Church Media Blog

Here’s a quick Father’s Day history lesson: The first observance of Father’s Day didn’t occur until 1910 at the YMCA in Spokane, Washington. A woman named Sonora Dodd came up with the idea to honor her father who was a Civil War veteran, raising six children alone, after the death of his wife. Dodd proposed a day to honor fathers with religious services, special meals, small gifts and flowers. The first President to support Father’s Day was Woodrow Wilson, but it wasn’t until years later in 1972 that it was established as a permanent annual observance by presidential proclamation.

Although the first Father’s Day was over 100 years ago, many of us still struggle with finding ways to show fathers and father figures just how valued they are. Even churches experience difficulty in producing the perfect Father’s Day service to honor the dads in their congregation. Here you’ll find some helpful Father’s Day ideas for church, including sermon ideas, video tips, and other ways to honor dads.

Preach an Encouraging Message for Dads

A dad may wear many hats, but he’ll first and foremost be a father. Use the holiday to remind fathers of their crucial roles in creating and sustaining a spiritually healthy environment for their children. There are plenty of Bible passages that highlight the place of fathers in guiding their families to become developing believers. You can find Father’s Day sermon ideas on SermonSearch.com.

Honor All Kinds of Dads

Dads come from different backgrounds and are at different stages of life, and you may very well have one of each in your place of worship on Father’s Day. Keep that in mind as you make your plans.

Use a Dad-and Christ-Honoring Video

In addition to encouraging Dads through your message, you may also want to consider using a Father’s Day themed video as a part of your service. WorshipHouse Media has hundreds of videos to choose from – whether you’re looking for something funny, inspirational, or anything in between.

Do or Give Something Tangible

Have “Dad snacks” to hand out at the end of the service like cookies, root beer or chocolate. Having kids hand them out at the end of a service is an added bonus. If your church is unable to do something like this, you could also include a craft or project into the Kids’ Ministry lesson, something that the kids could give to their Fathers on the way home from church – a card, a handmade art project, a coupon book for services around the house, etc.

ProPresenter tutorials are a hot item. And it makes sense. ProPresenter is a powerful tool with a ton of options to help with our services. But as we all know, ProPresenter runs deep. Real deep! So tutorials are a great way to make sure we are getting the most out of this tool. If you click here, you will find 29 tutorials for ProPresenter 6. These are incredible resources designed to help you navigate ProPresenter in such a way that you master not only the basics of the software, but other, more in-depth components as well. For the past month, thousands of users have been checking out these tutorials. Here are the top 5:

Importing, Exporting, and Recording with ProPresenter 6

ProPresenter offers a multitude of ways to bring in and share content. Some of these include outputting recordings, saving a document as images, importing and exporting documents, and using the playlist. Find out how to use each of these features in this tutorial.

Edit Slides in ProPresenter Using the Advanced Slide Editor

If you haven’t used ProPresenter before, or if you’re interested in more advanced features, this tutorial is an excellent starting point. You will learn everything from creating simple slides for worship to making specific elements in a slide come onto the screen at different times for announcements.

Creating Countdowns, Clocks, & Timers in ProPresenter 6

Yay! There is now the freedom to use as many clocks and timers as you’d like in ProPresenter 6. But how do you harness all that extra power to do something productive?

Three Ways To Import Song Lyrics into ProPresenter 6

Quick! Tell me three ways to import song lyrics into ProPresenter 6! If you can’t name all three, try watching this tutorial on creating presentations with song lyrics in ProPresenter 6. These tips on importing lyrics are fast, easy, and will save you tons of time and prevent potential typos too. Watch or read on!

How to Stream Live Video with ProPresenter 6

Do you want to use ProPresenter to stream live video? Do you also want to display song lyrics over your live video? Great news! Once your hardware is in place, it’s easy to do. This tutorial explains how to set up your live video feed with ProPresenter and how to add graphics as an overlay.

I realized something a few months ago as I was writing my latest book, Creative Potential: Principles for Unleashing Your God-Given Calling that I had never thought of before:

Satan has never created anything.

Think about it. God created the entire world, Genesis tells us that he made every creature on earth and everything within it. Although that may not be that great of a revelation for you, here’s where it hit home for me: Even though Satan has never created anything, I still listen to him when it comes to creativity too often.

Satan keeps telling the same lie over and over. He wants us to stop creating, he wants us to steal what isn’t ours and claim it as our own, and he wants us to borrow from others so we would look good to those we’re trying to impress. And in this pursuit to be ‘perfect,’ we rob ourselves of our own creative potential because we take advice from someone who has never created anything.

Instead, as creatives in the church, we must learn to ignore the voice of the enemy and lean into the voice of the Creator of ALL creativity. God has invited us to step into the fullness of our calling, as we pursue the purpose that He has given each and every one of us. Here are a few quick thoughts on how to ignore the voice of the enemy.

