We hope that during this busy time of year, you and your family are able to find quiet moments to hear God speak His blessing upon you.

As promised, we are continuing to improve the WorshipPlanning.com Mobile (WPM) website, which you can access with your mobile browser at http://wplan.me.

The big feature we’ve (finally) added is the ability to add, edit, and delete worship flow elements on your mobile device.  Pretty much all the details you can add on the main WP site (save for the extra notes) you can specify on the mobile site…provided you have the right security level.

The other minor but still important enhancement we’ve made on the mobile site is that all connections between your device and our servers are now encrypted and secure.  This will make your on-the-go access to WP yet a little safer.

What’s next for the mobile site?  Well, we have a few more tweaks we want make on the worship flow (including showing more element details).  We also want to give more access to more information about the service, like rehearsals.  Our next big updated will likely be the ability to manage teams and schedule people to serve.

(guest post by Chris Gambill)

Think about all the bands you’ve listened to over the years. You probably had a couple of favorites along the way.

Remember when one of your favorite bands broke up or significantly changed its makeup?

Usually when that happened, it was because of a relational breakdown. Maybe that’s not how it was announced, but it eventually was revealed to be the reason.

Or maybe you’ve been in a band. Even though you loved playing music, you hated being a part of the band. It just wasn’t enjoyable and you couldn’t wait to be done.

Why do these things happen? The simple truth is this:

Music making and relationships go hand in hand.

You may be investing time in creating and rehearsing great arrangements, developing amazing visual displays, and recruiting and equipping excellent musicians and techs. But, it will be very difficult to maintain this for the long haul if relationships are dysfunctional and/or non-existent.

As much as we desire to develop good musicians and play good music in the context of worship, we must also have as a priority the development of godly, Christ-centered relationships.

Here are six reasons why.

1. The kingdom of God is about relationships. It is more valuable to have quality loving relationships with other Christians than to have the most rockin’ band in your town. Jesus said people would know we are Christians not by the excellence of our music but by how we engage with each other in love.
2. Developing relationships will facilitate a common bond, unity, and purpose beyond music. Your worship team shouldn’t be only known for the quality of the music, but for their bond together with Christ.
3. When relationships are a priority, then you are less likely to deal with jealousy, anger, misunderstandings, and strife. And when those things do develop, you have a strong relational base to address them from. Truth can be spoken in love because you’ve already established the framework of love.
4. When relationships are a priority, you become more than just a band. You are a small group (or groups) doing life and ministry together. That’s a win.
5. Let’s be honest. Your team will play better together when they know and care for each other. A huge part of this is because your members will be looking for ways to look to the interests of others before themselves.
6. David, a leader of worship leaders, reminded us in Psalm 133:1 how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.

Developing relationships is a key part of leading a worship ministry. And while it is vitally important, it can also be very hard. I’ve served in a number of different ministries. In some cases there’s been success in this area. In other cases, not so much. When I stop to reflect, the difference between ministries with strong relationships and those without is obvious.

Not everyone will want to develop relationships. Some may already have enough relationships. Some may just be there to play music. Some may not want to invest the time because of busy lives. But as a leader, you must persevere in this area for the health of your team members, the worship ministry, and the church as a whole.

So, what are some practical ways you can work at developing relationships within your worship ministry setting? Here are a few suggestions:

• Begin by praying. Pray for the members of the team to want to care for and get to know each other. Just like Jesus instructed us in John 13, prayed for us in John 17, and Paul reinforced in Ephesians 4.
• Make sure that you are setting the example of engaging in relationships. If you’re not doing it, not one else will either.
• Have everything ready for rehearsal before people show up so you can be available to chat with people.
• Take members out to lunch or coffee as appropriate. Be conscious of gender issues.
• Invite more than one team member to have dinner at your home at a time.
• Schedule regular worship team get-togethers. Some can be for the purpose of study or training, but be sure to have some just for the purpose of hanging out. These could be cook-outs, game nights, themed food nights (like Mexican), sports events, or a trip to a concert.
• Related to the above, if you’re traveling somewhere together, be sure to car pool instead of everyone driving separately.
• Also related, engage some other team members in the planning and executing of these events. Especially if it’s not your strength. I’ve found that involving others helps to increase participation.
• Spontaneously invite people to go for lunch, coffee, or ice cream following a rehearsal or special event.
• Surprise your team with food during a longer rehearsal or between multiple services. Food is a great way to foster spontaneous conversation and caring.
• Make regular time for team members to share about personal needs in their lives and then provide opportunity for other members to pray for them. Don’t do all the praying yourself.
• Be clear on your expectations. Let the team know this is a priority and that everyone has a part to play. It’s not fair to get frustrated that your team isn’t connecting if you haven’t communicated the importance.

Ultimately, you have to consider the context of your ministry setting. What are the constraints people have on their lives? How many people are a part of your team? Even if your team is small, start doing this now. It’s a lot easier than trying to retrofit when the team gets larger.

