HiGHWAY

WORSHIP

Worship Leader Resources

We love to worship and we love serving our church community.

TEAM | TEAM RESOURCES | WORSHIP LEADER RESOURCES | MUSIC | ROTA

Resources for Highway worship leaders. Refer here for how to do stuff and our general processes.

Sundays & practice

When you are scheduled to be on as the team leader, you will need to use the ChurchSuite planning module to communicate with your team. We have an informative instructional video (below) that guides you through the process of making a plan for a Sunday service.

We aim to send out the plan to the team for the week by Tuesday evening latest if possible. The plan, if you select the correct date should automatically sync with the rota for the service so when you attempt to send it your team, and the media team should already be included.

To obtain access to CCLI Song Select for adding songs to our ChurchSuite library please speak to Hazel or Olu.

PLEASE NOTE - the way in which we add songs to our library has changed slightly since the 1st video on the planning module was made. To see how to make a song arrangement please see the second video (also below).

Our Friday practice, at the Stratford site from 7 - 9pm, is up to you as worship leader to choose to have, and then subsequently arrange with your team and a key holder from church. We mainly chose Friday because as a result of youth happening there is usually a key holder present. If you wish to arrange a different day and time to have your additional practice that is fine, but you will need to organise this with your team and a key holder once again.

Manor Park Sundays

Manor park Sundays are a lot simpler and more straightforward for us as worship leaders. A ChurchSuite plan still needs to be made and the songs should be sent to Richard (raddotenkorang@yahoo.com) who heads up the Manor Park media team. There is actually a Whatsapp group for media/av/worship so ask Olu and he will get you added to this. You can then share your ChurchSuite plan with your songs on the whatsapp group.

Since there is much less set up required as worship leaders at Manor park will usually self accompany, and be the only person on worship, you don't need to be at the Manor Park site until 10am. Please work with the team there to set up and packdown.

ChurchSuite Instructional Videos

Planning Module (legacy song files approach)

Planning Module Song Arrangements & Song Library IMPORTANT

Set Lists

Songs

It is up to you as worship leader to choose the songs but we do have some established guidance to help you decide, make things easier and partner with the vision of our leadership team. As it stands, you can choose:

Any Vineyard Worship song. We do this to encourage our singing of songs written within our movement especially those from the UK and Ireland. For ideas see this playlist
Any song that exists in our song library or that has definitely been sung in Highway before
Any song which we periodically add to our library via the vote that we have done previously to add new songs

Structure

There's a useful framework that helps structure our sets based on splitting them into 3 song type categories:

Gathering - these are lively upbeat songs that welcome our community into the worship set e.g House of the Lord, Real Thing, Lord You are good etc
Revelation - these are generally quite theological songs that declare powerful truth about our saviour Jesus e.g All Things Rise, King of Kings, Cornerstone etc
Response - more intimate and generally simple, less wordy songs that allow the church to sing of their love for Jesus - e.g Holy and Anointed One, Breathe, Draw Me Close To You, Agnes Dei etc

As a rough guide we normally would have 1 or 2 gathering songs, followed by 1 or 2 revelation songs, followed by 1 or 2 response, for a total of 5 songs in a worship set that should last approximately 25 mins. Please note, this is all guidance and the decisions are still up to you as worship leader. Harmony Smith, who formerly was the national overseer for Vineyard Worship UK & I breaks this approach down in the video below so give it a watch.

Also, Olu has created an app that catgorises many of our songs in the above way and allows you to create your own set! Check it out here and if you find it useful, let us know, so we can continue to keep it up to date with our newest songs that we are singing.

How to Build a Set - Harmony Smith

Song Keys

We understand that it is impossible to please everyone, but, we should try to pick keys for songs that are as accessible as possible for our congregation, who tend not to have the same larger singing range that we as worship leaders do. This will be different for men and women but a good test would be for you as worship leader to get someone, ideally a non singer if possible and of the opposite gender, to attempt to sing a small part of the song that you have chosen, in the key that you have chosen it in.

Also you should generally just pick songs that are in the middle of your range as that is more likely to be reachable for most, even if your voice you believe would send better at a higher range. Our priority is to bring as many into the Lords presence as possible so we should put our church members 1st in this regard.

Style

We do not have a strict style in terms of how we lead, however we have been urged by our pastoral leaders, to focus on leading our congregation in the songs we have chosen, and steer away from large amounts or talking/preaching within our worship sets. Once again, this is not a rule, or anyone attempting to quench what the Lord might be stirring up in you as you lead, but an encouragement to partner with our pastors, come under their authority, and focus on what we do best. For any more queries about this please ask Olu or speak to Simon Clinton.