Worship Leader Roundup (August 2026)
Once a month I pull together a short reading list of things worth your time. Articles, podcast episodes, tools, and the occasional piece I don't entirely agree with. No theme, no agenda. Just good content that showed up this month and deserves more than a scroll-past.
Here's what's on the list.
Your Worship Team Isn't Unprepared, They're UnclearWorshipIdeas
Victoria Eastergard makes a distinction worth pinning to your rehearsal room wall: practice happens alone, rehearsal happens together, and most volunteer chaos comes from treating rehearsal like practice time. If you've ever wanted to stop a full band because one person doesn't know their part, this gives you a better way to think about it, and a better way to talk to that person before Sunday. Read here.
The Church Doesn't Need Better Performers. It Needs Better Shepherds.Worship Leader Magazine
A straightforward case that the questions we ask about worship leaders (can they engage a room, can they hold a stage) are the wrong first questions. The right ones are slower: do they love the people they lead, are they trusted with influence, are they becoming who Christ made them to be. Worth sending to anyone on your team who's more comfortable managing a rehearsal than shepherding a person. Read here.
Three Planning Center Features Worth Turning OnPlanning Center
If you run your ministry through Planning Center, three recent additions are worth a look. Gap alerts will flag an open volunteer slot before it becomes a Thursday-night scramble. Chat moves team coordination out of a separate group text and into the same place you're already scheduling from. And CarPlay and Android Auto support means your team can run rehearsal playlists hands-free from the car, which is about as low-friction as prep gets. None of these will change your ministry. All three will save you a little friction every week, and friction is usually what's actually costing you.
If the tension between who you are on stage and who you are at home has been sitting with you, I wrote about that more directly this month in Off the Stage Has to Match the Stage