Common Challenges Worship Leaders Face Today

Proclaim Church Presentation Software is running a contest in September 2013 that asked worship leaders this question:

What are some of the biggest challenge you face as a worship leader today?

I thought the answers were interesting so I compiled a list outlining most of them.

Biggest challenge as a worship leader? It’s not the last-minute changes or the technical glitches; it’s not the musicians who don’t practice and learn their songs or worship sets that get interfered with. It is creating space in your life to meet with God in the secret place. This is the challenge and the secret to leading worship. -Davin Guest
Biggest challenges? Last minute changes, band deciding to change verses or repeat things mid-song, poor lighting for the projection screen.. -Chris Callanan
My biggest challenge is coordinating my team with the music they need to learn while working on a volunteer basis. -Earl Swigert
Getting the congregation to a place of worship that isn’t just lip service, but where they actually realize that their worship is an incense rising to God. -Denise Frechette Friesen
Being a minister in a small church in a small town, time management is my biggest challenge. There are plenty of times when worship planning and preparation takes a back seat to serving the people, and the Sunday service suffers because of it. Being able to work on the service with Proclaim from wherever I am does help a lot! -Greg Simpson
Keeping the whole worship team on the same page with the greater team responsible for the service. How to convey changes when the program already started. -Dirk Human
Accurately presenting the emotion and mood of a song/text visually as it relates to faith without being overly flashy and just “cool”. -Pat Laeger
Keeping all of the tech in order, so that it goes almost unnoticed, allowing for uninterrupted and wholesome worship. -Michael Bucceroni
Biggest challenge: to know when to let the words of the song stand for themselves rather than using the music to emotionally stimulate. -Amanda Van Halteren
Creating an atmosphere of engaging worship. -Stefan Gilbert
Making the presentations–such as announcements interesting so people will look at them and pay attention to them. -Sharon Vollmer
Biggest challenge is instilling the same passion for visual arts as what is required. -Nic Bancroft
Leading worship through graphics, my biggest challenge is creating designs that are faithful to the message in Scripture without any stumbling blocks of style that may distract people from that message. -Ryan D. Prickett
My biggest challenge would be making sure the tech (sound&visual) run smoothly while worship leading. -Joel Yeoh
My BIGGEST Challenge as a Tech guy as far as worship goes is usually just trying go get the slides perfect enough -Paul Hoe
One of the biggest challenges I face as a worship leader is communicating and implementing service items in an organized and timely manner. -Jake Miller
Finding music the congregation knows that matches with where we are in the church liturgical calendar/readings for the Revised Common Lectionary. -Michael Scarlett
Biggest challenge? Tech. Either lack of resources or keeping the tech from being a distraction in the service. -Mike Hill
Biggest Challenge, having enough highly committed volunteers. -Harold Macdougall
Biggest challenge is finding the right images to help promote the theme and expository realm of the message. -Mark Mahoney
Staying continually focused on Christ and not letting the small snags that come along distract me from the bigger picture. -Christi Milligan
Honing or craft and taking our creativity, our leadership, and relationship with God to the next level. -Timothy Hageland
The biggest challenge we have faced is having the healthy balance between spirituality and excellence in professionalism. Too much of both could drain a team, but a healthy balance (which only comes from the Holy Spirit) will lead your team into new levels (all around) with Christ. -Fernanda Gomes de Oliveira
Biggest challenges – keeping it fresh, unique, inspiring every week -Roger Alan Vest
Getting the focus off the experience and on the truths of Christ. The experience is great and necessarily follows the great truths of Christ. But keeping people focused on Christ and not the experience of worship is the biggest challenge. -Charlie Nason
Biggest challenge as a youth/creative pastor is coordinating volunteer involvement for our creative arts ministry (i.e. in service media, photography, videography, web design, sound, etc.). -Erik Coon
Biggest challenge? Keeping an attitude of worship and not performance. We all want to be great singers, great musicians, and great leaders… however, we can have all that and not be worshipping. God wants our hearts! -Josh Edwards