Being a SouthRidge Worship Leader

Leading God's people in prayer is one of the most important things we do in worship.   Your job is a crucial part of this worship service.

There are five basic steps to your job here:
1. Lead them in prayer 
2. Welcome and explain prayer cards and email list
3. Release kids to the Sunday School program
4. Give announcements
5. Call for the offering

1. PRAYER
If people are not already sitting, say, "You may be seated."
Your prayer should not feel hurried and should feel heart felt. If possible, just do it from the heart rather than read it - but be prepared ahead of time and know generally what you want to say. It is better to only pray for a few things slowly then a lot of things quickly. It should be about 2 minutes (that's a lot longer than it sounds)

You are not so much praying for the people as helping them to pray - creating spaces for them pray silently to God.

You typically will lead the people in all or part of the  P.R.A.Y. prayer:     Praise, Repent, Ask, and Yield.
       
We don't want to be repetitive - if you see that the Pastor or Music Leader has already prayed significantly along certain themes, such as praising God, don't include that type of prayer in your time.  At the same time, if you hear a theme in the music or past parts of the service feel free to echo those things in your prayer.

Include long pauses where people can pray what you have just said. For example, if you pray "We now lift up to you those we know who are in need your touch", give a long enough pause that someone can actually pray in silence "God I want to lift up to you my brother, you know the struggles he is having, I just ask that you would come into his life, etc." The best way to know how long to pause is to actually pray whole sentences in silence yourself! It should always be a little longer pause than you think it should be.

EXAMPLE PRAYER:
"God we have come here because we love you. You are great and good and true and just and merciful. You alone are God. We are amazed by who you are and we want to tell you that right now...[PAUSE about 10-15 seconds]
"Lord we also have come here to be honest with you, to return to you, to confess to you the things we've done or failed to do, and the thoughts we've carried around this week that are not pleasing to you. We repent of these things as we name them to you now...[PAUSE 10-15 seconds ]
"Father, you have told us that we can come to you and ask you the desires of our hearts. You know what they are. And so we boldly come now ask you to be at work in the parts of our lives where we are struggling, in the lives of people we care about. We name them to you now....[PAUSE 10-15 seconds]
"Finally Jesus, we want to give you our whole lives. We yield our hopes, our dreams, our future, our decisions, all that we are to you. We want your will to be done in our lives, so we yield everything to you now...[PAUSE 10-15 seconds]
AMEN.
 

You prayer should usually include words about worldwide concerns, local concerns, and personal concerns.

2. Welcome, Prayer Cards and Email:
Welcome to SouthRidge, my name is ____________________ and we are glad you are with us today. We are called to pray for each other and if you have something going on in your life we want to pray for you.   You can grab the yellow card in your pew rack, fill out your prayer request and then bring it up here and put it in the basket during the offering, and then we will pray for you.  The church staff will also pray for you during the week.  Also, if you are a visitor and want to find out more about our church, just fill out the other side of the yellow card, put down your email and put that in the basket.

3. Release Kids
Say something like "at this time the children may leave to meet their teachers in the lobby"

4. Give Announcements
a. Get top announcements from Pastor - often from the Service planning sheet.
b.  If pastor not available, Highlight top 2 or 3 items in the bulletin especially focusing on Mission and Small Group oppurtunities.

5. Call for the Offering
Say:
"As Christians we are called to be radically generous and to give richly to the work of God.
 We take our offering to support  not only our own community but also the work of the church around the world.
Now lets continue to worship God with our offerings and our music."