I decided just to go with it, set the shutter to a slow exposure and see what happened.

Here are the results. 50 free backgrounds for you to use.

While  you are at it you might want to check out some of these posts…

1. 50 Free Worship Backgrounds

2. Flowers and Plants- 61 Nature themed photos

3. Water- 14 water themed photos

 

 

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Working With Adult and Youth Bands: Use the Same Music

February 23, 2011   Russell Martin   2 Comments

I have been all over the place in my years as a worship leader when it comes to choosing the music we use. I have spent countless hours writing out praise charts. I used packaged material like S.P.I.N. which combines chord charts, rehearsal CDs and powerpoint slides. I have bought song books, chord books and scoured the internet for tabs and chords.

Working with adult and youth worship teams, I have decided that it doesn’t matter so much how you get your songs, but use the same versions with each. Here are 3 reasons why:

1. Organization- When you have several versions, from several sources, of different songs it makes it hard to keep track of which song is used with which group.

2. Mentoring- When you use the same versions of songs, it makes a learning partnership possible. I can have my keyboard player from the adult team work with our keyboard players from the youth team and they are both working from the same reference music.

3. Fill In- From time to time members of our Sunday morning team are out of town. Since we use the same versions of the songs for our youth band it makes it easy to have one fill in when needed without having to learn all new songs.

I will note that we do not do all of the same songs with both groups, however we have enough overlap that it works most of the time.

So how about your groups.. Do you use the same music? What resources do you use?

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Simple Worship Stage Ideas: Easy Being Green

January 17, 2011   Russell Martin   No comments

This set design is a lot more simple than our last one. Our church follows the lectionary and seasons of the church. The color right now is green, so we though it would be nice to create a design that used that color.

1. We started by running up green panels of fabric. We buy these in bolts, and cut them in various lengths. Mostly 15-18 feet.

The panels of fabric have a sleeve sewn at one end. We slip a dowel rod into the sleeve.

The dowel rod has eye hooks in the end. We attach those to ropes with hooks on the end. Toss them over a bar in the ceiling and raise them up.

Since it was Communion this week, we used our beautiful hand made communion banner. Next week we will replace it with a wooden cross.

We used some fabric clamps with rings, and made one panel of the green on each side drape across.

Finally we added our LED Bar lights at the bottom and everything was ready to go.

The final production.

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Sunday Setlist 01/16/11

January 16, 2011   Russell Martin   No comments

This Sunday had to be one of the most powerful communion services I have been a part of.  When it started though I wasn’t sure if it would work at all. We celebrate communion on the third Sunday of every month. This week we had a retired pastor who was leading the communion part of the service. He had been a pastor for many years in the Methodist Church, and really liked using one of the old Services of Word and Table. We like to do different things, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the words I had thought he would be using, for the screens, were not quite the same as the book he was to be following. So 15 minutes before the service I was editing, typing, and changing. Then I wasn’t able to find it.

Lucky I have an awesome tech team and they were able to find the words, make the corrections and have everything ready to go by the time that Communion rolled around. Something tells me they did not hear much of the sermon. (Hey guys it will be online Tuesday).

Our first song was “Everywhere I Go” by Lincoln Brewster. Being a little hyped up from the word mix up just a few minutes earlier, my heart was racing, and so was the tempo. If you know the song, you know that it’s doing all you can to get the words spit out at the correct tempo. Knock it up a few beats per minute, and it’s nearly impossible.

During our announcements I was able to take a breath before we started “All the Earth Will Sing Your Praises”. I started the guitar as normal, band came in, vocals sounded good and we were off. But I settled in, and relaxed when I could hear voices inside my head. Yeah, some of you may think that’s normal, but these were the voices of the congregation singing such that I heard it through my headphones.

Then was our sermon “God Names us Before We Were Born” from Isaiah 49:1-7. Our Pastor talked about the importance of names, how God has a name for us, and how we are to be a light to the nations.

I am amazed but now not surprised now how things work out. I had moved our next song to the offertory from another slot to help with timing issues. The song “Salt and Light” fit right into what Danny had talked about in the message.

Usually after the offering we will sing a song to move us into communion, and “Here I Am to Worship” worked great. By this time I am playing with only one earbud in because I love listening to the congregations voices. Since Kerri Crocker was leading this one I could just play piano and listen. Almost forgot to play piano a few times.

Then came communion. We do communion a few different ways, at different times. Sometimes we will use the formal liturgy in our current hymnal. Sometimes the pastors will use a more informal communion liturgy, without the congregational responses etc. This time we used the order that I grew up with going to church as a child. It is written in more formal english, using some words that we no longer use, especially in a contemporary worship service.

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: (Prayer of Humble Access 1662 Revision)

One might think that a 500 year old prayer would not fit well between songs written 5 or 10 years ago. And maybe for some it did not work. I can only speak for myself when I say that It was beautiful and powerful. It could have worked for many reasons. I think, though, that it worked well because it was different. The responses were not what the congregation was used to, so you had to pay attention, read the words, hear them again for the first time.

We sang “All I Need is You” and “We Fall Down” during the communion time. After an invitation we closed with a fast version of “Father of Lights”

Well, that’s how our Sunday went. Check out what other churches did on The Worship Community Sunday Setlists.

