Notions

It’s hard to explain to those who don’t work in a ministry area the many tasks and plans that it takes to make worship happen. The old joke is that “church staff only work one day a week. How hard could it be?” It got me thinking that it might be interesting to know about the worship workflow at Kingwood Methodist Church.

Along with many other KMC staff, I have an amazing music ministry team of Olena Blagulyak and Barbara Dickson and they carry the burden on many aspects of music ministry. While rehearsals are essential, we don’t just spend time in practice and on Sunday mornings. Our pastors and staff have much to do before you arrive to worship with us on a Sunday morning. Much reading and thought goes into what is preached. Olena spends many hours practicing her gift. I spend time studying music scores. Barbara maintains contact with our team members, sets up chairs, maintains the music library of 2,000 titles, deals with weddings, and much more.

Today, I had to catch up on logging in OneLicense.Net copyright information. We must legally account for each choir anthem, solo, organ piece, or handbell selection with certain publishers to tell them that we are using them on our streaming services. One License doesn’t cover everything, but it covers a lot of permissions. Most hymns are covered under a hymnal copyright umbrella but occasionally, we do have to cite usage of those, too, via CCLI and WorshipCast. Along with that, we create credits that run at the end of all of our worship services that cite the author of each liturgical item, such as a prayer.

Well in advance, the pastors have met and given us thematically where worship will be headed. Then, I take that and begin to lay out in Planning Center the worship plans. In church staff meetings, we make sure that we are aware of what is upcoming in church life so that it can be reflected in worship. Then, if there are planning extra planning session, we meet and white board them. Since we share some personnel, Ryan Stueckemann and I coordinate who will be serving the Sundays on our A/V teams prior to the Sunday that they serve. We have lay team coordinators to set up liturgists in advance for traditional worship as well as lay people (and Barbara Dickson) who make sure the paraments are correct and the candles filled with paraffin.

Certain Wednesdays are set aside each month for filming of announcements and discipleship connection videos that you see in worship. Sarah Larsen, our communications person, coordinates with leaders what needs to be featured. Then, after it’s all lined up, our filming team of Jessica Pence, Ryan, and I film the scripts. Jessica edits and prepares the videos.

My main work focuses on the choir. At any time, we are working on current and further anthems along with major works. Those get selected based on themes. Often, I wade through several hundred anthems that match up with the theme of the day and if they will work well with our choir. In preparation for rehearsal, Barbara sets out our the choir’s name placards and then I go in an appropriately arrange the voices so that we can blend for optimal choral sound. She has sent out notices to the choir so that they can report in their attendance for the main rehearsal. Wednesday night, we rehearse and get the music prepared for Sunday morning as well as about 4-6 weeks of anthems that are upcoming. I’ve talked with Olena so that she is up on any unique moments of which she needs to be aware in rehearsal or in worship. Rehearsal consists of warmup, singing, and prayer time.

Thursdays, I create the ProPresenter scripts and opening countdowns which are what worshippers see in the Sanctuary on our screens during the service. ProPresenter includes all liturgical aspects of the service — scripture, hymn texts, call to worship, anthem texts, etc. Jessica posts up the announcements and discipleship connections. The loops and videos get distributed out to the appropriate A/V team in both the Sanctuary and Vine.

And, we haven’t even arrived on a Sunday yet . . . and, this is only the music area. Imagine what else is happening in other ministries led by your church staff!