5 Ways to Improve Your Church's Worship Experience

Every weekend is an opportunity to help people connect with God. That’s a pretty incredible privilege and responsibility, if you think about it. 

You’ve been in worship services that moved you into a space where you could really focus on connecting with God. You've also been in worship services that were so distracting that it was difficult for you to connect with God.  

So, how do we craft and execute great worship services? Each of our churches has our own focuses and strategies. In this post, I’m going to share a few ideas that might help you improve your worship experience. 

5 Ways to Improve Your Worship Experience

#1 Transitions

Some of the most distracting moments in a worship service are often the transitions. When the space between two engaging elements is not attended to, energy is lost, focus wanders and the opportunity to help people connect with God is hampered.  

One of the smartest things you can do is think through each transition. Make the service flow. A few examples: 

• Play background music that is connected to the theme of your service as people walk in and as they walk out.  
• Script the words that the worship leader uses between songs.
• Consider the flow between songs in terms of energy, topic and music.  
• Create or purchase a short transition video between worship and the sermon to lessen the awkwardness of a stage reset.  

If you want to improve your worship experience, give careful thought to the transitions. 

#2 Scripture Videos

Something that we have been focusing on in our worship experience is scripture, but not just reading it or putting it on a screen. We make simple videos. Here’s our basic template for these videos:  

• A nature scene
• Scripture overlayed over the nature scene 
• A good voice over for the scripture. 

We typically use one of these videos between songs in each worship set. We find them helpful in engaging people who aren’t big singers, and we also believe they propel our people into deeper worship.

If you want to add some creativity and engagement to your time of worship consider simple videos like these.  

#3 Stories of Life-Change

For years, we would attempt to tell stories of life-change (or testimonies) during our announcements time. Then, it dawned on us that these stories are perhaps the most moving element in our worship services. We are all deeply impacted by stories of how God is moving in the lives of others.  

So, we started using stories in the same way that we use scripture videos. We’d film a testimony video and place it between songs 2 and 3 in our worship set. Or, we’d do a baptism or two, or we’d show a recap video from a student ministry retreat.   

Worship is a response to who God is and what He has done. One strategic way that you can draw people into worship is to tell stories of how God is moving in and through your church during the worship time.

#4 Right-Size Your Space

I’m sure you’ve been to an event that didn’t fit the space in which it was held. In Michigan, we know all about this. It’s called Ford Field, where the Lions play. When the Lions are having a bad season (which happens often), there aren’t many people at the games and the space lacks energy.  

The same thing can happen in a church service. You might not think that this matters, or should matter, but I believe that it does. One of our jobs in crafting and executing worship experiences for our people is to eliminate distractions. If your worship space doesn’t fit the size of your current congregation, the space will hinder people’s ability to connect through worship. 

I’m guessing that your in-the-room attendance isn’t exactly what it was before COVID. If you’re like my church, you’re sitting at about 80% of where you were. If this is true, then consider right-sizing your space. Remove seats, put in bistro tables, pull in room dividers. There are all kinds of ways to make a space feel right for the size of the crowd.  

If you want to improve your worship experience, I would encourage you to right-size your worship space.  

#5 Invested Worship Volunteers

Something I learned from a leader who helped greatly improve the worship experience in our church over a number of years is that worship leaders model worship to the congregation. In other words, not only does the worship leader lead songs, they pull people into worship simply by the way they themselves are worshipping in the moment.  

I believe this is true of the primary worship leader, but also the worship volunteers. There is an opportunity to improve your worship experience through higher levels of training and expectations with your volunteers.

Requiring volunteers to memorize songs so that they aren’t staring at chord charts will help with this. Also, providing vision for how you want a volunteer to act while on stage is helpful as well.  

The idea here is that when the worship leaders– staff and volunteers–are fully engaged while leading worship, their leadership presence pulls the congregation into worship. This is another way to improve your worship experience.  

Wrap Up

These are five ways to improve worship in your church. I’m hopeful that one or two of these might generate a helpful conversation with your team. Again, what an incredible privilege it is to get to serve our congregations by crafting and executing quality worship experiences where your church members can connect with their Creator.