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Simple Worship Stage Ideas: Starlight

December 06, 2010   Russell Martin   4 Comments

In my first Simple Worship Stage Ideas post I shared a stage design based on water and sails. Here is another idea that we did for our Christmas set. This idea is based on the design Starry Night from churchstagedesignideas.com. Having a much smaller stage we had to adapt the idea.. but I think it worked well. Click here to see all of the photos.

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The first element to put together were the windows. These were some we had from a previous set. They made from some thin wood and they have wax paper covering the windows. We are planning on recovering the windows with thin quilting backing, or fabric interfacing, so they are less likely to tear, yet still let the lights come through.

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Here my wife is attaching the paper…

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We then hung 6 3 foot wide panels of white poly satin.

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They have sleeve sewn into the top. We took some dowel rods and put eye hooks on either end. We also created cords with small clasps on the end.

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We throw the cord over the top bar of the stage using the beanbag, slip the dowel through the sleeve in the satin, hook the cords to the eye hooks on the end and pull them to the top.
Finally we tie them off to some created weights on the other side of the stage.

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Next we put one set of our LED bar lights shining onto the back panels…

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We attached the lights to the back of the windows and hung them in place.
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The large one in the middle is about 4 feet from the background, the smaller two are about 6 inches in front of that. This added just a little more depth…

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At this point we thought we were finished, but it just didn’t look right. The light from the christmas lights was reflecting too much off of the white panels in the back. The choice was to either change the panels to blue, but that meant taking them all down and redoing them.

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So we just decided to make them look like pulled curtains, revealing the black curtain in the back. Here was the final result.

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Also looked cool without any of the stage lights, just the christmas lights….

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The nice thing about the whole set is that we only had to purchase the lights. We have the cloth panels in many different colors, and the windows were from a previous set so we got a great set for little cost.

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Sunday Setlist 11/28/10

November 28, 2010   Russell Martin   2 Comments
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We started the advent season this week in the Xperience Service. Advent is the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve. Though there is some debate on whether you should sing Christmas songs during Advent or not, we usually begin to slip a few Christmas carols in along with other songs that go along with the theme of the week.

This week the sermon was “Walking in the Light” from this week’s scripture Isaiah 2:1-5. Tommy Burton talked about, what the superscription over our lives read? What would the superscription over your church read?

Our songs were

Today is the Day- Lincoln Brewster

Come thou Long Expected Jesus- Hymn

Hosanna (Praise is Rising)- Paul Baloche

Flower -Kerri Crocker

Heart of Worship- Matt Redman

Gloria- Mercy me

Overall a great Sunday. Was great to pull out the in ears and listen to the congregation singing along.

Next week will be our all Christmas Music Sunday so we are preparing this week for that.

This is part of theworshipcommunity.com Sunday Setlist. Be sure and click the link, head over and see what other churches did this week.

Make sure and check out my Hopes Prayers and Lullabies CD. An instrumental piano CD raising money for our adoption process. Order from Indie Heaven. Also join the Hopes Prayers and Lullabies Facebook Page and keep up with our journey.

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How We Create our Songlists

September 30, 2010   Russell Martin   No comments

I used to choose songs the week before, night before or even sometimes the morning of our weekly worship service. I used to think that was the way to do it because I could get a feel for  where the Holy Spirit was leading that week. Over time I have come to learn that, while you always need to be flexible to change songs, having a long range method of planning songs works much better.

So I thought I’d share a little bit of how we choose songs for our services.

1. Choosing a set for a season- There are literally hundreds of thousands of worship songs that you could use at any given time. We try to bring that down to a list of about 90 songs that we will use for a season. This gives us a manageable list to be able to look at and choose from. We try to make sure that the songs in the list have a variety of keys, tempos, and can be sung by a variety of people. The set is a suggestion that helps keep us focused, however if a song fits well in a particular service that is not in our set, we’ll go ahead and use it. At the end of a season (3-4 months) we will look at the songs and see what new ones we want to add, or which ones we need to give a rest for a while. (see organizing your worship libraries)

2. Lectionary and Worship Planner- Our preachers choose their sermons from the lectionary scriptures. This means at any point in the future I know the scriptures that will be used on that Sunday. Our pastors choose the scripture and sermon titles at least 3-4 months out. I might not know exactly where the sermon is going, but I have a good idea of a general direction. We will then look at our songs for the season and choose ones that match the overall message for that week. We also use the Music and Worship Planner from the Methodist Church. It contains the lectionary scriptures, along with hymn and contemporary song suggestions for each week. We might not have the specific songs each week, but they help us find other songs that we know, that would fit with the service.

3. The White Board- I installed a 6×4 foot white board in my office. We will write up 4-8 weeks worth of dates on the board. Then using inspiration from the worship planner, scriptures, sermon title, and prayer we will begin filling in songs for each Sunday. We try to make sure that there are no more than one new song each week, there is a variety speed, and variety of leaders for the songs. Recently we have been trying to include an original song, and a hymn in each list.

4. The Monthly Rehearsal- Creating our songlists this way also helps with our big monthly rehearsal. We can look at the upcoming weeks and pick out the new songs, or unfamiliar ones and use that rehearsal to work over those. Since we can only really do 4-5 songs at the rehearsal that helps keep us from choosing too many new ones. Weekly we rehearse for about an hour before the service. We’ll go over the songs we are about to sing, then review some of the up coming songs.

So that’s how we do it. How do you choose your songlists?

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