4 Ways ANYONE Can Be a Better Worship Leader

Feb 8, 2016
3 min read

Being a worship leader is hard. You are generally the focal point at the start of every service, and almost as often, you are the first person to be criticized when people do not enjoy the service. Today, many worship leaders are underpaid (or not paid at all) to perform one of the single greatest functions of our church gatherings. Not only that, worship leaders, as artists, have to deal with the pain of having their passion scrutinized and criticized regularly. Still want to be a worship leader? If so, read on. Here are four no-nonsense ways you can immediately improve your worship leadership.

1. Tune. This may seem abundantly obvious, but I cannot tell you how many times I hear worship leaders, or the musicians behind them, playing out of tune. This is such an easy way to drastically improve your sound. As the worship leader, it is your responsibility not only to ensure that you are in tune, but that your team is in tune as well. And unless it is a keyboard, your instrument will likely go out of tune with a change in temperature, like the AC turning on right before the start of service, or leaving your instruments to sit in the heat of stage lighting. And by the way, that little silver thing hanging from your drummer's key ring is a drum tuner. Use it! (Bonus tip: If someone else starts the service with an introduction, or if your pastor likes to have some post-message worship, coordinate with him or her to cue you with enough time to do a quick retune right before you start playing.)

2. Warm Up Your Voice. Again, this should be obvious, but I rarely see worship leaders do it. Will you look silly singing some warm up scales? Yes. Will you still have a voice a few years down the line while the worship leader down the street sounds like she's singing with gravel in her mouth? Yes. Just do it. You'll thank me later. (Bonus tip: Warm up your voice in your car on the way to church. That way only strangers will make fun of you.)

3. Find Your Range. Guess what? Everyone's voice is different. You may love Kari Jobe, or Chris Tomlin, but your voice may just be a little different from theirs. This means that you will sometimes have to transpose their songs into different keys. You will also have to consider the vocal range of the average person, ensuring that at least some of the people in the congregation will be able to hit the high notes with you. The simplest way to find what keys are best for your voice is to take your repertoire and start changing the keys to see what feels best, and which keys you are straining to sing in. For me, I'm almost always in the keys of E (relative minor: C#m) and G (relative minor: Em). I know that singing in C will either push me on the low end, or if I go up an octave, it will push me on the high end. And I have also learned that D can be a good substitute for C with my range. Find the keys that you are comfortable with, so that you can be heard and clearly understood. (Bonus tip: Octave changes are really popular right now, and they can really add a powerful punch. But you may not be able to hit them in every song. If you can't, trying using a pronounced change in the dynamic of the song to add some punch in place of the octave change).

4. Worship in Secret. The greatest way to lead worship with a genuine spirit and freedom from fearing the opinions and criticisms of people, is to worship first and foremost in the secret place, before the eyes of your heavenly Father alone. This will mature your soul, allow you to truly embody the heart behind the songs that you are playing, and ensure that you remain humble while serving in a position that notoriously lends itself to narcissism. Worshiping in the secret place is more than practice (even though it serves that purpose too), it brings us back to the "heart of worship" as Matt Redman famously put it. It brings us back to our first love–to what worship is really all about.

I hope these tips have been helpful. More are on the way! What are some of the practical things that you do to improve your worship leadership? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below!