Ever since God called me into ministry, I’ve served Southern Baptist churches. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t serve churches of another denomination (or ones with no denominational affiliation) if He called me to do so. But as it stands, I’ve only served Southern Baptist churches. Even so, you couldn’t call me a “fanboy” of the SBC. [Read more...]
Faulty Theology and Song Selection
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This morning, as I was sitting in my office planning worship services and choral rehearsals for the next few weeks, I came across an arrangement of a song written by a famous Christian musician (I won’t mention his name here because that isn’t the point). I’ve always respected this musician for his skill and his theology. But there was one line in this anthem that caused me to throw the entire piece out. [Read more...]
Follow-up to WorshipWebsite.net Review
In follow-up to my review of WorshipWebsite.net, the developer e-mailed to say that the java issues I reported have been fixed and that he is in the process of identifying any others that might exist and fixing those as well. That’s good news for users of Mozilla based browsers like Firefox, Flock, and others.
Head on over to WorshipWebsite.net and sign up for their 30 day free trial. I think you’ll like it.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
Worship Planning Site Review: WorshipWebsite.net
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I have had the opportunity to use two online worship planning sites recently and I thought I would give a review of them both. Perhaps readers of IsaiahSix have suggestions of other sites or desktop software solutions they use and the discussion could be helpful to us all. Yesterday I reviewed Planning Center and today I review WorshipWebsite.net.
Disclaimer: WorshipWebsite.net is the service I’m currently using, but I have tried to be fair and objective as much as possible here.
WorshipWebsite.net Overview
WorshipWebsite.net is one of a handful of online worship planning tools that help worship leaders manage their physical and human resources. It allows you to store charts, scores and sound clips with song records for easy retrieval and team management is a relatively painless process with the team oriented approach the site takes.
Song Database
WorshipWebsite.net allows you to store songs you have used in worship services in your online database. The next time you program that song in a worship service, the details are there waiting on you. One very nice aspect of WorshipWebsite.net’s program is the ability to import song data from SongSelect. If your church or ministry has a CCLI license (and if you don’t, why don’t you?) and you subscribe to CCLI’s SongSelect service, you don’t have to enter song data manually. Simply log in to your SongSelect account, find the song you want to enter, download the song file1 and import it into your song database. Lyrics, authors, composers, copyright information, etc. all import in. This feature has worked flawlessly for me every time I’ve needed to use it.
Of course, if you’re programming one of your own songs or a song that isn’t otherwise in the SongSelect files, you can enter song data manually. If you do, the title will appear in ALL CAPS. I assume that’s by design to show which songs have been manually entered and which ones have been imported, but my OCD2 finds this a little irritating. The list of songs that populates the right column in your song database screen is peppered with ALL CAPS titles and Regular titles. That’s not really a huge issue, but it looks a little messy.
Unlike with Planning Center, WorshipWebsite.net does not allow multiple different arrangements under one song heading. For example, if I wanted to store different details for “How Great Thou Art” from the hymnal, Hymns for Praise & Worship, and HymnCharts, I would either need to store them all together and walk my team members through differentiating the scores and details, or store the song three different times. Ideally there would be a way to store the different arrangement details in one record and then when plugging the song in a worship service, you would have the option of which arrangement you were planning to use.
You can store scores and audio files (the website’s developer requests that you not store video clips because of the vast amount of server space and bandwidth it would require) with your songs. There are no storage limits, but I would suggest that you be reasonable and judicious in your use of this feature. And don’t forget about your copyright issues, too.
Planning Worship
Planning worship is a pretty simple process in WorshipWebsite.net. You create a new service, pick the date and time for the service and choose whether or not you want to use a previously stored template as your starting point and then start plugging in your worship elements. You can enter header items and then enter service details below the headers. Elements are color coded for easy viewing; songs from the database are one color, service items are another color, etc. And you can customize these colors to some degree. While I haven’t found this feature all that helpful, I’m sure some folks would, so it’s a nice bonus.
Items you enter into the order of service automatically appear at the bottom of your current order. Simply drag and drop in their appropriate place.
