Jason Hatley here . . . Pastor of Worship Arts at The Journey and Founder of www.WorshipLeaderInsights.com with a word of CAUTION! Uttering these five words is certain to bring disaster to your services and your team. It will create unnecessary stress, and without a doubt lead to confusion and missed opportunities.

It may even be bad for the environment and make puppies sick.

OK – so maybe those last two are a stretch (ha!), but I believe the other side-effects will definitely happen if you say these five dangerous words.

What are they? I hesitate to put them in writing, but for your sake, let me share them. They are:

“Let’s just wait until Sunday.”

Not what you were expecting? Well let me explain!

Have you ever said those words before? When asked how the song will end or what the lighting cue will be, you say, “Let’s just wait to Sunday. We’ll decide then.”

Or, when faced with the opportunity to talk to your Pastor about how he would like the teaching slides arranged, or what he will say to cue the worship team to begin that final song of commitment you say, “I’ll just ask him Sunday.”

I can tell you this with confidence . . . nothing good ever comes from putting off until Sunday what can be done today.

I’m sure you agree: Sunday has enough stress of it’s own.

Whether portable or in a permanent facility, you and I are leading systems on Sunday morning that have narrow margins, rely on many different people to arrive on time and do their job well, and we have limited time to accomplish it all. After all, that first service is going to begin on time whether we are ready or not!

Yet so many times we put things off until Sunday that could be easily handled today. A conversation with the sound engineer about a small change, a correction to the slides for a song, a change to the music . . . all could be handled with little effort during the week, but for some reason we wait until Sunday.

Sunday has an amazing compounding effect. Here’s what I mean . . .

A small issue that could be handled in 10 minutes on Thursday, under the pressure of Sunday, becomes a much more time-intensive or even stressful task.

A small change to the music communicated to your band before Sunday is no big deal. But under the pressure and time constraints of Sunday it takes twice as long to make the change and all of a sudden your team (no matter how great your musicians are) now have a little hesitancy as to exactly what to do in the set.

And why is that?

Like I said . . . Sunday has enough stress of it’s own. It doesn’t need us to add more unnecessary stress to it!

So – what can you do to avoid these tense moments on Sunday. Here are 3 quick things:

#1 – Create a check-list for Sunday. Write down EVERYTHING you need to say, do, or communicate for Sunday and make sure you do it each week.

#2 – Create systems to meet or have conversations with key people before Sunday. Take care of small things while they are still small. We call this a Production Meeting at The Journey and I detail exactly what happens and how it works in our Planning Worship Services for Life Transformation resource.

#3 – Talk with your pastor about any specifics BEFORE Sunday. I don’t just discuss the Worship Order with our Lead Pastor, Nelson, once during the week. We carry on an on-going conversation throughout the week to make sure that there is nothing left to chance heading into Sunday.

The Truth is this: SUNDAY MATTERS!

We get far too few of them, so we have to make them all count.

This week, refuse to say, “Let’s just wait until Sunday.”

Instead say, “What can I do today to make Sunday the best it can be?”

Now those are ministry words to live by!

Your partner in ministry,

PS -A Worship Planning process that creates life-transforming moments, minimizes missed opportunities, helps you plan your services weeks (even months) in advance, and reduces your stress along the way is a game-changer for your church.

Without it you suffer under the tyranny of the week-to-week mentality . . . never quite sure how to relieve the stress and get ahead.

But with the right system, you can break free from the stress and start planning powerful, life-transforming worship services. That’s exactly what the Planning Worship Services for Life Transformation workshop will help you do!  Check it out here.