Home

On the 22^nd of June, a group of people who have been involved in leading worship in the circuit met together. The reason for meeting is that a number of people in each church have become involved in leading services of readings provided by the staff for use when there is no minister or local preacher available, but volunteers may not have been helped to feel confident in leading worship.

We met together to look at the nature of worship. We then spoke about our experiences of leading worship and the reflected upon the positive and negative aspects of leading worship. This reflection enabled us to produce a list of areas in which help and support would be useful.

The meeting concluded that a series of sessions to train and support leaders of worship would be helpful. We plan to hold these sessions on Monday evenings in the autumn, possible at St. Andrew’s. These sessions will be open to EVERYONE and not just those who were at the meeting. The sessions could enable you to become an accredited Worship Leader in your church, but it is fine to come along and take away some useful tips.

If you were not able to be at the meeting but have been involved in leading worship you may be interested to see the comments of those who were there. How does your experience compare to that of the others?

What is worship?

• Adoration

• Praise

• Prayer

• Listening

• Being open to God

• Singing

• Sharing

• Reading from the Bible

• Communing with God

• Communing with other Christians

• Learning

• Silence

• Reverence

• Activities

• giving thanks

Experiences of leading worship

Positive

• Hearing somebody say “I enjoyed the service”

• Enjoy choosing hymns (2)

• Support from colleagues in Readings services

• I am affirmed that I am doing what God has required of me

• Excited, honoured, hopeful – being of service to God

• Happy to actively engage children

• Sing the hymns

• Confidence in knowing what you are reading/leading is something you believe in and know or hope the congregation will be receptive to

• Enjoy reading

• A further understanding of why we are involved and helping to learn more and deeper meaning of worship and presence with God

• Leading prayers

• Leading worship and creating a worshipful atmosphere

• Getting to grips and really understanding the main reading – finding the best way to put it over

• Leading a meditation, although not easy

• A sense of sharing and speaking of God’s love for each and every one of us and hoping we won’t let him down.

• Day when people say “well done”

• Speaking

• Feedback – during and after service

• Editing message for me to deliver

• Group discussion to structure/organise service

Negative

• Standing up in church before all the people

• Praying on behalf of them (the people)

• Finding it difficult to understand the message and how to make it more understandable

• The long struggle to find the inspiration and get it right

• Had theme I cannot grasp

• When you are unable to hear the speaker – due to their diction

• If the leader is too active with their hands – it distracts

• Not being in tune with the topic

• Coordinating events in the service to allow for a smooth running of worship

• Don’t like doing prayers with responses/pauses e.g. prayers of intercession – timing

• Reading from the Bible or any written material

• Creativity

• Support from congregation when preparing service

• Fear lack of response

• Lots of things to do and remember if you cannot delegate

• Worried it won’t go well

• Finding suitable material if we didn’t think the Readings suitable

• Have difficulty with the prayers

• Fear of not getting the message across

• Relief when it’s over

Things to include when training leaders of worship

• Choosing Bible translations

• Prayers

• All-age worship

• Language

• Culture

• Timing

• Using microphones

• Strategies for preparing

• Choosing hymns

• Resources

If you want to find out more, why not visit the 'Upcoming Events' page for details of our new Worship leaders' training programme.

Back to Top

This site was created using OpenOffice.org.1.1

Last up-dated September 2005