People Scheduling
Managing your team members is pretty easy in WorshipWebsite.net. You can enter their data and their roles (multiple roles are possible) and organize them into teams (morning musicians and evening musicians, for example). When your service order is ready, you can select teams or individuals to notify. If you notify a team, everyone on that team is notified so you don’t also have to notify them individually. One nice feature of the notification system built into the service is the ability to notify your team members via SMS, or text messaging. Be careful, though; they may bring you that first mobile phone bill and tell you to pay the text message charges if they didn’t know they were coming. WorshipWebsite.net doesn’t charge to send the text messages, but carriers will.
Recently integrated into WorshipWebsite.net is the ability for your team members to mark on the calendar when they will not be available. As you are planning your events, you’ll be able to see who is and who isn’t available on any particular day.
The Pricing
Pricing for WorshipWebsite.net is pretty straightforward. It’s based on your church size. There are no subsequent limitations on the number of services you can plan or the number of people you can enter into your account or the number or size of files you can store in your song database. Too, there is an offer for new ministries that can’t yet afford to pay for the service to receive one year’s access for free; that’s a generous offer.3
Firefox vs. Internet Explorer
UPDATE 8/24/2007: Good news! The Firefox java issue mentioned here has been fixed and other java issues, if any, are in the process of being identified and fixed. A brief note about browsers: I’ve used WorshipWebsite.net on two different computers and have come across some glitches when using the service with the Firefox browser. Whether these issues exhibit themselves in other Mozilla-based browsers such as Netscape or Flock I do not know. When entering dates and trying to print worship services, it seems to get caught in some sort of javascript loop and tries to execute the script over and over again. I had to manually stop the process by clicking the Stop button at the top of the browser. This happened on two different computers, so I’m reasonably certain the issue is on WorshipWebsite.net’s side of the equation. This problem was not existent when I used Internet Explorer. So my recommendation is still to dump IE as quickly as you possibly can. Use Firefox and download their IE Tab add-on, which lets you mimic IE when you need to.
Summary
WorshipWebsite.net is not the prettiest site on the internet; the interface could use some updating. And the browser compatibility problem is slightly bothersome, especially if you forget and get stuck in one of the loops. But the features offered through the service make up for the design’s shortcomings. If you’re looking for a way to streamline your worship planning and team organizational efforts, WorshipWebsite.net will help you walk that path much more easily.
Services like WorshipWebsite.net and Planning Center prove that churches and ministries can and should embrace the technology of our times to have a positive impact on the Kingdom. Are these sites and others like them going to be directly responsible for the salvation of thousands? Of course not. But they will allow you to be a better steward of your time and resources and thereby free you to do more Kingdom-focused activities.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
- Be sure to use the “Export” feature in SongSelect, not the “Save” feature. WorshipWebsite.net requires the formatted *.usr files. The unformatted *.txt files won’t work. [back]
- Technically I don’t have OCD, but even my wife will tell you that’s only because I haven’t sought an official diagnosis.
[back] - To be fair, while I don’t want to commit them to anything, I would guess the developers of Planning Center would make a similar offer to the best of their ability. [back]
Worship Planning Site Review: Planning Center
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I have had the opportunity to use two online worship planning sites recently and I thought I would give a review of them both. Perhaps readers of IsaiahSix have suggestions of other sites or desktop software solutions they use and the discussion could be helpful to us all. Today I will review Planning Center and tomorrow I will review WorshipWebsite.net.
Planning Center Overview
Planning Center is a web-based worship planning solution. With this site, users have the opportunity to plan and store detailed data for worship services. For example, you’re able to see the last time you used a particular song in a worship service. When you enter a new song into the database, you can upload scores and sound clips for your musicians to use when they access the worship services. And managing who is supposed to participate in which services is a relatively simple process.
Song Database
One of the strengths of Planning Center is its song database. In this database, you enter songs as you program them in a service. This happens only once per song; the next time you program the piece, it’s there ready to be inserted into your worship plan.
