Pastors: Help Your Musicians Plan Orderly Worship

One great weakness in church worship today is that pastors have entirely given up the planning of services to musicians. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the musicians worked with the pastors, and there is certainly benefit to the input of musicians regarding the hymns and other music within a service. But without pastoral direction and leadership in this area, worship services often have little observable order, especially when the music chosen has no direct relationship to other elements in the service – especially the sermon.

Some pastors, however, are actively involved in planning the worship services, or at least help their musicians plan the music to fit with the message.

One such pastor is Steve Thomas. Pastor Thomas pastors Huron Baptist Church in Flat Rock, MI. I offer here the documents he gave his musicians well before he began a preaching series through the book of James. This kind of thing certainly takes work and planning. But putting the time into these kinds of resources will help your worship be more unified and orderly.

Thomas – memo re James series (Word doc)
Thomas – James exegetical outline
Thomas – James homiletical summary
Thomas – James sermon schedule

© 2008, Scott Aniol. All rights reserved.

Scott Aniol

Scott Aniol holds a bachelor's degree in church music from Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC), a master's degree in musicology from Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL), and has studied theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN) and Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. He was ordained to to the gospel ministry by First Baptist Church (Rockford, IL) in April of 2004. As the executive director of Religious Affections Ministries, Scott speaks on the subjects of music and worship at various churches and conferences. His most recent speaking engagements include the Preserving the Truth Conference, Central Seminary’s Foundations Conference, International Baptist College, and Bob Jones Seminary. Click here to read and/or listen to important talks from Scott Aniol. Curriculum vitae

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4. Endorsement for "Worship in Song" by Ligon Duncan
5. Endorsement from Greg Linscott