When Does the Task of Worship Leading Begin?

I’ve been thinking recently on the question: when does the task of worship leading begin? So I thought I might jot down some points here. As a preliminary point, we need to understand that worship leading is (obviously) a form of leadership. John Maxwell defines leadership as influence – nothing more, nothing less. A person […]

Imagine the Unknown

Shimon Perez once said: People prefer remembering to imagining. Memory deals with familiar things; imagination deals with the unknown. Imagination can be frightening – it requires risking a departure from the familiar. We love the safety of the familiar; the tried and true. It’s safe because it’s predictable. But growth, innovation and transformation comes from […]

Five Facets of a Worship Leader

Worship leadership 101: a worship leader does a whole lot more than singing songs in front of a congregation on a Sunday. This is obvious. The task of a worship leader is so much more than that. In fact a worship leader is called to help shape the corporate worship life of a congregation. Here […]

What Does Unity of the Church Look Like?

I’ve had a pretty inspiring weekend. As some of you may know, I’ve been thinking long and hard about unity, particular in relation to how worship ministers can contribute towards God’s move in uniting the church in the city. Part of this includes my crazy idea of having people from different churches form a band […]

Reflections on Cindy Ratcliff’s Visit to Perth

It has been an amazing start to the weekend, first with Cindy Ratcliff’s ministry to the worship teams from different Perth churches on Thursday night, and then with the Just Worship event last night at Metrochurch, during which Cindy led worship. My wife and I were really thrilled because at the end of the evening, […]

Cindy Ratcliff’s Insights into Worship Ministry

I just got back from an amazing evening at Metrochurch’s OneNight with Cindy Ratcliff, the Senior Worship Leader of Lakewood Church. I had always been a big fan of Cindy’s ever since I heard the album We Speak to Nations. That album was for me a return from an artist-centric approach to worship music back […]

Worship’s Dirtiest Word

In recent posts, I have been ruminating about worship auditions. Over the years, worship ministries have accepted auditions as a completely legitimate way to vet and induct new candidates into the ministry. But whenever you talk about auditions, you also bring up another concept, which to mention in the context of worship is virtually taboo. […]

Next Generational Leadership

I was off work today, recovering from a cold, and I spent a good deal of the day devouring Ross Parsley’s new book, Messy Church. Yesterday, I suggested that everyone should get a copy of it. See my post here. I’m about halfway through the book and what Parsley is advocating is to see the […]

Why the Distinction Between “Praise” and “Worship” Matters

In an earlier post entitled Defining Worship, I introduced Harold’s Best definition of worship as continuous outpouring. If worship encompasses all of our life, then “worship” is a much bigger concept than “praise”. In fact, we can think of “praise” as a subset of “worship”. Robert Webber once said that “worship is a verb”, but […]

What Type of Worship Leader Are You?

Years ago, I came across John de Jong’s catalogue of different types of worship leaders (from his book Riding the Storm), which I thought was rather amusing. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but in the process, he makes some quite incisive observations about worship leading methodology. So here are the categories, but I want to just make the […]