This is what we do: We start our rehearsals promptly at 7pm, whether people are there or not.   We sing a few worship songs to warm up and do vocal exercises for about 10 minutes. During those first warm up worship songs, I’m greeting people as they walk in: a smile or a “great to see you.”  Our materials are all on a table by the door for folks to pick up on their way in.  That’s our first 15 minutes: warm up.

Next, we walk through the agenda/goals for the night.  This is the list of what we need to accomplish.  This is where I teach the parts or remind people of the parts for each song.  We’ll go through each song one at a time so the singers can record them (on their own personal recorders) for practice throughout the week.  This lasts about 45 minutes.

At approximately 8pm, I stop teaching parts and shift to a devotional that lasts 10-15 minutes.  Sometimes we pray here, most of the time we pray at the end in small prayer teams.  Then we’ll sing again, but worship through the songs rather than examining the individual parts.  By worship through them, I mean not “performing” the songs but using them as tools to worship.  Let the songs soak into the hearts of your leaders.

Because we are rehearsing for 3 different services with 3 different orders of worship, at 8:30pm we separate into individual worship service teams.  This gives the individual teams a chance to polish their sound, learn any songs specifically for their services and work through worship flow and segues. Some vocal teams will spend time with their band while others rehearse on their own.   All of the teams will pray together for the services and personal concerns.   Rehearsal concludes about 9:15pm.

It is important when leading worship to remember that the goal is to connect others to God in worship. The worship leader’s most intimate worship experience is mostly done when we are NOT leading others: in a quiet time, private worship, or when we take part in a corporate worship services as a member of the congregation.