The important thing to remember is that this cannot be ignored. It may be hard and there may be resistance, but it is vital to push through. In the end everyone will be better for it.

Your congregation is watching the worship team. It’s obvious when a team gets along and loves each other and when a team is filled with strife. Which type of team do you think will be more effective in leading people to worship Jesus Christ?

And it will be a good way to make sure your team doesn’t become one that implodes on itself and people talk about at conferences for years to come.

If your worship ministry is struggling, maybe it really doesn’t have anything to do with how deep or talented your bench is. Maybe it has everything to do with lack of relationships among the ministry team.

For Discussion: How have your intentionally fostered relationships in your worship ministry?

Version 4.0.4 is now LIVE, and it includes these exciting features:

If you have a SongSelect™ account, you can now easily search and retrieve song details (including lyrics and chord sheets) form the SongSelect database…without leaving WorshipPlanning.com!  It will seem like your song library in WP just instantly grew 1000 fold!

Our SongSelect integration is easy to use.  But we’ve gone ahead and create four very short videos on how to use it.  Feel free to check them out here (they are also available on our support site):

• Adding SongsSelect songs while building your worship flow - http://goo.gl/Xbn78
• Getting SongSelect chord sheets while building your worship flow - http://goo.gl/gtEhd
• Adding SongSelect songs to your library - http://goo.gl/467Es
• Syncing existing songs in your library with SongSelect - http://goo.gl/ZdfMV

The  window used to select which library item should be included in the worship flow element has been improved in the following ways:

• More streamline selection of which library or songbook from which you’d like to select an item
• Ability upload/attach files to a song without having to leave this page and edit the song itself
• Seamless SongSelect integration

Editing role details has been inconsistent between Account Admins and Ministry Schedulers.  We have now made the interface the same for both.  You can even add roles to teams and assign them as skills to people, right on the Edit Roles window.

It’s a fact: one of the biggest hurdles with using an online planning service like WorshipPlanning.com is building your library of songs. Churches often call us asking if we can provide them song details and lyrics so they don’t have to spend hours keying in that information. The fact is we cannot legally supply churches with copyright protected information like song lyrics, however, we have partnered with a service that can: SongSelect™ by CCLI.

Chances are you already use CCLI, and may have a SongSelect account (http://aboutsongselect.ccli.com/). If you do, you will LOVE how we have integrated SongSelect functionality right into your WorshipPlanning.com account. Once you authorize SongSelect in WorshipPlanning.com finding songs and adding them to your songs library is a snap (and so is adding lyrics, song details and chord sheets). You can even search and add SongSelect songs on-the-fly as you build your worship flow.

We’ve created this brief video to show you how this new feature works. Take a look, and feel free to post any comments or questions you may have. We expect this feature to be available to everyone November 28.

All you have to do is point your mobile device’s web browser to http://wplan.me, and sign in. Like the main website, there is nothing to install, authorize, or sync. You might even consider removing the WorshipPlanning.com app you installed from the App Store, since this new way of accessing it will give you more functionality with better performance.

Here are the specific reasons we think you’ll love the new mobile version:

1. HTML5 is as good as native apps - Unless you’re programming math- or graphics-intensive applications, the technology in modern mobile browsers (known as HTML5) allows developers to create interfaces as good as, or better than, native apps. In fact, the current mobile version of WorshipPlanning.com (we’ll call it WPM) actually does more and performs better than our iPhone app.

2. Shorter development cycles - Coding native apps for all the different smartphones out there requires specialized skill-sets and complex project coordination, costly from both time and financial perspectives. We already know how to code web pages and WPM is simply an extension of that knowledge. We can update WPM as fast as we can update the main WP website. The native iPhone app requires at least a week for Apple to approve each version update (no matter how small).

3. Instant updates - Just like the main site, when we do roll-out updates, you’ll see them instantly without having to wait for approval from Apple and then manually update the app on your device.

4. One app, many devices - WPM is smart enough to detect device attributes like screen size and OS type. This means we can make WPM show different features depending on the capabilities of your device….all from one site (one web address, one code base).

5. Launch WPM from a home screen icon, just like a native app - In just a few steps, you can create a shortcut to WPM from your home screen. After doing this, you’ll probably even forget that it isn’t actually a native app.

Many developers are moving away from native apps in favor of web-based mobile apps for the reasons we’ve described above (among others). The technology is here to make this a seamless experience for users. We loved being able to say we have a native iPhone app; but we believe our mobile users will be much better served with the new web-based mobile app of WorshipPlanning.com.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post a comment or contact us via our support site: http://support.worshipplanning.com

WP Mobile Update

We recently made an exciting first step with the WP Mobile site (WPM) that’s in the direction I know many Planners have been wanting WPM to go.  If you are a worship editor (security level 1) or higher, you can now change the worship flow order.  This may seem small, but believe me when I say that adding and editing worship flow elements is not too far behind.  And shortly after that will be the ability to manage team schedules.