The most effective way to use this training is to consider Andy as part of your church worship team. Working alongside your pastors, worship leaders and musicians, he can help develop the worship within your church and serve your congregation, and as such the programme can be a part of your church investment.

To be the most beneficial, a suggested initial visit of one week (including a weekend) is recommended, with a shorter return visit within six months in order to assess progress and to advise on any necessary changes. This could be followed by a third visit nine months to a year later. By this time your worship team should be able to introduce a worship development programme of their own, moving ahead without further outside training, unless the leadership felt other training visits or consultation would be beneficial to the church.

Other options are available to help generate short-term change, but more immediate results or more long-lasting and substantial changes to the way your church worships.

For example, a package can be constructed in order to:

Work on a long-term basis with your church and your worship team.
This training programme would involve lots of hands-on learning experience in master class settings, enabling time to develop relationships and to address the real issues of your particular church. Such a programme encourages fast change at the beginning and then significant progress for the church as a whole.

Work occasionally with a group of churches or organisation.
This would provide more general solutions, within which a team would gain effective and quickly applicable changes. However, this would provide less technical details, involve less individual time (unless that was the only element selected) and the progress is less likely to be long-term.

Work once with a church or a group of churches. This would be more general in content. As practical training, it would rely more on the individuals drawing what they need from the talks and applying it themselves into an everyday experience. It would still be very constructive and a good place to start, but would be less of a guarantee for real and long-term progress.

The areas of training could include:

1-to-1 mentoring of principal worship leaders
Worship leading master classes
Music team master classes (applying worship leading skills and music production techniques to help the church engage in worship)
Practical advice on making a worship band sound better musically
Worship team training and development
Guidelines on song choice and style
Leading all-age and family worship
Worship on Alpha
Advice on using sound systems and technology
Making a worship recording
Developing contemporary worship in a new setting
Advice for ministers working with a contemporary worship team
Teaching for a whole church on worship (including leading worship)

The training could contain:

1-2-1 training and mentoring for the churches main worship leaders

Masterclass training for a small group of worship leaders (up to 6)

General teaching on the principles and practicalities of leading worship for worship leaders (10-50)

Masterclass practical training, production and advice for a worship group (up to 10)

General teaching on the principles and practicalities of leading worship for music teams (10-50+)

Teaching and demonstrations on worship for larger groups of interested people (50+)

Meeting with pastors and leaders to advise on how to best work with worship teams

Basic advice on sound equipment purchase and installation. Also basic advice for sound teams.

Worship leading for the church to demonstrate the model and to teach the congregation and music team

TEACHING CONTENT

The Principles of worship

Why we worship
Brief history of worship
Biblical models of worship
Biblical guidelines on worship from the OT and the NT
Worship in the church today
Introducing newer models of worship
Worship is more than singing
The lifestyle of worship
The worship team as lead worshippers
Staying right before God
Working under authority
Attributes of a worship leader
A servant’s attitude and a shepherd’s heart
Leading worship out of a love for Gods people

The Practicalities of worship

The journey of worship, musically and spiritually
Building confidence and trust
Considering the congregation
Choosing songs and musical styles
Creating a flow of worship
Linking songs
Giving direction through music rather than speaking
Working with other musicians
Making the worship team less noticeable during times of worship
Developing musical skills
Applying musical techniques in order to help the congregation
Building on strong foundations and embracing the ‘old’ with the ‘new’
Classical musicians working with contemporary musicians
Avoiding the common pitfalls
Simple and effective techniques to improve worship leading skills
Effective rehearsals and soundchecks

Extra teaching could be included on:

Effective family and all-age worship
Song writing
Making worship recordings
Training and identifying future worship leaders

The more specific, the more effective

The smaller the group being trained, the more specific to your setting the teaching can be made and as a result the more effective the outcome. But also, the more relatively expensive it will seem.

The larger the group being trained, the more economic the visit can become, but the less specifically helpful to your churches needs

These are not just encouraging talks on worship, this is an opportunity to allow your worship team to have the benefit of master classes that will address the specific needs of your own church situation.

As such, you may find it more helpful to calculate the budget by ‘investment per head’ of your team, rather than ‘how can we get enough other people involved to offset the costs’