31 Days of Worship - How We Get Ready for a Service

Yesterday I gave you some helpful websites that you might use to get more organized and streamlined if you are a worship leader at your church. For the next couple of days before Relevant (squeeeeeee!) I wanted to share with you how we get ready for a worship service.

Y'all...what I'm going to share with you is my happy place. Other than my own home with my guys, I'd rather be at church working on worship services than any other place. Except the beach. I'm only human.

For today's post, I'm going to talk about rehearsals. When I get an invitation from Planning Center it shows me when rehearsals will be for the week I'm asked to serve. Usually Praise Team and Section Leader practice is on Sunday morning after the music first service. We have about an hour to go over the songs, which is plenty of time for us to eat a sausage biscuit from the cafe and drink coffee (or a Diet Pepsi - the cafe doesn't serve Diet Coke. Bleh.) and laugh our heads off at each other about whatever we happen to be talking about. I love these people. When we finally get down to rehearsing, we go over the songs and each voice part (alto, soprano, and guys) to make sure each of us knows what to sing, as well as teach the choir if we have choir the next weekend. I'll talk about that in a minute. Our Praise Team rotates each week and consists of two sopranos, two altos, and a guy along with Brent, our worship pastor. If we have choir the next weekend, the section leaders are also there if they aren't already scheduled to be on PT. One of the section leaders is also the choir director for the next week.

As we listen to the songs and go over parts, we make notes on what we need to remember or what the choir needs to do. "Repeat chorus twice," or "Praise Team only," or "All in parts." Stuff like that. If I didn't make notes, I'd never survive.

We only have choir every other week, since we have rehearsals on Saturday morning and having choir every single week would be a lot to ask. Our band, however, practices just about every Saturday from eight to ten. Sound Man has to be up there every other week in rotation with the other sound dude. I wish I had a picture of the band rehearsing, but I didn't think to get one the day we had rehearsal.

During choir practice we start out in sectionals with each voice part in a different part of the building. We listen to the cd with each song on it and go over the parts we learned the week before. After about an hour and a half, we all meet together and go over everything.

The weekend I got all these pictures and video just happened to be a weekend I was directing. I didn't plan it that way. I wish Kim had been, actually. Oh, well...you get to see me in all my directing glory. HA!

We have fun as we rehearse, as evidenced by my very loud outburst of laughter. Typical, especially when Greg, Jae, and Timmy are in there. They pick on me. Meanies.

Tomorrow I'll show you how we get ready on Sunday mornings, starting with getting there by the dawn's early light.