Leading Worship, Creating Flow with Paul Baloche

Here's the story behind this. Our church is merging two worship services, and we hired a worship consultant to help us with the transition. In his report afterward, he said that both services needed to work on this concept of "flow". This means that if you have a song set, there should not be several seconds of silence as you switch between songs, because that is awkward silence for everyone. He strongly recommended to watch this DVD "Leading Worship: Creating Flow, with Paul Baloche".

Paul Baloche is most known to me as the guy who wrote "Open the Eyes of My Heart" (link of Paul Baloche explaining the song).

The DVD starts out with Mr. Baloche sitting on a little pedestrian bridge over a flowing river. He expands on the idea that all of nature is flowing, so our worship should also flow like a river. It also shows Mr. Baloche at a Chinese buffet where he makes the claim that our worship should have a lot of variety. The rest of the DVD shows Paul with his guitar and a worship band in the background, teaching or playing examples.

He covers the choosing of songs. Songs should transition smoothly with keys. The key should transition upwards if possible. Instead of ending and having seconds of silence, there should be smooth transitions with the keyboard. At the end of the song, sometimes there is extended vamping where the worshiper can just stay "in the pocket", and not leave the moment. Some other ideas are to encourage your congregation to integrate of the types of praise in the bible - clapping, hand raising, for instance.

Of of the influential things to me was that to be a good worship leader, you should be a worshiper during the week, not only in song, but by immersing yourself in the Scriptures.

I was shocked that he picked songs like "As The Deer" and "Majesty" and "Victory Chant". I had rejected and left those songs long ago, because of their overuse in the 90s. But they sounded fine, and I respect his ability to make singing them a worshipful experience.