Pastor’s Blog

This past weekend was a monumental one for Daystar. We started our new worship schedule. The current worship schedule for the weekend is as follows:

Saturday @ 6 pm
Sunday @ 8 am; 9:30 am; 11:15 am
Sunday @ 6 pm (Believers’ Service)

I have to be honest; I did wonder if anyone was going to show up at 8:00. Turns out there were over 150 people at the 8:00. In fact the combined worship service attendance was 2,083!!!

Just think about it, just a few months ago many were asking us why we were going to continue to have all 3 worship services since the new auditorium seats 1,000. Now, we are adding another worship service and still packing them in with Easter on the way! God is so awesome!!!

Thanks for being a part of Daystar.

Nightline on ABC hosted an incredible debate about the existence of Satan. Among the topics discussed were: heaven and hell, God and Satan, good and evil, forgiveness, love, “higher consciousness”, evolution, the Big Bang Theory and much more. The players were Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Annie Lobert, founder of the Christian ministry “Hookers for Jesus”, Deepak Chopra, scientist, and Carlton Pearson, former Pentecostal Bishop (not sure what he is now…except weird).

I’ll reserve my opinions about the debate until you get a chance to watch the face-off. Click HERE to watch it. Let me know what you think.

From Ben Murray, Worship Pastor at Daystar.

How’s the worship leader community out there? Hope you’re doing just dandy. There’s always room to grow. Sometimes you just have to initiate the growth yourself and I guess that’s what I’m trying to do with this note. I’m interested in what you are doing as a worship leader and how you administrate your worship ministry. What is working for you? What have you done that flopped? Hopefully we can all learn something from this. I’ll go first and give you the low down on what it’s like at Daystar.

I’ve been at Daystar for 5 years. In those 5 years we’ve experienced rapid growth. Right now we have a Saturday night service @ 6 p.m., Sunday morning at 9 a.m. and 11a.m., and Sunday night @ 6 p.m. With that type of worship schedule I try to only be in the office 3 to 4 days max.

We currently have three worship teams – Team 1, Team 2, and Team 3 (all volunteers). Each team plays on a specific weekend. Team 1 always plays on the first weekend of each month, team 2 for the second weekend, and team 3 for the third…..that’s as simple as it gets. The teams rotate the fourth and fifth weekends. The teams have their own separate rehearsals during the week. Team 1 practices on Wednesday nights after church (I lead the rehearsals for this team). Team 2 practices on Tuesday nights @ 7. Team 3 practices on Monday nights @ 7. Teams two and three have designated band leaders. I only go to those rehearsals on the week before they play. There is usually a short devotion at these rehearsals led by one of the team members. Right now we’re using the book “Crazy Love” by Francis Chan as a devotional tool. We spend our week night rehearsals learning new songs and we always rehearse our set list with the team who is playing on the upcoming weekend. When a team leads worship for the weekend they take the following week night rehearsal off.

We also have a pre service rehearsal on Saturday night @ 5, Sunday morning @ 8, and Sunday night @ 4:30. These rehearsals are more for polishing up and sound checking.

This past Christmas I went a little crazy and bought ipod shuffles for all three worship teams. I pre loaded about thirty songs that I would like to learn. I try to let the teams know a head of time which song we’ll be working on so they can be listening to it. We learn most of the new songs by listening and mimicking. Occasionally I’ll have specific parts printed out. I rely on some of our stronger musicians to help teach the correct parts. We use the Nashville Number System for all of our charts. I use songselect.com, praisecharts.com, planningcenteronline.com, and worshipspice.com as some of my resources.

We use a metronome for every song that we do. We also use click tracks and drum loops for certain songs. I get the click tracks from praisecharts.com.

We use aviom as our personal hearing device. We have a separate send for singers and musicians. We don’t have any floor wedges on our stage. We do have fold backs, but they are unused most of the time. The musicians use the Shure SCL-5 in ears and the singers use the Shure SCL-4. All three teams paid for their own in ears. The church bought the in ears in bulk and we set each person up on a payment plan. This saved the church some money, but it also fostered a sense of responsibility (if you know what I mean).

