It is a pleasure to serve as this week’s guest blogger!  My name is Jason Hatley and I serve as the Pastor of Worship Arts @ The Journey, which my wife Karen and I helped start in 2002, and as founder of Worship Leader Insights.

As the Pastor of Worship Arts, I invest a tremendous amount of my time in creating the weekly worship experiences.

This is the part where I usually take all of the credit, but since I’m on Nelson’s blog I want to be 100% on the level with you.  I don’t accomplish this on my own.  In fact, if I am serious about our worship services being the very best that they can be every week, I can’t do this on my own.

It takes a team effort.  That team is founded on the Pastor / Worship Pastor relationship.

This week I will be talking about how the relationship between Pastor and Worship Pastor is a central issue in planning effective worship services, and I will teach you the four steps to maximizing this relationship, and your worship service planning.

So, let’s get the ball rolling on this topic by defining worship planning.

Worship Planning Defined: the process by which the Pastor and Worship Pastor work together to strategically design worship services that are relevant, creative, God-honoring and transformational.

There are three important distinctives in this definition.

1. …Pastor and Worship Pastor work together – Do you have a scheduled time for meeting with your pastor or worship pastor to plan, implement and evaluate your worship services?

2. …design worship services -  Do you have a process for worship planning that can empower you to work with your Pastor / Worship Pastor to plan 6 months to a year out?

3. …relevant, creative, God-honoring and transformational. – At The Journey these words describe our values for worship services.  What are your values for planning worship services?

By the end of this series, you will have some insights and systems that will help you maximize the Pastor / Worship Pastor relationship, and ultimately help you plan more effective worship services.

Jason Hatley

PS:  Check out the Free Webinar I am doing for Worship Leaders on Thursday, October 30.  Learn how to overcome the Top 3 challenges that every worship leader faces in this 2-hour event, visit   www.WorshipLeaderInsights.com/events.

While you are there, be sure to sign-up for my free monthly newsletter!