1. Time in the Word.

My pastor says that one of the reasons we can’t hear the voice of God and distinguish it from Satan’s is that we often haven’t spent enough time to become familiar with the word and voice of God. The single best way to do this is to get into the word more often. As we do, we’ll begin to learn to the spiritual voice of our Father and recognize it because His word and His voice will never be contradictory. The will always be in conjunction with one another, because God does not contradict Himself.

2. Be Regular in Our Pursuit.

Worship leader and songwriter Carl Cartee said this on the SALT Tour last fall: “Random has no cumulative value.” What he meant by that is that getting into the word or spending time in the presence of God through worship, prayer, fasting or study without a regular pattern means that our pursuit of God is random. It’s nearly impossible to grow when you randomly do something. Imagine going to the gym to lift weights whenever it was convenient. That would be random, and you’d never gain much strength. A great way to tune out the enemy’s voice is to regularly pursue God.

3. Find Your Place in Community.

Lastly, it’s God’s desire for us to be in relationship with other Jesus-loving people who will encourage, equip and edify our pursuit of our calling. But often, the enemy wants us to think that we’re best in our creative gifts when we’re by ourselves. However, God modeled community and collaboration by collaborating with Himself! It’s not God, 1-in-1, but instead God, 3-in-1. Which means God shows our need for community by being in community with Himself in His sovereignty.

As you begin to step into the fullness of your Creative Potential and recognize the purpose and calling God has predetermined for your life, I hope you’ll ignore the lie that Satan is constantly feeding us. The world needs you to step into your God-given calling and unleash the fullness of your own creative potential!

Want to know more about my upcoming book? Click here for all the details or visit CreativePotentialBook.com

What is the worship like at your church?  As worship leaders, it is a question that we are often asked, and a question that others in the community are asking about us.

So how do you answer that question? What is worship like at your church? Perhaps the most obvious aspect of our worship starts with the songs themselves.  The songs we sing and the way we sing them go a long way in defining our worship.

When people walk into a church service on a Sunday morning, their first impression will be based in large part on the music, and at the heart of the music is the song itself.  The songs we choose are often the most visible aspect of our worship experience.

Here’s how you can choose songs that will create a meaningful worship experience:

Spend time in prayer. The first and most important part of choosing the right songs happens before we even look at songs! Before we go to our repertoire and start selecting music, we should first lift our services up in prayer, and ask God to create a clean heart in us personally before we lead our church. Making time to pray with our worship team before each service and at each rehearsal is also a priority.  It reminds us what we are all about, and keeps us focused on the One who is worthy of our worship.

Spend time in Scripture.  It goes without saying that we can’t lead others where we haven’t been ourselves.  As a worship leader, spending time in the Word of God is a priority in creating a heart of worship.  When we are actively engaged in daily worship, we will be much more effective in leading our community on Sundays.   

Be on the lookout for new music. We are blessed to live in a time when there is great new worship music regularly being written. That makes it easy to regularly seek out new music that could be a great fit for your church. Don’t try to find a spot in your service for every great new song out there – you’ll never learn them all – but do spend time listening to music that is God-honoring and will work well for your congregation.  Even if you never use a new song in church, it may lead you to a place of personal worship, making you more effective in leading others.

Know your people. Sunday mornings are often the one time in the week that our church will gather together as a body and worship corporately before going back to whatever Monday holds for us. Don’t overlook singability and familiarity. This is our chance to lead those who love singing and those who don’t! In order to engage such a diverse group, choose songs with easy-to-learn melodies and put them in a key that everyone can sing in.  Our job is to create an environment that allows anyone and everyone to engage in worship! As we seek out new music, also be sure to include old favorites that people know by heart and can sing without thinking.  People sing with more confidence when they know the songs. Learn what your people do and do not respond to or engage with. Be mindful of who is in front of you, and thoughtfully mix old songs and new songs, reflective songs and energetic upbeat songs.

Plan ahead.  It can be all too easy to get stuck in the rut of planning Sunday-to-Sunday.  This will limit our creative options and lead to burnout. For example, we all know Christmas and Easter are going to come around again the same time every year, so why not have a basic outline in place for each a few months out? Work towards having a detailed two week plan, a solid one month plan, and a three month outline in place.

Know the theme and ask for input. Too often, we can find ourselves at odds with our pastor, who may not ‘get’ music or what we are trying to accomplish by using certain songs in worship. Knowing this, it goes a long way to set a time each week to discuss the worship set, how the songs are effective for worship, and discuss any changes that need to be made.  This gets everyone on the same page, and allows the pastor to have input and suggest songs/topics that will relate to the theme of the message.  When we know the theme of the service and have input from others, we can to create a truly unified worship experience, and not just a list of songs that we enjoy singing that may or may not relate to the message.

Know your theology.  There are some great sounding songs out there that have a pretty shaky message.  If a song has questionable theology, don’t be tempted by its catchy melody!  As we said before, there are lots of songs out there, so there is no need to include a song that will have our congregation singing something weird, awkward, or just theologically inaccurate.  Be wise and discerning in what message a song sends.

When we follow these guidelines, we create an environment where we can successfully lead our church in worship.