A nice feature of the song database is the ability to enter multiple arrangements of the same song. For example, at our church we make frequent use of WORD’s Hymns for Praise & Worship collection. We also use HymnCharts and every once in a while, we’ll use the version straight from our hymnal. So, if I were to enter the hymn “How Great Thou Art,” I could enter all three arrangements under the same song heading. For the HymnCharts arrangement, I could upload the appropriate files so our instrumentalists could download them and see them ahead of time. When planning a worship service, if I were to select “How Great Thou Art,” I could specify which arrangement we would be playing, and the necessary files (if any) would then be available to our musicians. You can also upload arrangement-specific sound files. (By the way, you have the ability in your account settings to allow your team members to download the sound files or simply stream them. If the files are your own recordings of your own songs, there wouldn’t be any problem allowing downloads. But if they’re commercially available recordings, you’re already on shaky legal ground by uploading them at all. Don’t risk further damage by allowing downloads, too.)
UPDATE: Comments from readers have alerted me to the feature in Planning Center allowing you to import song data from CCLI. That’s a very helpful, time saving feature and I apologize for overlooking it in my original review.
Planning Worship
Planning worship services at Planning Center is fairly straightforward. You can enter header items such as The Greeting or The Welcome and under the headings include details of that particular element. Each item you enter is placed at the bottom of the current list but moving it to its proper location is easily accomplished by click-and-drag functionality. Simply move it to wherever you want it. If later you want to move something to a different place in the service, no problem. As I mentioned earlier, when you enter a song into your order, the accompanying files and sound clips show up alongside the title for your team members to download or listen to.
Planning worship is made simpler through the use of templates. This will be of more use to some than to others, but if your services have any amount of predictability to them at all, templates allow you to set up those predictable elements so you’re having to do less work from week to week.
The Matrix
You have the ability to compare week to week what has been happening in your worship services through the Matrix. The Matrix can be a helpful tool to give you a bigger picture if you limit your viewing to just a few weeks. Any more than that and the screen gets a little too crowded to be helpful.
People Scheduling
Resource management is relatively simple through Planning Center. Enter all of your team members (up to the limit allowed by your plan) and when combined with the template feature, you can set up specific groups of people for specific worship services. That’s very helpful and saves a good bit of time. Once your service is in its final format, simply notify your team members from within Planning Center. They receive an e-mail and are asked to confirm their availability. If they’re on the schedule for a particular worship service, it shows up on their calendar when they log in. If they’re not scheduled for a worship service, they don’t see anything listed for that date.
UPDATE: Comments from readers and e-mails with the kind folks at Planning Center indicate that your team members have the ability to mark dates for which they are or are not available. I apologize for overlooking this feature in my original review.
The Pricing
The major downfall of Planning Center–and ultimately the reason I no longer use this service–is its pricing and account structure. There is a free plan, but it’s really just to let you see how everything works. You don’t have to upgrade to a paid plan, but you’ll be extremely limited in what you can do. The first plan that would be remotely helpful to anyone would be the Lite plan, which I see has recently increased in price from $9 per month to $14 per month. On this plan you’re limited to 100mb of data storage (charts, sound files, etc.) and 35 people. You could work around both of those limitations, but where you’ll be stuck is that this plan only allows for one “ministry.” Planning Center basically defines a ministry as one unique worship service. So, if you have only one corporate gathering a week, you’ll be fine. But if you have multiple gatherings per week (Sunday and Wednesday, for example), and those gatherings are different from one another, or if you have multiple worship services of varying styles on Sunday morning, you will have to at least upgrade to the Basic plan, which is limited to two ministries (still not extremely flexible) and costs $29 per month. There are ways around these limitations, but it goes against the spirit of the service’s intent and I found that trying that was extremely annoying and time consuming anyway. This way of pricing the service is peculiar and I would be interested to know how it came about.
Summary
Planning Center is a slick, well designed web-based worship planning tool with a lot of nice features. A lot of time and design talent went into planning this service and its front-end interface. I enjoyed using it for several months and it did make it easier than my old method of planning worship (pen and paper followed by Microsoft Word). While I was able to work around some of the limitations of the pricing structure (and from a budgetary standpoint I couldn’t justify jumping to the next level), ultimately the restrictive use of “ministries” was (and is) its Achilles’ heal.
Tomorrow I’ll take a look at WorshipWebsite.net. UPDATE: Here’s the link to that review.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
Tonight was one of those rare occasions . . .