The choir rehearses on Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. They perform on the 1st and 3rd Sunday mornings and Sunday nights. I have delegated choir rehearsals to a lady on one of our teams and she does a great job.

When we built our new building we budgeted enough for a digital mixer. We ended up with the Yamaha M7CL. It is one of the cheapest digital mixers on the market, but a very nice board. The digital board has been great for us because we can save settings and scenes for each band that plays (example: when team two plays this Sunday we’ll just recall the settings for team 2…..that’s it. All the gain structure, routing, EQ’s…..everything is set for team 2). That was a great move for us and it has taken away many head aches for me. FYI the cost of a 48 channel M7 is about $16,900 (if you have connections).

Our worship leadership structure includes 5 people. Each person has a specific gifting. There is a person with the prophetic gift, a person with the evangelistic gift, a person with the gift of teaching, a person with the gift of encouragement, and my self as the administrator. Let me try to explain how our model works. Barry is our person over recruiting (of outreach/evangelism). His sole responsibility is to recruit people for the worship ministry via talent searches, auditions, one on one conversation…etc. Joey is our teacher. Some of his goals include an orientation class for new comers and teaching worship development classes. Karen is our encourager. She takes responsibility for keeping in touch with people in the worship ministry by sending birthday cards and calling teams to chat and pray along with some other duties (this is much easier to do in a smaller setting). Kim is our prayer person. She is responsible for helping keep a culture of prayer and worship to God in our ministry. Kim does initiatives like our prayer calendar where everyone was reading the same Bible text and praying for the same thing each day for the month of January. Finally, I am the administrator. My goal is to make sure all of this gets done without doing it myself.

Right now we only have the one main leadership team. This year we want establish the same concept among the teams and the choir. There’s a lot more to this leadership model than I can write in a note. For more info email me at benmurray@daystarchurch.tv

Thanks for reading. I look forward to you comments. Feel free to offer suggestions on things you would do differently and let everyone else know what your doing to make things work at your church.

Here are some questions to get you thinking. What is your structure like? When do you rehearse? How does your team learn music (listening, chord charts, rhythm charts)? How many teams do you have? How many services per week? Do you have an administrative assistant or an associate worship leader? What are your office hours like? What are some of your favorite resources?

I love teaching more than maybe any pastor I know. But the truth is, there are some things that will never happen by teaching alone. It ONLY happens at the altar in the presence of God. Because our worship experiences are so full, we seldom have the space for “altar calls” on Sunday mornings, but we always have them in our “believers’ service” on Sunday night (space issues not withstanding) and AMAZING things happen in the altar.

God said that true worshipers will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. Most churches are either a “Spirit” church or a “Truth” church. That is, they either focus only on the spiritual aspects of serving God or focus only on the teaching aspect of following God. Here at Daystar we try to have a balance. We know that the truth of God’s word sets people free, so we have lots of teaching. But we also realize that a personal connection with the power of the Holy Spirit is TRANSFORMATIONAL!

What awesome things have you seen happen at the altar in your life?

Ken and Karissa Moody

On February 13th, Daystar had its Second Annual Father/Daughter Dance. It was a blast. Fathers and daughters of all ages participated. There was great food, fun games and music…and a HUGE dance floor! We danced so many dances, most of the fathers needed oxygen. There was even a horse race around the dance floor. Guess who won?

The most precious thing to see what fathers and daughters bonding and enjoying the love that God intended between a dad and a kid. From young girls who spent their first “date night” with dad, to older girls renewing their relationship with their father, it was a beautiful occasion. God was definitely moving in families on this special night.

If you were there, email me your picture and I’ll post it along with these!

Roger and Miranda Hamm

Olivia, Abigail and Jerry Lawson

Janah, Misti and Gary Daniel

Miranda and Roger Hamm

My Girls

Girls Having Fun

Today my girls got a rare pleasure. They were able to make a snow man. Well, actually, they didn’t work together so they ended up making 2 half snowmen. But they had a good time.

Snow only comes to Cullman about once every 2 years. They had a great time. Neither of them hit me with a snowball, but I found a snowball in the freezer. I’ll be watching my back over the next few days. Hope you had fun in the snow!

Snow at the Lawsons