(darin rihanek on bass // josh barton on guitar // photo by danieljohn)
Earlier this week I sent out an email to our local church asking if they would like to participate in a little worship experiment. . The “experiment” was this – I asked them to participate by watching this video from worship leader/artist Gary Durbin and learning it before we came together for our Sunday service. I was not really sure what the response would be, but I thought we needed to try something different and here’s why.
For us, it normally takes about 3 weeks before our church really begins enjoying a newly introduced song. So lately I have been thinking about interactive ways to help our church get past the newness of these songs we are introducing and into the nougaty center of what the song is really saying.
So, I emailed everyone and did not know what the responses would be, but evidently everyone loved it. I have posted a few of their emails below.
from one of our church school teachers:
from a secretary in our front office:
from a friend on the move:
and lastly, from one of the Spanish translators at our church:
When it came time to sing the song in service, it seemed as if we had all been singing it for weeks. To me this was success because people already knew the song and were able to enjoy worshipping with it, rather than learning it. Definitely a good first experiment/experience for us.
So now, I’d love to hear your thoughts – what creative things are you doing that have helped your local church have better times of worship? Or what have you done to serve your local church, to engage and interact with them? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. See below for the rest of our setlists from the day.
1. (Ab) Filled With Your Glory
2. (Ab) Radiance
3. (C#) Holy, Holy, Holy
4. (E) Consume Me [we will be teaching this song in our video section soon. it was written by one of our worship leaders, Jordan Palmer]
5. (E) You Are My All In All
1. (B) Let God Arise
2. (B) Counting On God
3. (D) Here I Am To Worship
4. (D) Revelation Song
5. (E) How Deep The Father’s Love For Us
If you would like to see what other churches and worship leaders are doing each week, stay on the internet for a few miles, and then take your first left down to Fred McKinnon’s site. Have a great week!
Thanks for the great idea. I’m definitely going to see if this is something we could use. Glad it worked out well.
Great idea Dan. I’m going to mention it to our worship leader as something we could do when he has a new song as well.
thanks Obed & Chris! yeah I wish every new song had a corresponding video, but regardless it helped our people feel more involved. next month I’m gonna try a “contest” where they help pick a song for Sunday based on the theme of what we’re going for….or something along those lines….it’s a work in progress.
I have another idea about pulling in some art, but there’s a few bugs to work out there still 🙂
This is genius.
thanks Seren!
On behalf of all the old folks in the church (all seven of us) thanks for the preview. It really helped.
Ha…I would not put you in the old folks category. In fact we overheard Pastor Charlie tell Laurie that they should take the old people out to lunch. The old people being Lavonda and her crew – aren’t they the same age as Charlie? 🙂
You are definitely a new generation worship leader dude!
I have waited a day to make a comment on this post, so that I’d have time to think of some way to take credit for this brilliant idea. But it’s not working. So…WAY TO GO!
Really, what a wonderful, creative way to involve people in what’s going to take place on Sunday during the week. There are so many songs out there with video’s, I’m thinking this would even be helpful when a song’s really on your mind that people already know. Or, if a song really ministered to people during a service, send out a video so they can keep living in it during the week, etc.
wow…I’m humbled and blessed by you and this post. that’s really creative. That’s great leadership and something that every worship leader could easily do in their church with all the videos available now. Great work and thanks again for using the song!
Awesome concept. I think if more churches did this, worship would take a whole new direction. Songwriters for years have been left wondering why a song did not fly in a worship service. Unfamiliarity is the reason. By integration a pre-listen type of thing, this might allow people to be more apt to write new music. Nice Dan…