NOTE: I posted this several years ago, but it seems I have people contacting me regularly asking for this video, so today I am reintroducing this to the Renewing Worship audience.

The way our worship leaders look on stage can aid in or greatly distract from our times of worship. I have witnessed services where the team members were emotionless, non-moving statues on stage. Others have been distracting in their countenance. Some have done a great job engaging the congregation in meaningful worship.Guitarist-smChoir-Singer-small

I was in a church recently where the worship team was extremely distracting when they were not engaged in leading a song. It seemed they were always focussing on something other than what was happening in the worship service at the time. This communicates volumes to the people in the congregation.

It is very important for worship teams to pay attention to their stage presence, not out of a desire to be showy or draw attention to themselves, but rather a desire to be engaging and not distracting–to help people focus on God. It might be uncomfortable, at first, scrutinizing your movements and expressions; but after a while, the better behaviors will become second nature.

Gateway Worship has produced a great instructional video to help our worship teams pay attention to how they look. Granted, for many churches, the video represents a more “robust” worship environment, but the great nuggets of information in this video are worth the time for all musicians.