One Step Ahead

What is One Step Ahead Worship?

Worshipping together is a vital part of our life as Christians. Yet those we entrust with leading worship are often thrown in at the deep end. Wouldn’t you love a tool to equip them for the job?

One Step Ahead is a training course for worship leaders – but it’s not a pressure cooker course producing shallow results.

The course has 11 sessions intended to be run monthly with the pastor and worship leaders in a church, allowing time to discuss experiment and evaluate between sessions. Each session includes leader’s notes, video teaching, and questions for discussion and quotes for reflection. There is also an impressive Resources section to inspire worship leaders with ideas as they prepare for worship leading.

Over a year you will traverse biblical perspectives on worship, worship throughout church history, practical discussion on how to lead, and how to apply all this in the 21st century.

The result will be well-grounded worship leaders with greater understanding, greater passion, and greater skill in their vital task – and worship leaders in tune with the leadership of their church.

This is a resource distilling an enormous range of material on worship leading and presenting it in a concise, provocative and interactive format.

What does it cover?

#1. Finding the way forward 
This is the Introductory session. We look at what people are saying about worship today, and specifically we ask how we can change the perception that worship is music only. We look at definitions of worship, the elements of worship, song leading vs worship leading and the call of the worship leader.

#2. How is worship different in the New Testament? (REDISCOVERING BIBLICAL WORSHIP PART ONE)
In this session we get stuck into the Bible to find out how people worshiped in biblical times, and to get a sense of the changes that happened in worship between Old and New Testaments.

#3. Understanding the Presence of God (REDISCOVERING BIBLICAL WORSHIP PART TWO)
This session builds on what we learnt last time. We analyze song lyrics and think through what we say when we worship lead, with particular thought to a New Testament understanding of the Presence of God.

#4. What’s in an Order of Service? (WORSHIP THROUGH HISTORY PART ONE)
This session provides a snapshot of how the first Christians worshiped, and the changing values as church services evolved over the last 2000 years. This is then applied practically as we consider our own church services, the values that come into play and the importance of being in sync with your pastor as you work with him/her in service planning.

#5. ‘Bits that get in the way when you just want to worship’ : Prayer, Offerings & Communion (WORSHIP THROUGH HISTORY PART TWO)
This title is a little tongue-in-cheek! Prayer, offerings and communion have always been essential parts of worship. We look at making our services a seamless whole, rather than a collection of isolated ‘bits’. We look at creative and interactive ways of doing prayer and communion, and how to make your offering time worshipful in an age of AP’s!

#6. Whatever happened to Confession? (WORSHIP THROUGH HISTORY PART THREE)
This session takes one particular worship form – confession – and traces it’s history and practices, before considering it’s place in worship in today’s feel-good culture. We look at what the Bible says about confession and how we can lead a confession time effectively in a modern church service.

#7. Should Christians Meditate? (WORSHIP THROUGH HISTORY PART FOUR)
Here we consider the place of Bible reading, silence and reflection time in our services, and how these can combine in Christian meditation. We look at how worship leaders can get people to use their imaginations to get them inside a biblical truth or passage and open them up to worship.

#8. Symbols are back! (MODERN COMMUNICATION PART ONE)
This session considers the Reformation backlash to things visual and symbolic and engages with Dan Kimball’s visual emphasis in ‘The Emerging Church’. We look at how to run a meditation on pictures and bible passages; what makes a worshipful powerpoint presentation; and how to make the interior of your church more worshipful.

#9. What did you say? (MODERN COMMUNICATION PART TWO)
This session is in two parts. Depending on what’s most helpful for your team you can major on part one or part two or spread the material over two nights. Part one is about the spoken side of worship in general. The second part steers us away from unnecessary in-house language and helps us connect with the guest or non-church visitor.

#10. New Songs : What’s your criteria? (MODERN COMMUNICATION PART THREE)
Here we consider the importance of having criteria for the lyrics of our songs. You’ll have a chance to work out your own criteria for new songs and for re-organising your song repertoire. It helps the worship leading team get on the same page regarding song choices.

#11. Worship in the future
This final session looks at what leading authors have said needs to happen in worship in the future, and what kind of corporate worship is most likely to connect. We look at how to plan a service according to what the people will do, how we spend our ‘time’ as Christians and reconnecting with our inspiring past.