31 Summer Worship Ideas to Level-Up Your Ministry (Part 3)

If you missed Part 1 or Part 2:

Here’s the recap:

• Leading a worship ministry in the summer is like driving a car with three wheels or trying to win a race in high heels. It’s tough because you’re dealing with three big challenges:
  • First, your team is busy with summer sports, vacations, family reunions, and just wanting to relax after a hectic school year. 
  • Second, your congregation is just as busy and often disappears for most of the summer.
  • Third, you and your family want a break too. Plus, you’re planning for the fall kickoff and Christmas, which adds more stress.
• To help you out, we’ve written a three-part article series with thirty-one summer worship ideas to level up your ministry. These ideas are designed to help you embrace summer limitations, build your ministry, and get some much-needed rest. You don’t need to do all thirty-one—just pick six or seven that work for you.
• Each idea is tagged with one or more of these categories: Rest & Restoration, Ministry Growth, Future Prep, and Embracing Summer Limitations. This way, you can stay strong through the summer without burning out.
• If You Missed Part 1, click Here
• If You Missed Part 2, click Here

Here’s 21-31:

21. Schedule a planning week (or two).

[Future Prep]

Schedule at least one workweek away from the grind of the office and Sunday responsibilities.

Assure your lead pastor or board that it’s not a vacation. It’s to help you lead your worship ministry at a higher level over this next year.

Here are some tips and suggestions:

• If accountability is an issue, list out your objectives and goals for this planning week. That will assure your leadership that you’re working. But more importantly, it will motivate you to get things done.
• If possible, use budget money to book an extended stay hotel or cabin to maximize the time away.
• If possible, schedule this event leading into a non-vacation sabbath week. Hopefully, your church leadership understands the need for extended rest for their ministry staff.
• And if you can’t get away to that extent, find an offsite area you can work uninterrupted each day of your planning week.

Realistically, it might be impossible to book an extended time away this summer. So schedule a few scattered days when you can.

And as soon as possible, firm up a planning week on the calendar for next summer.

Your future self will thank you.

22. Develop a new leadership habit or skill.

[Ministry Growth / Future Prep]

The possibilities here are endless. Maybe it’s…

• Deepening your personal productivity.
  • [Check out Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt]
• Goal setting.
  • [Check out Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt]
• Being a better communicator.
  • [Consider Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley]
• Team member development.
  • [Must have books: The Ideal Team Player and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team both by Patrick Lencioni]

Two tips:
First, only try to tackle one skill or habit at a time. If you attempt to engage in more than one area, you won’t excel at any of them.

Second, if you’re not sure what skill or habit you should invest in, ask your team and/or your lead pastor. They all know at least one area you need to grow. :- )

23. Spend a full or half-day with your senior pastor.

[Ministry Growth]

Schedule something you both enjoy (or something he/she enjoys, and you can tolerate).

It might be a day of golf, a putt-putt outing, a day of fishing, or catching a minor league ballgame.

Have at least one meal together that day, too.

And be prepared. Write some questions to get to know him or her better, both personally and what he/she is seeing for the church’s future.

A church can only benefit from a deeper relationship between its senior pastor and worship leader.

That’s part 3 of this series. Stay tuned for next month’s article where we’ll go through part 3 of Summer Worship Ideas to Level-Up Your Ministry.

24. Pilot a new policy or ministry system change.

[Ministry Growth / Future Prep / Embracing Summer Limitations]

Implement a change in a ministry operation with a trial run or pilot program. Maybe it’s an overhaul to your scheduling process. Or it’s a change to your rehearsal you want to make.

Most people are already used to being out of a routine in the summer, so capitalize on this. And if people hear “trial” or “pilot,” they’ll be more willing to go along with changes.

Also, seek feedback along the way. Remember, when it comes to embracing change, people will buy-in if they have a chance to weigh-in.

And likely, by September or October, you can adopt the new changes as permanent with little or no drama.

