YOUTH WORSHIP TEAM
I’ M TIRED OF THAT SONG! | Vance & Michelle Shepherd
If you’ re reading this article, you may likely have the high calling of leading the next generation of youth in worship. For us, having a faith-based music school has been an incredible blessing, and our belief is that teaching the youth how to become skilled musicians or vocalists is just a small portion of our calling. Teaching them how to play music, to write songs, make arrangements etc. is important, but the largest portion of what we do in discipling and mentoring our students is to help them maintain pure servant hearts that are soft and open to God’ s calling on their lives.
As our students get older, gain more experience and become more skilled in their playing, they can tend to get bored easier. They want to add in new songs every single time they lead worship, while not necessarily understanding how this effects the churches and congregations they serve in. An example of this is that our school of music leads worship for four different churches around the valley on an average of one Sunday per month. This means it might be four months between dates at any one church. As we book the dates for them, we consider each church’ s style of worship, popular songs in their rotation, etc. We put together a set list that meets the needs of all the churches and also add in a new popular song picked by the students. For one season, we decided to keep the same worship set for every church, in order to have the students be able to really master the songs, and also to be very comfortable leading them.
The students were really excited about it, since this would really help with their nervousness( knowing the songs so well), but I received a call from one of their parents with concerns over the set list being the same. She wondered why they couldn’ t just do different worship sets, and pick out different songs each time, or even learn new ones. She was afraid that her daughter would get bored doing the same songs over and over, and would not be challenged, which is totally understandable. But as we explained to her, repetition is definitely not a bad thing in their musical training but is a very necessary and good thing! Repetition creates confidence and ease in leading, helps motor skills be more automated, and also creates excellence in their playing and singing. With the students getting the opportunity to lead worship at a new church, we wanted them to be as rehearsed and confident as they could be. And even though the students would have to lead the same songs again, they would be leading those songs to four completely different congregations. And to keep it fresh and keep the students excited, we like to switch out musical parts so that they’ re always doing something slightly different musically with the songs. We might switch the piano player’ s part to the keyboard / synth player – switch the lead and rhythm guitar player roles around, change lead vocals on songs, etc. So, there are always ways to add a challenge and keep things fresh for the students.
After we had the conversation with the parent, we sat down with each of our students and helped them see that as worship leaders, they’ re not learning and playing the songs for themselves, but they are serving the church and also the pastors’ vision for his congregation. They will sometimes have to play certain songs until they are personally sick and tired of them( haven’ t we all been there before!), but it’ s important to keep in mind the congregation can only really engage and sing along when they are very familiar with the lyrics and melody. And a current trend that most churches are experiencing right now is that people only attend church 2- 3 times per month, which should definitely be a consideration in selecting songs that make them engage. And while we do always have our students pick new songs and have a voice with worship sets, song rotation, etc, we want to mentor them to consider that there may be a very good reason why the songs for that Sunday’ s worship set were chosen. The pastor may want the team to lead a particular song over and over for a few months, maybe because it fits his message series. Or he might feel that a particular song is really reaching his congregation and breaking down walls. It could be a wide variety of reasons. As a musician, especially a worship musician, you’ ll always be serving the people you’ re playing for. For those of us who have played professional gigs, the audience loves to hear certain songs that frankly we may never want to hear or play again in our lives. But in serving the church in worship, we have a much higher calling than just entertaining people. We are serving God and also His people … and pointing people to the heart of God through worship … what a privilege!
May you be blessed as you pour into or become the next generation of worship leaders and musicians.
Vance & Michelle Shepherd Founders of The Shepherd School of Music in Las Vegas, NV, where they work with youth to raise up the next generation of worship leaders and musicians. facebook. com / shepherdschoolofmusiclasvegas www. ShepherdStudiosLV. com
48 March 2026 Subscribe for Free...