. . . in worship leading ministry when the congregational music set was as solid as you could ever pray for. It was one of those after which you almost expected the pastor to say we could go home. Here’s the set:
»And Can It Be
»How Deep the Father’s Love For Us
»My Savior’s Love (I Stand Amazed in the Presence)
I’m not trying to pat myself on the back and I’m not trying to pump up our musicians. This was completely a Spirit-led time of worship. In fact, we could try the very same set next week and it might end up a complete flop. But tonight, tonight it was something special. It was one of those times that make me truly appreciative that God called me to be a worship leader.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
Variety in Worship
A little variety goes a long way. For our worship service yesterday, I had planned on chart arrangements of some pretty popular old hymns (as opposed to playing and singing them directly from the hymnal in a strict musical setting) and had planned on using both piano and keyboard/synth.1 However, our organist/keyboardist was out sick, so it was just the pianist and me. Now, I wouldn’t want to be limited to just one instrument on a regular basis, but the difference actually worked well yesterday. The variety was noticeable and offered a different flavor to the congregational singing. I do have to say, though, that our pianist is highly skilled and he’s able to fill the role of lone instrument without any hesitation whatsoever.
The challenge for me is to fight the ruts that so easily come with tasks that I carry out on a routine basis. I didn’t plan for this service to be any different than any other service. But, therein lies the problem. It helps to be reminded that subtle alterations can make worship services more meaningful from time to time.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
- Our electric bass player is a college student who is home for the summer. [back]
Strong–But Good–Advice on Worship Preferences
Andy at Think Christian provides a little “between-the-eyes” advice each of us would do well to heed.
It Goes Both Ways
In fact, while he approaches the topic of worship preferences from the “church music snob” point of view (kudos to him for being able to see that in himself; he’s a better man than I), his advice goes both ways. If your first “musical language” is modern in nature and your church programs a hymn or two, don’t just sit/stand there and bemoan the fact that the songs are old and boring. Pay attention to the text and worship the God to Whom it points.1
IsaiahSix is a strong proponent of the balanced use of materials in corporate worship–old and new. However, with that freedom comes great responsibility for those planning worship. We can’t afford to be musical snobs either. There are likely six or seven different generations sitting in our congregations weekly, each of them with their own musical language. We have to make sure we’re not asking them to worship exclusively in a language they don’t understand. We can and should ask them to become multilingual, but we do them–and the Kingdom–a great disservice when we remove all vestiges of their own language.
Not Just About Music
This idea of “snobbery” isn’t relegated to the music world. It applies to other aspects of the worship service, too. Maybe you think your pastor moves around too much; maybe he doesn’t move around enough. Maybe he reads his sermons; maybe he’s too conversational in his delivery. Maybe the drama wasn’t as polished as it needed to be; maybe it was so polished it seemed canned. Whatever the excuse to take our focus away from the One we worship, we have to fight that temptation.
After all, it isn’t a production we’re attending. It is an offering of worship in which we’re participating. When we find ourselves critiquing rather than worshiping, perhaps we should remember Andy’s advice.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
- That is assuming the hymn does, in fact, point to God. But that’s a different issue we’ve covered here at IsaiahSix extensively. [back]
A Review of Robin Mark's CD East of the River
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From the time I first heard the CD Revival in Belfast, I have enjoyed the worship recordings of Robin Mark, so I was pleased to learn of his latest release, East of the River. In many ways, this CD is not unlike his earlier recordings. It opens with an instrumental “overture” of sorts before moving into the first song. The orchestration is noticeably Irish, which I like very much. If planning worship from week to week were left to my personal tastes (thank goodness it isn’t!) we would have a lot more whistle/flute and bodhrán.1 The lyrics on this CD are unmistakably Christ-centered; you’ll find no “Jesus-is-my-girlfriend”2 songs here.
While there are similarities to some of Mark’s earlier projects, there are differences, too. This recording is a studio recording rather than a recording of a live worship event, as most of Mark’s previous projects have been. As such, East of the River lacks some of the energy of its earlier predecessors, but I’m not sure that wasn’t by design. While several songs are quite energetic (“Heaven’s Gates” and “God Arise,” for example), there seem to be more quiet, introspective selections as well, including “Arise and Shine” and “Lost and Found.” This mixture make this recording perfect for use as a personal worship tool.
