50 Worship Leading Tips Rookies Should Learn and Veterans Should Relearn – by David W. Manner

• Learn more people’s names than new songs.

• Take a Sabbath every week.

• Make deposits in younger leaders and withdrawals from older leaders.

• Pray for and defend your pastor even when he doesn’t deserve it.

• Leave more things at the office when you go home.

• Ask how it might impact your family before asking how it might impact your job.

• Learn more theology than musicology.

• Welcome divine interruptions in your routine.

• Surround yourself with those to protect you from your own stupidity.

• Place more focus on people than projects.

• Stay longer.

• Celebrate the Lord’s Supper more often.

• Begin all worship planning with Scripture and Prayer instead of songs titles.

• Drink more coffee with senior adults and students.

• The original song key may not be the best key for congregational singing.

• Practice leadership as much as you practice your guitar.

• Cast vision for the future without denigrating the past.

• Not all thoughts that enter your mind have to exit your mouth.

• Don’t feel threatened when someone else gets the credit.

• Affirm volunteers in public, correct them in private and pastor them in both places.

• Don’t randomly blow things up without considering where the pieces might land.

• Help grandparents and grandchildren worship together.

• If you don’t guard yourself spiritually, emotionally and physically no one else will.

• Public worship will never succeed without private worship.

• Understand the difference between knowing you can and deciding you should.

• Never stop being a student.

• Always err on the side of grace.

• Build bridges from the platform to the pews.

• Turn house lights up and volume down occasionally to see if they are even singing.

• Don’t determine the worship language of your congregation based on how you might appear to other worship leaders.

• You’ll always sing too many or too few hymns or modern worship songs for someone.

• Filter songs theologically before musically.

• Wake up every morning feeling unqualified in your own power to do what God has called you to do.

• Keep your focus on where you are instead of where you wish you were.

• Spend as much time on relationships as you spend on ministry job placement sites.

• Not all staff problems originate in someone else’s office.

• There are lots of other churches but you only have one family.

• Your attitude may be the only change necessary.

• Scripted, explainable and rational aren’t always worship prerequisites.

• If you try to succeed alone you’ll also fail alone.

• Setting boundaries ahead of time gives you the resolve to say no.

• What you once learned is not enough to sustain your entire ministry.

• The worship service you prepared may not be the most important worship that occurs this week.

• Just changing the music won’t grow or kill your church.

• Not every worship song is appropriate for congregational singing.

• Leading music doesn’t necessarily mean you are leading people.

• Worship even when you aren’t the leader.

• Your musical talent may help you secure a position but leadership and relationships will help you keep it.

• Don’t lead worship just because you don’t know how to do anything else.

• If you’re saving your best for where God might call you next, why would He want to?

Dr. David Manner is the Associate Executive Director for the Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists. His convention responsibilities include worship consultation and leadership development. Before joining the convention staff in 2000, David served for 20 years in music/worship ministry with congregations in Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. David writes for various online and print publications and can be followed on Twitter @DWManner or on his Worship Evaluation Blog: http://kncsb.org/blogs/dmanner.