Sometimes worship ministry can feel like professional sports in that if you’re older than 30, you feel like it’s time to retire. What does being a worship pastor in your 40s or 50s look like? Andy Chrisman has been the worship pastor at Church on the Move in Tulsa, OK for over 15 years, and in this conversation we talk about how his stages of leadership have changed over the years, what it looked like for him to grow as a leader and the importance of making space for new leaders to emerge within the ministry.

The recent events with the COVID-19 pandemic and “shelter at home” orders have forced a new normal for churches to do their worship services online. With a few Sundays under our belt, I hosted a panel discussion of sorts with two other worship pastors—Brett McDonald and Ryland Russell—where I’ve seen their churches doing well navigating this new “normal.” In this conversation we talk about what our services look like online, how they differ from a normal in-person gathering, how we’re leveraging social media, and the mistakes we’ve learned from along the way.

With the recent pandemic with the COVID-19 virus, self-quarnenjining and social distancing, churches across the United States and beyond are scrambling to figure out how to hold church without actually physically meeting together in one space. We’re having to become experts overnight in the area of live streaming and church online. In this bonus podcast episode, I share all the things I’ve learned over the last few weeks—things that have succeeding and things that have failed—plus a bunch of resources I’ve found along the way.

It’s a story about addiction to redemption, from meth addict to worship leader. Stephen McWhirter has an amazing testimony but even more amazing is how God is using that testimony to mold and shape him into the worship leader he is today. It affects the kinds of songs he writes or how he leads a group in worship, whether that’s a part of Iron Bell Music or now on the road under the name of Stephen McWhirter. In this conversation, we talk about his story, authenticity in worship and the importance of leading people out of the overflow of your private worship. We also talk about songwriting and how songs like God That Saves, Belong To You and his latest song Grave Clothes were written.

We want people to engage in the worship services at our church and have a real encounter with Jesus, and part of the puzzle is creating moments within our services for that to happen. Kurt Von Eschen is the Experience Leader at Battlecreek Church in Tulsa, OK where he leads the worship, production and creative teams to craft services with intentionally that lead people through a journey. We talk about how to have the end in mind when you’re planning a service. We talk about their process from the moment the senior pastor has a sermon topic idea to the day everything hits the stage, and how to evaluate a service and how to give and receive feedback.

Spontaneous worship is leaving space within a worship set to move in a direction that wasn’t specifically planned ahead of time, but there is planning that needs to occur in order to do this well. Tommy Iceland is a worship leader and songwriter that has experience leading worship in various countries and venues big and small, and in this conversation he shares how he prepares the worship band to be ready for moments that aren’t necessarily on the script as the Holy Spirit leads. We also talk about what it’s like to write songs with people you’ve looked up to for years but never really met until you sit down to write together.

The electric guitar has become a dominant instrument in worship music over the last 25 years, and Brian Wahl has been creating YouTube content for guitar players for almost half that time. Being the creator of Worship Tutorials, a worship leader and one of the main electric players at his church, Brian has a lot of wisdom for both the guitarists in a worship band and the worship leader who is working with their electric players. This conversation covers everything from preparing for the weekend, how to play with other guitar players and how to set up your in-ear monitor mix.

When you work with churches and coach leaders every day, you start to see a pattern of the same issues over and over and over that many leaders seem to struggle with as they build a worship ministry. Jake Gosselin created a company called Churchfront that helps worship pastors lead Gospel centered and tech-savvy worship. In this conversation, Jake talks about the three areas where he see leaders of worship ministries struggle and the advice he gives people every day in his one-on-one coaching calls.

Every ministry has a culture—how people describe the ministry and what it’s like to be a part of it—and leaders shouldn’t just take a passive approach to the culture of their worship ministry and assume it will all work itself out. John Larson is the worship pastor of Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama where they are intentional about the ministry culture of their worship and arts department. In this conversation, John talks about how they define the culture at Highlands, the responsibility of the leader to protect good culture and what to do when culture is unhealthy or there’s conflict among the team that needs to be resolved.