A further aid to personal worship are the helpful Scripture references printed in the CD booklet ahead of the song texts. If you purchase this album from iTunes or a similar music download site, you’ll miss this feature.
The songs are easily singable and many would be accessible for congregational use. Don’t feel the pressure to emulate Mark’s sound; if you can, fine. But just because the recording sounds Irish doesn’t mean that your use of it has to. Use the resources you have.
Here’s a list of the tracks on the recording:
»Some Place East of the River
»Heaven’s Gates
»Fortress
»Arise and Shine
»He Shall Reign (a personal favorite)
»Tripping Up the Stairs
»I Have Been Crucified with Christ
»Lost and Found
»Shepherd
»I Am Persuaded
»At the Dawning
»Mary Lee
»Highly Exalted (a personal favorite)
»O Amazing
»Central Station
»God Arise
While I might prefer the earlier Revival in Belfast CDs for their live energy, in the end East of the River is a very good recording. I happily recommend it to you if you’re looking to expand your worship recording library.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
Exploring the Worship Spectrum: A Response to Best's Traditional Hymn-Based Worship, Part 3
Harold Best makes an argument for traditional, hymn-based worship and he does so on unexpected grounds: the actual, physical hymnbook itself, as opposed to the hymns in the hymnbook.
I want to avoid definitional quandaries concerning what a hymn is, compared to, say, a gospel song, or a spiritual or a chant or a chorus. This would take too much time and offer very little to the core of the issue. Therefore I shall extend the idea of hymn-based worship to everything contained in hymnbooks, for it is the book part that interests me far more than typological definitions of “hymn.”
Best sets himself up for unnecessary arguments by making such a statement. By arguing for hymn-based worship that isn’t necessarily tied to a specific book, he could have argued that there is a rich tradition of sound doctrine and teaching in Christian hymnody. And he would be right. By tying his argument to a book, however, whole new problems arise. Which hymnal? The Broadman Hymnal of the 1950s? The Baptist Hymnal? 1975 or 1991? The Worshiping Church? The Celebration Hymnal?
Not all hymnals are created equal. Some have better or worse theology than others. Some are more or less diverse than others. Some go to drastic lengths in order to create a gender-neutral Godhead. At the very least, each hymnal, whether published by a particular denomination or by a publishing house, has its strengths and weaknesses. If one is bound to a particular hymnal, he will be less likely (my opinion) to try to compensate for those weakness. So I would have been much more comfortable with a hymnody-in-general argument rather than a hymnal-based argument.
Best later points out that “the best hymnbooks are treasure troves of theology, prayer, Scripture, song, hymnic information, stylistic variety, and liturgical opportunity.” Yes, the best ones are. But, I’ve never seen a hymnal that meets all of these characteristics. In fact, I doubt one exists.
Now, having played the devil’s advocate so far, let me suggest that Best’s intent is right on target. Christian hymnody is absolutely a rich source of theology and spiritual support and growth. Little apart from the Bible can be used so widely for devotional purposes as hymnals can. And I have encouraged the choirs and churches I have led in worship to use them for such purposes. A hymnal is a volume of systematic theology, parsing into sections doctrine about God, the life of Christ, missiology, etc. But there is more to consider than that.
My concern over a hymn-based approach to worship is not in the use of hymns. Hymns should play a vital role in our corporate worship gatherings. If we were to limit our worship practices to the use of hymnals, however, we would miss a whole world of God-glorifying, Christ-exalting creativity. Why not use a centuries old hymn that for some reason or another didn’t make it into your church’s hymnal? No doubt our hymnals contain some weak hymns at the exclusion of much stronger ones. Or why not seek out music by composers and authors still living? Investigate new music (and old music!!!) thoroughly to make sure it is biblically solid and fruitful for use and use it to the glory of God. “Some of the new music isn’t worthy of singing,” you might say. You’re very right; but a lot of hymns aren’t worth singing, either. We just sing them because we’ve always sung them. And that reason isn’t good enough.
Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,
