How Do You Start Your Praise and Worship Leading

A recent e-mail from a praise and worship leader highlighted the question of how you start your praise and worship leading on any given Sunday in church. While there is no one, universally agreed way, there is certainly some points to a wise leader who can help them to start their session in the way that suits their community best.

While there are many ways to start your service, you have to remember the audience that you are ministering to. Are they old? Are they young? Do they love country music, rock music or dance music? Are they a mixture between all of these groups? Remember, you were there to serve your people and lead them into a deeper relationship with the Lord, not to produce a certain style of music or a certain style of worship. But if you were a praise and worship leader who was wondering exactly how to start your service, here are a few ideas…

Prayer: it is always a great idea to start your service with prayer, and this can be woven in around beautiful and gentle strains of music. If you are praise and worship leading in a small or more conservative church, this is an ideal way to start and should lead to quite easily into a beautiful and gentle worship time with the Lord.

Atmospheric: if your congregation is slow to come into the room, it’s a great idea to start with an atmospheric buildup of music. You can start with just one or two instruments, playing back and forth and gently building towards the entire band being involved in the service to commence. This can start from five or 10 minutes before the service is due to commence, thereby building an atmosphere of worship among the congregation as they are filing into the building.

Start cold: another possibility is that you can start the first song straight from silence, maybe with a quick welcome before you launch into the first song. This is particularly good if your first song is a big, noisy number, because the shock of going from silence to full sound or capture people’s attention and get them involved quickly.

Militancy: some churches feel that the militant declaration of the word of the Lord is essential at the start of a church service. Personally, I don’t agree that there is any essential start to a church service, but would rather be led by the Lord even if it means changing the way I start every service. However, if this is the culture that your church promotes, as a praise and worship leader and as a servant you need to working with the culture to produce the style of praise and worship leading the true church is used to. And there is nothing wrong with declaring the word of the Lord with boldness!

So however you start your praise and worship leading, remember that your claim is not to have a great staff but to have a great finish, and to achieve your central purpose of leading people into a deeper relationship with the Lord. Where do you start beagle small, up or down, loud or soft, make sure that you are leading people to the point where they can worship the Lord freely and with all their heart. However you start, remember that praise and worship leading is about leading people to God.