25. Develop more worship designers.

[Ministry Growth / Future Prep]

If you’re a solo worship designer—that is, you do all the service and set planning/design, break free from that leadership and ministry barrier this summer.

When you’re the only one capable (or allowed) to plan worship sets, you are creating a cap for ministry expansion. That is, you’re the lid holding back future growth of both the ministry and potential leaders.

So here’s a quick process that might work for you:

1. In June, invite your leaders and/or potential leaders to a training event where you teach and demo on how you planned this month’s songs and sets. Then, work together to plan July songs.

(You also may want to open up this event to any team members. You never know who might have a knack for creating a great worship set.)

2. Gather again in July to plan for August. This time, let them design a mock worship set on their own, and then you can review and critique them.

This will show you who has natural gifts for planning an engaging journey of worship. And who doesn’t.

Note: not every person who’s a good upfront worship leader is a good worship designer. And some of your best worship planners might not ever be upfront worship leaders.

3. Continue this development process into the fall and beyond, and you’ll have a team of trained worship designers.

To help, here are two resources:

1) SongCycle book – To effectively have multiple worship designers, you have to have a standard song list, a clear plan for rotating those songs, and a strict process for introducing new songs.

You’re asking for musical and stylistic mayhem if you let your worship leaders and designers choose any song from any source.

The SongCycle book will give you those standards and boundaries you need. Here’s the FREE digital workbook version.

2) Worship Flow book – Worship Flow will show you how to move seamlessly from between worship moments using scripture, silence, prayer, music and other elements. You’ll also get tips for intentional verbal transitions that keep the focus where it needs to be—on worshiping God.

These two resources will help your team understand how to plan an engaging worship service from a biblical model. It will also help them avoid the rookie mistakes of poorly planned transitions and over-stuffed services.

26. Experiment with different band configurations.

[Embracing Summer Limitations]

If your team is like most, their availability is sketchy over the summer. This is a great time to embrace different sizes and configurations of bands.

Consider scheduling a two-person acoustic duo (two acoustics or a piano and acoustic). Make it a trio by adding a percussionist to play cajon and shaker.

If you run a big vocal team, this is a great time to experiment with one leader and one back up. You might find that fewer voices in the mix actually makes it easier for the church to sing. It definitely makes it easier on your audio engineer.

If you run a larger band with multiple guitarists or keyboardists, strip down to a power trio (bass, drums, guitar) or four-piece combo. If everyone plays their part, you’ll still have great sound. 

Scheduling small bands out of necessity this summer might lead you to discover some musical combinations that really resonate with your church.

27. Invest, watch, and implement one training resource this summer.

[Ministry Growth / Future Prep]

Set a singular ministry growth goal to focus on over the summer:

• Overhaul a dysfunctional area of your ministry.
• Or bring structure and clear processes to an undeveloped ministry system.
• Or you can even take a good area of your ministry and level it up to great.

28. Start planning for next year’s special projects.

[Future Prep]

What special project do you want to do this year? Maybe it’s…

• Taking your leaders to a big conference.
• Or hosting your own training.
• Revamping your platform or lighting.
• Creating a series of intimate worship nights.
• Upgrading your audition & onboarding process.
• Developing an internship program.

Anything that’s not part of your weekly or monthly routine could fall into this.

But here’s the problem. Most leaders wait until they want to start the project to start the project. Huh?!

You have to put the work in up front for special projects that involve multiple people, budget approval, changes to existing policies or systems, or that require extensive labor, equipment, and materials.

So if you want to accomplish a big project in the first part of January, summer is the perfect time to start planning that project.

• Work backward to determine start dates and deadlines for stages of the project.
• Decide who you need on board and start getting buy-in now.
• Determine what promotion or communication needs to happen for this project to be successful.

Do this foundation-building now, and your vision for the project has a 1000% better chance of becoming a reality.

