Five Leadership Pointers
"If you are welcoming people at the beginning of the service, it can be good to mention that you will soon be worshipping in song together. Then you can pray, or read a Scripture and go from there. It gives people, especially visitors, a heads-up that they will be singing soon."
What are some ways to effectively lead worship as a church piano player?
In this week's post, I’m going to give you 5 Leadership Pointers related to leading from the piano. These are really just suggestions (not commandments) on how you can lead effectively, from the piano, if this is something you are looking at doing.
Here goes then…
Give a clear welcome and ask people to stand/sit accordingly
It really does help people to know when it’s time to sing. Sometimes, a worship leader just starts a song, leaving everyone behind because it wasn't obvious that it was time for the congregation to participate.
If you are welcoming people at the beginning of the service, it can be good to mention that you will soon be worshipping in song together. Then you can pray, or read a Scripture and go from there. It gives people, especially visitors, a heads-up that they will be singing soon.
Also, depending on the practice of your church, it’s good to actually ask people to stand or sit. Otherwise, it often happens where the song begins, and some people stand, some stay seated waiting, and some sit down again, realising they stood up too early. One way to help with this is to ask people to stand as you begin the song. This is better than saying “let's stand and sing”, then taking a minute to get yourself organised to start playing; that’s when you get bobbing head syndrome!
Indicate if the song is new, but be subtle
If you are introducing a brand new song, it’s okay to let people know this. And if it's done subtly, you can also say you will play or sing the first verse so people know how it goes. Hopefully, though, you've been able to send the song out to the church the week before, so that this will just serve as a reminder that it's the new song you're singing. Of course, with all the songs, if people aren’t reading from a sheet or PowerPoint, but from hymnals or songbooks instead, make sure to say the title and page number clearly. That will allow people the time to turn there.
Don’t talk (or pray!) too much between songs
As mentioned in a previous post, your role as a church piano player is not to preach mini-sermons between songs, share testimony, or share your favourite biblical insights. Unless that’s what you’ve been asked to do, and in that case, make sure anything you say is meaningful, relevant, and not more than it needs to be.
Likewise, a similar principle applies to prayer. Of course, you want to incorporate this into the worship, but you can also do that too much. If you’re praying long prayers in between each song, it might be best to save time for the actual prayer time that will likely be another part of your church service.
When praying, pray in accordance with the last or next song
This is pretty obvious; it’s really an issue of relevance. What I mean by this is that if you incorporate prayer as you lead, it can be helpful to use that time to help people focus on the subject of the song you’re about to sing, or have just sung. Ideally, this will hopefully be in harmony with the sermon subject or service theme.
The final point then is...
Use Scripture readings that relate to the songs
This is very similar to the previous point, but it’s really helpful for bringing everything together and consolidating the same truths in people’s minds and hearts. I would certainly encourage you to see if the Scripture readings you use in the worship time relate to the overall theme or the content of the specific songs. As most songs will, and should be, based on passages of Scripture, this shouldn’t be too difficult to organise.
You could also consider quietly playing as you read Scripture. The style here will be more like incidental music, and you might find it helpful to learn a few vamping progressions by memory so you can focus on reading.
The key here is sticking to 1-2 chords, keeping your hands mostly in the same place. Otherwise, if you are concentrating too much on the reading, you might find yourself unintentionally improvising some odd-sounding tunes!
So there are five leadership pointers for those of you leading the congregational singing from the piano. To recap, I'll list them again...
Give a clear welcome and ask people to stand/sit accordingly
Indicate if the song is new, but be subtle
Don’t talk (or pray!) too much between songs
When praying, pray in accordance with the last or next song
Use Scripture readings that relate to the songs
I hope this has been helpful to those of you already leading worship from the piano or anyone considering it.
[Return to The Church Piano Player Website]
This blog post was written by pastor and pianist Kris Baines, from The Church Piano Player. Kris lives in the UK with his family, having recently moved back from New Zealand where he worked as a pastor for the past 26 years (also leading worship/worship teams). Kris has also spent over 35 years writing, recording, and performing music and is now bringing all that combined experience together to help equip church piano/keyboard players.
Check out the church piano player website for more information on online courses by Kris Baines.
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