6/21 Tour Update - Planning

Josh Linman here for day 12 of the Creative Worship Tour.

With all the interviews I've done so far, I'm starting to see some common traits for successfully pulling off team-based, creative worship planning.

1) KNOW THE BIG IDEA
Make sure your team has a clear focus of what the big idea for the message is. It's not enough just to have a title and scripture verse because scripture can be interpreted so many different ways. Try to get your pastor to answer some of the following questions: What concept/idea do you want to explain? What is your goal for the message? What do you want people to take away? What are some main points you will make? What stories will you tell?

Getting answers to some of these questions will help solidify the big idea and give you a specific focus with which to view song, video and other creative elements. It will be easier to decide if an element will enhance the experience or detract from it with a better knowledge of the big idea.

Check out this video of Mike Slaughter sharing his ideas with the creative team for the upcoming Sundays sermon.

2) TRUST EACH OTHER
Trust your team. Every team member should be comfortable throwing all their ideas on the table, trusting that no one will judge their ideas initially. Write down all the ideas because even a bad idea can spur someone else to think of a good one. Trusting your team also means not making an idea your baby and pushing for it above other ideas. Trusting your team also means erasing your titles during the brainstorming phase. The music person should listen to song suggestions from the video person or vice versa. Finally you need to trust your leader. Most often this should be the pastor who will be preaching. They need to have the final say in what elements make it into a worship experience because they know most specifically what will help them communicate God's message.

Watch this video to get a taste of the kind of interaction that needs to take place when throwing out ideas.

3) HAVE A PROCESS
From Jacob's Well and their 12 week plan to Ginghamsburg and their weekly planning meetings every church that is doing creative and engaging things in worship has a concrete process that the whole team knows about. Experiment and see what process will work best for you. Set-up a regular meeting time. When the team first starts meeting, don't try to jump right into planning for the service next weekend, start slow and plan for the service next month or the next series. Having a process holds everyone accountable. Everyone knows that brainstorming happens 4 weeks out and the service is finalized 1 week out with all the creative elements ready atleast a few days before the service so they can be reviewed by the teaching pastor.

4) TAKE TIME TO REVIEW Everywhere I have gone, there has been a huge focus on review and evaluation. Granger Community Church, which has two services on Saturday has a quick meeting to review after those services to see if there is anything that can be fixed for Sunday. The key staff people involved in worship will review what went well and what needs work. At Orchard Valley Mike Jones said while they try to focus on the strengths of the service and not get too negative, they don't hold anything back.

It takes time to develop relationships in these review meeting where you aren't taking the critiques and criticisms personally and instead remembering everyone is on the same team and is trying to make the experience more effective at connecting and communicating with people.

So what do you think? What else is important in the planning process? What kind of information does your pastor give you? How do you build trust in your team relationships? What is your process - how long is it, who is involved? Do you review your services?

Share your thoughts below. Don't miss tomorrow and my behind the scenes tour of Church of the Resurrection's facilities.