Worship Leaders

Our vision is to have 1-2 hour worship sets (full-band preferred but individual sets welcome). Two hour sets can seem challenging (a one hour set can seem challenging if you are only used to playing 15 minute worship sets). Our desire is that your team would learn to flow into creative, spontaneous and prophetic worship. Matthew Lilley offers a series of video teachings called “Spirit Led Worship” on YouTube (with free PDF notes available here) on this subject. We highly encourage you and your team to utilize this teaching and begin to flow beyond just playing songs.

Vertical: Your primary role is to worship by example.  Set your eyes on Jesus and GO!

Horizontal:  Additionally, you are helping to create an atmosphere for people to encounter God through worship, prayer and creative arts. Worship God with love and care for all who attend. Be a “shepherd” and invite others along with you as you go after God’s heart.

Before coming to the Burn, do your best to express to your team the mission and heart of the Burn.

Briefing/Debriefing with the shift leader will be required of the worship team and prayer leader(s). This is a time to pray, review the guidelines and get all the leaders on the same page. Briefing will happen in the designated meeting room 30 minutes prior to your set and debriefing will happen immediately following your set.

Transitioning Worship Leaders/Teams
1. The goal is seamless flow of worship with the music never stopping.
2. Complete silence during transitions should never happen.
3. Ideally, the worship leader will be singing a song right up until the moment that their shift ends. As soon as they stop singing and playing, the next worship leader immediately begins to sing and play.
4. There should be a clock within eyesight of the stage to assist in transitioning right on the hour.
5. Extended musical interludes (someone just strumming guitar while all the band members switch out) is awkward and should be avoided. A worship leader needs to keep singing during the transition to keep the atmosphere of worship and hopefully keep the room engaged.
6. The teams at IHOPKC do this wonderfully, and you can watch them transition on the live web stream on their web site.
7. Typically it works well if the worship leader for the upcoming set plugs up their guitar (or gets on the keyboard) and is ready to go immediately when the previous worship leader stops singing.
8. This may mean that when you prepare your set list, you understand that your first and last song may need to be just the worship leader and one instrument. If you plan to start your set with the drummer clicking off a fast song where the whole band jumps in, you will inevitably end up sitting around waiting for someone to get setup before you can begin your worship set. This creates awkwardness that can be avoided by planning your set list accordingly.
9. As much as possible, the band members should be on stage, in place and completely set up before their shift begins. This means those with extended setup times (usually electric guitarists) may need to get on stage as much as 15 minutes early.
10. Band members should not “chat”, laugh or be distracting while getting on/off stage. Please talk as little and as quietly as possible to reinforce to others that the worship is continuing constantly.
11. Powerpoint/lyric display is not available. Please keep this in mind when choosing your song list.

*NOTE* Worship Leaders/Bands are welcome to bring a small merch table (CDs, books, stickers…etc) and/or donation container (“tip jar”) to help supplement their expenses. Please clearly mark on “tip jar” what leader/band and who to write checks out to. It is your responsibility to supervise the table (or mark clearly for honor system). Merch tables will be away from the main event area, when applicable, to avoid distractions.

*NOTE* For worship leaders/bands that are new to leading at the Burn, we ask that they take a night watch set (after 11pm) before we consider a request for a prime time set.