Worship Online Podcast (For Worship Leaders)

Your congregation isn't quiet because they don't care. They're quiet because they think the stage is singing for them. Dwan Hill leads worship at Cross Point in Nashville and started The Choir Room, a gathering that began with one Instagram post and a borrowed room with an organ in the corner. He expected 20 people. A hundred showed up. In this conversation he breaks down the summer his church ran an initiative called "a singing church": they pulled the band off the stage, went down to piano and acoustic, turned the house lights up, and picked only songs people already knew. Two years later, he says the volume of the congregation is still dramatically higher. You'll also hear why five people in unison on "Goodness of God" can carry a room better than a polished choir, how he teaches every vocal part by ear in five or six minutes with no sheet music, and what to say from the platform to someone who honestly doesn't think of themselves as a singer. His reframe for anyone with a small team: don't depend on your five people to sound like a choir. Use them to inspire the congregation to be the choir. If that's the kind of Sunday you want, it starts with a team that already knows their parts before they walk in. That's what Worship Online is for. Learn more at https://worshiponline.com/ Mentioned in the Episode  The Choir Room at Carnegie Hall  Cross Point Church   If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

  He wrote one of the biggest worship songs in the world. Then he spent years walking away from worship entirely.  Cory Asbury is honest about why. He let frustration with the industry fester into bitterness, and as he puts it, "Bitterness has the shelf life of a Twinkie."  In this conversation he tells the story of the moment in Switchfoot's San Diego studio when he knew that season was over, and what it took to come back.  You'll hear why he thinks talent gets promoted faster than character, and why years of hiddenness are the only thing that sustains success when it comes.  He walks through his process for anger: sit with it, find the root, grieve it, so it never hardens into cynicism toward the church.  And he gives the advice he admits sounds like bad advice: serve your team, make the meals, stack the chairs, take the worst seat.  Cory has led worship full time since he was 18, spent years leading in a prayer room with six people in it, and is back with a new worship record.   If this one hits a nerve, the unglamorous prep is where it starts. Worship Online helps your team learn their parts at home so rehearsal is refining, not reteaching: https://worshiponline.com/    Mentioned in the Episode  Outsing the Angels  East of Eden  These Are the Days    If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

Naomi Raine had just written what she was sure was the best song of her life. Then she decided the room was too small to waste it on.  Twenty five people at a church plant. No record deal, no audience, nothing. And right before she held the song back, she heard it: if you can't be faithful with this song in front of 20 people, I can't trust you with 20,000 people.  Naomi sang it that Sunday anyway. This conversation is what happened after.  You'll hear why she says you can fake it in private just as easily as you fake it on stage, and what honest prayer actually sounds like at 7:30 in the morning when you did not go to bed until one. And about her brand new podcast, In the Room with Naomi Raine. You'll hear her reframe for every worship leader carrying guilt about Monday through Saturday: it is all worship, including the rehearsal prep and your kid's football game.  And you'll hear how she stays planted in a local church in Mount Vernon while touring the world.  Naomi is a Grammy winning founding voice of Maverick City Music who still pastors a local room and now runs her own label.    If prep keeps eating the time you want to spend with God, Worship Online helps your whole team learn their parts at home so rehearsal stops stealing your week. Learn more at https://worshiponline.com/    Mentioned in the Episode  In the Room w/ Naomi Raine  Old Church Basement  Jesus at the Center  Fresh Start Christian Center  If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

He walked into his new church in Nashville, watched the worship team, and his first thought was: good, nobody needs me here. That is the American Idol runner up talking. He had just come off a national stage, and what he felt was relief. So he served on the parking team instead. In this conversation Clark Beckham talks about the tension of getting pulled onto a platform before you are ready, why he calls himself an octagon peg in a round hole, and how he got free of the guilt of not being the one leading worship. He also gets into where those reharmonized piano covers actually came from: nights alone at the piano, running the chords he grew up on with Brian McKnight, Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder, treating harmony like a scavenger hunt for God's beauty. Clark is a self taught multi instrumentalist, an American Idol season 14 runner up, and he serves at The Belonging Co in Nashville. If this one hit a nerve, Worship Online helps your team learn their parts at home so Sunday is about worship, not scrambling. Take a look at https://worshiponline.com/ Mentioned in the Episode  Acoustic Worship Sessions Album  Clark's IG  Clarkbeckham.com  If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

Every person on their worship team has an expiration date.  At Southeastern University, students audition, get developed, lead for a couple of years, then graduate. The team rebuilds itself constantly. It still works.  Chelsea and Austin, who everyone calls Shuff, lead SEU Worship, a campus ministry of sixty to eighty college students leading chapel three and four times a week.  In this conversation you'll hear how they frame excellence as 'prepare the offering,' a holy practice instead of a performance standard.  How five staff develop thirty-plus student leaders, who then develop everyone else, so the discipleship isn't sitting on one person.  And what stewarding ten straight days of worship actually looked like: swapping guitar players out mid-song over the talkback, two hour slots at one in the morning, and making sure people ate, slept and showered.  Plus why 'What A God' lived in their chapel for about a year before any other church started singing it.  If the 'prepare the offering' idea hit something in you, that's what Worship Online is built for: your whole team learning their exact parts at home so rehearsal is refining, not reteaching. Try it free at https://worshiponline.com/    Mentioned in the Episode  What a God  10 Days of Outpouring  Southeastern University    If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

