Keeping worship music fresh is a challenging and rewarding facet of a worship leader’s job. It takes time, thought, prayer, and preparation and research to keep the music current, relevant, and most importantly, focused on God. There are many resources available on the internet to help. Here are a few of the best and most widely used church worship resources.
Song DISCovery and Worship Leader Magazine. Worship Leader Magazine (www.worshipleadermagazine.com) is a print and digital media magazine which shares thoughts on worship, planning, music ideas, and up and coming worship artists about eight times a year. The cost is fairly minimal at around $25 a year, but for an added fee, you will receive a CD with each magazine. The CD contains anywhere from twelve to fifteen great new worship songs. It also includes chord charts, lyrics, power point presentations and Scripture references to help you incorporate the new music into your worship service. Chances are, you won’t be able to use every song on the CD, but you should be able to use enough of the resources to make it worthwhile. Even without purchasing a subscription, you can read some articles and find some great information on the website, www.worshipleadermagazine.com.
Praisecharts.com is a fabulous resource for any church with a worship team. Within just a few clicks, you can purchase, download, and print enough scores to completely fill up your worship service. You can find chord charts, lead sheets, orchestrations, and audio files for thousands of current worship songs. There are some free resources, as well as blogs, videos, and the ability to prepay at a discount. You can even choose to pay with PayPal for these great, reasonably priced resources. Just visit www.praisecharts.com for more information or find them on facebook and twitter.
Worshiptogether.com is a website geared toward worship leaders. It has songs to stream, profiles of well known worship leaders, digital and physical music resources to purchase, blogs, events, and best of all, a search engine for worship songs. Just answer a few questions about keys, subject matter, genre, and writers, and Worship Together will suggest songs and where to purchase the resources for those songs. Join the community for free and receive free mp3’s and lead sheets for your team.
CCLI.com is the place to go for a complete list of the top used worship songs. CCLI is extremely important to worship services because they manage the royalties and licensing that goes along with popular worship songs of today. Before you make a single photocopy of music, make sure you consult CCLI to find out if it is legal. They also provide Song Select, a great tool to help you plan and track your use of worship music. Look for articles on worship and Bible studies, too.
Experiencingworship.com offers articles on worship, devotions, message boards, and free lead sheets to download. The site also has many links to worship resources and an inexpensive study on worship. available for purchase.
Hillsongmusic.com is a vast resource for worship songs. You can purchase music, DVD’s, sheet music, downloadable music, and even training videos. For a number of years, Hillsong has been on the cutting edge of worship music all over the world. Their music is singable, moving, and true to God’s Word. Look for Darlene Zschech’s book, Extravagant Worship to inspire you in your personal and corporate worship.
