Get All The Pieces On The Table

Planning a worship service can be intimidating but if you have a clear understanding of everything that needs to happen in the service, you’ll be able to plan effectively each week.

It’s important to get all the pieces on the table so you can see how everything fits together.

Welcome to part 5 of an 11 part series called How To Plan A Worship Service from Start to Finish.

You’re doing great so far! Keep going!

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The fifth step to take when planning a worship service is: Get All The Pieces On The Table.

When I was little, I enjoyed putting puzzles together. I loved the satisfaction of seeing my work to get all the pieces in the right place – come together to form a picture.

But before I started the puzzle, I would always dump all the pieces out onto the table, turn them right side up, and then separate the edge pieces from all the other pieces. You probably have done the same.

Planning a worship service, in some ways is similar to putting a puzzle together.

Now, that you’ve done all the prep work, you’ve prayed, talked with your pastor, considered the audience and considered your musicians, it’s time to get all the pieces of the service on the table.

Before we go on, I want to mention one thing – and maybe challenge you in this area.

I believe the worship leader should not only function as the music leader, but also as the producer or service coordinator.

This is not at all required and won’t work for some situations, because every church is different and every pastor has different strengths and interests.

But if you can take the pressure of having to orchestrate everything that happens on a Sunday, off your pastor, this will free him up to do ministry and focus on preaching the word of God.

Your pastor should not have to worry about whether or not the sound guy is going to show up. Take that responsibility upon yourself and make sure that position is filled each week.

Your pastor should not have call the person scheduled for special music to make sure they are ready to sing. You should do that.

I could go on – but here’s the point.

Ask your pastor if you can take care of everything regarding the service except the preaching – so that he can be free to fellowship with the congregation, meet new people and deliver the Word of God in the most effective way possible.

This means you will need to know about the baby dedication and about the prayer time and make sure you plan for it in the service.

This doesn’t mean that your pastor can’t do those things – if he wants to – by all means, that’s his prerogative.

But see if you can serve your pastor, by organizing all the elements of the service and freeing up his time to minister.

And by the way – this doesn’t happen without great communication – that’s why it’s important to meet with you pastor every week.

Be sure to watch part 2 of this video series for more information on that.

So whether or not you function as the service coordinator you still need to have a very good understanding of everything that’s happening in the service so you can plan accordingly.

Most churches have four main elements to their Sunday service.

Music, Offering, Sermon and the dreaded Announcements. 🙂

But, I’m sure you also have other elements that you use from time to time.

Some things that churches often include in their services are:

Special Music
Choir Selections
Videos
Scripture Reading
Prayer Time
Birthday and Anniversary Recognitions
Graduating Senior Recognitions
Missions Emphasis
Baby Dedications
Guest Speakers
Kids Sermons
Water Baptisms

You get the idea.

Hopefully, your church doesn’t do all those in one service!

But as you know – each of these elements take up time.

Now, I am assuming that most of you serve in churches that have a set time for your Sunday service.

And even if your service time is flexible, I would encourage you to pick an allotted time and try to stick within that time frame from week to week.

It might be an hour and 15 minutes, or an hour and a half – but sticking to an allotted time will help with your scheduling and programming.

Knowing what elements need to happen and how much time each element will take, enables you to plan the music portion of the service so that it fits within the overall time allotted.

And that’s why I say it’s important to get all the pieces on the table.

If you normally have 20 minutes of music, but there is a baptism scheduled (and your pastor doesn’t want that time to be taken from his sermon) you will need to adjust what you do musically so that your service doesn’t go overtime.

So put down on paper everything that is happening and then begin to orchestrate where everything needs to go.

A word of encouragement: don’t be afraid to change things up every now and then. Get creative! Try something new. Move specific elements around to see where they best fit and to keep your service order from becoming stale.

God has created each of us to be creative and we can worship Him by using those gifts. Step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

As we wrap up this video, I want to go back to the puzzle analogy one more time.

Do you remember how frustrating it was to work on a certain piece to try to make it fit in the puzzle, only to realize it belonged to a totally different puzzle? Or when you get to the end of the puzzle only to realize there were two or three pieces missing.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

That same frustration can happen when you have the wrong pieces or don’t have all the pieces to the service before you start planning.

If you spend time planning a service – and you have everything orchestrated to work together – and then on Sunday morning – you find out “By the way, we have a guest speaker and he needs 10 minutes” so please cut two songs from the order.

You can prevent this frustration by being proactive with your communication and by working to understand every element that needs to take place.

And then incorporate those elements into a cohesive worship service

Thanks for watching part 5 of this 11 part series: How To Plan A Worship Service From Start To Finish. I hope you’ll watch the rest of the videos and let us know what you think in the comments.

If you want to go deeper on this topic, we’ve put some additional links in the description below.

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