CCLI
HOW TO LEAD WORSHIP LIKE A PASTOR W / JUSTIN TWEITO | Matt McCoy
Worship leader and songwriter Justin Tweito sat down with CCLI President Matt McCoy to talk about how to lead worship like a pastor, select songs that fit for your church, and more.
[ Justin ] If someone is going to be involved in picking the songs, laying out the service order, leading a team of people and shepherding moments, that is a pastoral role. They may need to be called a pastor or minister. They’ re not just here to sing. To hand that weight to one person, without foundational discipleship, character building, and theological training, is why they can get burned out. It’ s great if they’ re good musicians, but that is a small part of what we do.
[ Matt ] You posted on Instagram recently,“ Stop picking sets like a DJ, and start planning like a pastor.” Can you share your thoughts on that?
[ Justin ] There’ s a great book called Christ- Centered Worship by Bryan Chapell. He takes passages of Scripture and shows that there is an order of worship. There’ s an order that God has given us in Scripture. And it’ s not to be overly stringent on what we do, it’ s to give us guardrails to worship Him as He is meant to be worshiped, and to keep us from doing our own thing.
There are different order methods, one is the ACTS method. You have an Adoration moment, Confessional moment, Thanksgiving moment, and a Supplication moment. If you’ re hitting those marks in a service, you’ d be surprised how much more fulfilled you can feel and how much more glory it brings the Lord, rather than just hanging out in an Adoration moment the entire service.
[ Matt ] How can worship leaders determine what songs are a good fit to sing at their church?
[ Justin ] When I see a new song has come out, I’ ll right away hit play on YouTube. But what happens is, you have a bias to the song title, the font they use on the title, the crowd, the camera work, the number of views it has, and you think after watching it, that you must play it at your church. They’ re produced songs. I’ m not knocking the marketing or the song; I do
that too when I put out songs. But as pastors and leaders, we must be aware of it. I can’ t tell you how many times I’ ve tried to introduce a song and we do it and it falls flat. Either our people couldn’ t sing it, or it’ s a good YouTube song but not in the room.
The songs that we sing aren’ t meant for records, they’ re meant for rooms. We have to put them on records to get them out into the world, but those are demos. It’ s not going to be your band, the mix and musicians are probably better on it, and it’ s just how it could sound. The actual best version is in the room. When the mix isn’ t perfect or you didn’ t play it very well, but everyone is singing their guts out.
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Get the resources to lead the songs for Justin Tweito’ s latest album Shadows on SongSelect and Loop Community.
Matt McCoy Matt is the President of CCLI and the Founder of LoopCommunity. com. He’ s also a worship leader and passionate about building simple, powerful, and affordable technology for churches and worship teams. www. ccli. com 44 April 2026 Subscribe for Free...