Common Worship Leading Blunders (Part 2)

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Vicky Beeching recently wrote an excellent, thorough blog post on dealing with disasters in a worship set. If you’ve been a worship leader for any length of time, you know encountering a disaster is a “when” not an “if”. Vicky gave some great advice for a variety of situations and I suggest you read it.

Whereas my last post was on worship leading blunders you should avoid, I wanted to expand on Vicky’s post to include a few more ‘blunders’ that just seem to happen…and how to recover. Here goes:

When You Say “Crap” instead of “Clap”

This may never happen to you. I mean, it hasn’t happened to me once. It actually happened twice. Let’s face it: sometimes you just say the wrong word. The best thing to do is move on, but if it was so obvious to the rest of the room that people are laughing at you, go ahead and laugh with them. Embarrassing as it is, it is a healthy reminder that you’re not an indestructible rock star for everyone to stand in awe of. Be human. Lead with humility. Laugh. Now, go. Lift up a ‘crap’ of ‘plaise’. 🙂

When that song didn’t ‘take off’ as you expected

Not every song you do needs to be done over and over. Some songs resound with certain congregations, others don’t. In my experience, there are three types of songs: songs that are instant hits, songs that take 2-3 weeks before they’re hits, and songs that need to retire. It’s not that they’re bad songs, necessarily, it’s just that your congregation isn’t engaging with it. So test a song out a few times and if it’s just not “working”, let it rest in peace.

The off-beat tambourine lady is on the front row

Actually, I don’t really need to specify that she’s on the front row. She’s ALWAYS on the front row. That’s what off-beat tambourine lady’s do. It must be in their contract. The best thing you can do is try and ignore it (I know, it’s tough) but also show the congregation how you want them to clap (check out what Jon Acuff has to say about clapping). The off-beat tambourine lady has good intentions, but she will threaten to bring the entire room into a code red state of chaos. As the leader, keep referencing the proper clap. And pray the tambourine breaks.

What about you? What are some blunders you’ve encountered?