Paul Baloche has been leading worship for over thirty years. He will also tell you there were many, many weeks he never sat down with the Lord on his own, then stood on a platform anyway and said, "Hey guys, let's worship the Lord."  He borrows his wife's line for it: busyness is the enemy of intimacy.  Paul wrote "Open the Eyes of My Heart," "Above All," and "Hosanna," and spent twenty five years as worship pastor at one church of a few hundred people while turning down offers from much bigger ones.  He walks through the actual practice that has kept him steady: a guitar, the book of Psalms, a journal, fifteen minutes some days and an hour on others.  He also gets honest about grading a Sunday by how many people cried, why he tells young musicians to go serve somebody else's ministry first, and how to tell a younger player you see a calling on them without laying a heavy trip on them.  If the weekly scramble to get your team ready is eating the part of you that actually wants to worship, that is the part Worship Online takes off your plate. Every instrument, every harmony, learned at home before rehearsal starts: https://worshiponline.com/  Mentioned in the Episode  Yes, We Believe  Lead Worship  ---  If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

The best piano player in your church might be the wrong person for your team.  Keith makes the case that an audition is not American Idol. It's the first thing that teaches someone what kind of team they're joining, before they ever play a note.  You'll hear how to build an application that asks about someone's story and not just their instrument, the everyday conversation questions that quietly reveal character, starting with what song they listened to on the way over, and the four honest ways to respond after audition day so nobody walks out guessing.  He also gets into why handing pieces of the process to current team members develops leaders and takes weight off you.   Keith Elgin leads worship, coaches worship leaders and pastors, and hosts the Worship Online Podcast.  Since all of this starts with what you hand people before they show up, Worship Online gives you album accurate tutorials, charts, and a mixer so everyone learns their part at home, whether they're auditioning or leading this Sunday. You can try it free at https://worshiponline.com/   Mentioned in the Episode  Sign Up for Lab+    If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

Put a bunch of similarly gifted people on one worship team and something quietly goes bad. Jordan Howerton calls it poison: the jealousy and comparison that takes root when you start wondering why someone else got that campus, that song, that recording. He also thinks celebration is the antidote, and his teams practice it out loud at every huddle. In this conversation: why CCV sings the same songs at all 18 campuses but lets each leader arrange them for their own room, why he tells anyone stepping into a new church not to change a thing for the first six months to a year, and the reason jerking the wheel on culture rattles people even when the change is right. Jordan is the senior director of worship and production at Christ's Church of the Valley in Phoenix, where he has helped lead worship across 18 campuses for more than a decade. If culture change starts with people showing up ready, Worship Online gives every player and vocalist their exact part to learn at home, so rehearsal is refining instead of reteaching. See how it works at https://worshiponline.com/ Mentioned in This Episode CCV Music Nothing But Good If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN. 

A hole on the platform is easier to fix than a hole in your team's culture.  Keith Elgin learned that one the hard way, and he made a list of the other nine things he wishes every worship leader knew.  You'll get his case for why your worship ministry doesn't need its own vision, only a clear read on your church's. Why the hard conversation you're avoiding right now becomes next year's crisis. And why eventually you shouldn't be the best musician in the room, plus how insecurity quietly keeps you there.  He also pushes on the line most leaders repeat but don't act on: Sunday reveals your team's culture, it doesn't create it. Preparation, communication, and formation happen Monday through Saturday or they don't happen at all.   In addition to hosting The Worship Online Podcast, Keith leads worship at his local church, coaches other worship teams, and created the Worship Journal.  If Monday through Saturday is where the real work happens, Worship Online gives your team a way to actually do it: every part learned at home before rehearsal, so you can spend your time on people instead of parts. Take a look at https://worshiponline.com/    Mentioned in the Episode  Alive Church  The Worship Journal    If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.   

The song that broke him out is called Slow Me Down. He posted it on Instagram, and his life hasn't been the same since. Which is a strange thing to build a career on, because everything about a platform says go faster. Charles Weems is 23. He started leading worship at 14, and he still leads Sundays at a church of about 100 to 150 people while he travels the rest of the week. In this conversation he talks about the year and a half he spent setting up sound gear in a middle school with one other guy, and the complaining that went with it. He explains how to receive a prophetic word without wearing it like a crown you never take off. And he gives the most honest answer to comparison we've heard: someone can be on a stage in front of a million people and be out of God's will, while you lead ten people and are exactly where He asked you to be. If you're the one doing setlists, charts, and setup alone, Worship Online gives your team a way to show up already knowing their parts. Learn more at https://worshiponline.com/   Mentioned In This Episode Slow Me Down   If you like what you hear, please leave us a review! Also, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected]. We want to know how we can better serve you and your church through this podcast.  Don't forget to sign up for your FREE 2-week subscription to Worship Online at WorshipOnline.com!  The Worship Online Podcast is produced by Worship Online in Nashville, TN.