But, again, most leaders just wait till they want to start and later find out that the project is too big, too expensive, or too time-consuming. What happens? It gets pushed off for another year.

Plan now.

29. Update your team policy guide or handbook.

[Ministry Growth / Future Prep / Embracing Summer Limitations]

I know, that sounds almost as much fun as watching trees grow.

But the slower pace of summer is a great time to tackle an important, but non-urgent project like creating or updating your team policies.

This summer project will do three things:

1. It will free you up to tackle a passion project in the fall or winter.
2. It will give your team clear expectations for serving in the ministry. If you don’t have clear expectations, you can’t hold people accountable for anything.
3. It will help you qualify new team members. If they understand the policies and expectations BEFORE they join, they will either self-select out or onboard with a clear understanding of their role.

30. Work one hour less every day (ethically).

[Embracing Summer Limitations / Rest/Restoration]

Find a way to get home earlier in the summer to spend time with your family and enjoy the summer months more.

But do it ethically.

Your church might be a “butt-in-seat” culture. That is, they equate “time in the office” with productivity and pay.

Now, even many of those churches practice relaxed office expectations in the summer. But if yours doesn’t, seek permission to come in earlier, or do some of your “hours” outside the office.

If you’re in a results-oriented situation, fantastic! For you, as long as Sunday is planned and the quality is on par, it doesn’t matter how many hours you work. So…

• bust out your work,
• take a shorter lunch,
• schedule fewer meetings,
• …and do whatever it takes to leave early.

 

And that leads us to number 31:

31. Start practicing Parkinson’s law.

[Ministry Growth / Embracing Summer Limitations]

What is Parkinson’s law? Applied to work and time management, it’s this:

Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

Here’s a great example. Ever gone online “for a few minutes” to search for new songs?

Two hours later, you’ve listened to forty-eight songs and only have a list of three that you think could work.

There was no hard stop to that black hole project.

Another example is your weekly worship planning. It could take all afternoon if you let it. But if you set a timer for 75 minutes (and set your phone and computer to “do not disturb”), you could likely plan all your songs, segues, and scriptures and have them into your planning app before the timer goes off.

Another way to leverage Parkinson’s law is to do your non-urgent, but important work early in your week.

Why? Because your urgent work—the work for this Sunday—always finds a way to get done.

When you do a non-urgent project or task early in the week, you will still deliver as high a quality for Sunday with 75% of your week as you did with 95% of your week.

That’s Parkinson’s law. Work expands to fill the time you give it.

So, to make the most of summer, like

• accomplishing special projects…
• planning for the future…
• creating more space for family and rest…
• overhauling a ministry system…
• getting work done so you have extended time away…

…practice Parkinson’s law by doing the non-urgent stuff first and setting time limits on all your tasks and projects.

Taking Action on These 31 Ideas

This 3-Part Series has been a beast. And there is no universe in which you could, would, or should tackle all of these ideas in one summer.

The aim of this series is for you to pick a few options that resonate with you and take action.

So to do that, we’ve created a downloadable Take Action Package that you can get free access to.

It includes…

• a one-page checklist of all 31 Ideas.
• an easy-to-reference PDF ebook version of this article.
• a Take Action Workbook to help you determine which ideas to implement and how to accomplish them.
• printable Summer Planning Calendar worksheets.

Yes, all free. Click HERE to download

 

What?! Start Thinking Next Summer?!

Absolutely. In the planning guide are some ideas to look ahead to the following summer. Depending on when you find this resource, it might be too late to try some of these ideas. But you can start to prepare to try them next summer.

We’re excited for you to make the most of your summer—in personal and ministry growth, and through finding rest and restoration.

Make sure you download the Take Action Package today before you forget. And shoot us a message letting us know what you’re going to try this summer. We’d love to hear from you.

Here’s to you making it a fantastic summer!

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This article was originally published in Worship Musician Magazine, August 2024 issue and has been modified from the original.